Jim Van Gelderen: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. This is Jim Van Gelderen and I am broadcasting tonight from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. We have just finished our spring tour and we thank the Lord for all he did in hearts.
Certainly a blessing to see young people get right with God, see young people get saved and always a blessing to be in the Lord’s work. My wife and I will be setting out in just a short time to Canada, where we will be in several local churches looking forward to preaching to God’s people and trusting God to do a reviving work in many hearts.
Well, I want to continue on a series that we started last couple podcasts I’ve had the privilege of doing. I’ve been dealing with second Corinthians chapter number ten and dealing with the subject of strongholds. Now, stronghold is a very interesting word.
Has the idea of a fortress. If you thought about them in the medieval times, it would look like a castle. In modern days, it looked like some kind of military fortification from which attacks are launched to defeat the enemy.
Now, in order to have a stronghold or a military fortification on enemy soil, you have to have four things. Number one, you have to have real estate. Number two, you have to have building materials.
Number three, you have to have an enemy. And number four, you have to have deception. If you can imagine some remote part of the United States that a foreign military power had gotten some land and was secretly building a military installation from which they were planning to launch attacks toward our our country.
We’d be concerned about it. Now, obviously, they’d have to have deception. And once that deception would be exposed, they’d be in huge trouble.
It’d be really over half the problem would be done once people would find out there’s what’s going on, there’d be an attack and it would be taken out. So it is with strongholds in our heart. Young person, you have an enemy.
He’s Satan. You probably have figured this out. But he is not your friend.
He’s a liar. The father of it. So he’s the enemy.
He gets real estate. We talked about that in the first podcast on this subject, and we talked about that real estate is simply when we hold on to wrath over twenty four hours, we get bitter and Satan gets real estate. Then building materials are those wrong thinking processes.
Many times we we feel like we’re not worth anything, or that we’re a failure or will never be used of God. Whatever. Wrong thinking is the building materials.
But there’s another thing, a part of this stronghold that I want us to see here in verse number five, verse four talks about the pulling down of strongholds. Five says, casting down imagination. That’s the wrong thinking.
And every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Now, the high thing is something that we turn to because we got, we got problems. We got, we got burdens, we got hurt.
We got, uh, we’ve got some situations in our life that we’re looking for meaning and fulfillment. A high thing is something that you turn to to meet your need other than God. It’s his high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God.
That word, knowledge of God is not talking about knowing about God. It’s talking about knowing God. It’s talking about that intimate relationship where you walk with God.
I believe it’s what the songwriter meant when he said, and he walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known. It’s talking about that walk with God. When God manifests his presence and you begin to know him, he becomes real to you.
You have a real, genuine friendship with him. It takes time to build a friendship. Takes time to really know someone well.
In marriage, you’ll find a young person in time. As you longer you go. You know your spouse, you spend time with them.
