Is God good? We say, "Yes! Of course, He's good," until something happens that we disagree with and blame God for.
The other day a woman asked me on social media why did her husband die of cancer. I told her I was sorry for her loss and then simply said death entered the world through Adam and Eve, so we will all experience natural death at some point.
She said she understood that but didn't understand why her husband wasn't healed because she had faith that he would be.
The Wrong Question
This is a much deeper issue than could be worked out in a few words on social media. However, asking "Why God" is never the right question. Asking Him where do I go from here or what do You want me to do now are valid questions.
When we blame God for anything we have prayed for and hasn't happened the way we want it to happen, and then shake our fists in His face and tell Him He messed up, we have stopped believing a core truth about God.
We have stopped believing God is good. And if He isn't good, then where does that leave us? If we don't believe He is good, then we won't be fully surrendered to Him. That's why I love the line in the song Goodness of God by Bethel Music. It says, "With my life laid down, I'm surrendered now. I give you everything 'cause your goodness is running after me."
Foundational Lies
God's plans are always for our good and not our disaster (Jeremiah 29:11, NLT). God is the author and finisher of our stories. He has a plot twist for every time we find ourselves headed toward disaster. He will then use that situation to teach us something that we will never learn any other way.
Romans 8:28 (TPT) explains it this way: "We are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together to fit into God's perfect plan of bringing good into our lives, for we are His lovers who have been called to fulfill His designed purpose."
The problem is we begin to believe lies. We believe God didn't make the right decision and let someone we love die. We believe God doesn't know how to fix things because we see that everything is a mess, so we want to step in to control things and make them happen the way we want them to happen.
The woman who lost her husband is going through a time of grief and questioning. She can come out of that without developing a stronghold that will keep her from following what God wants for her. Or if she lets the lie build into one of her core truths, it will become a stronghold because the evil one will make sure of that.
Spiritual Battle
We have to understand that evil is in this world. Evil is fighting against us. We are pawns in a galactic battle of the ages. It's good against evil—a war that is being fought in the heavenlies and has consequences here on earth.
John 10:10 explains this. "A thief has only one thing in mind—he wants to steal, slaughter, and destroy. But I have come to give you everything in abundance, more than you expect—life in its fullness until you overflow!" The devil is the thief, and he has one mission. He wants to steal, kill and destroy our lives and our destinies in Christ.
His strategies will continue until he has people enslaved to him, especially good Christians. He fights hardest to keep us from being effective.
What is a Stronghold?
A stronghold can be something that takes root in our lives as an argument against God. It's something we begin to believe because of circumstances or situations in our lives, but it is a lie.
This meaning is discussed in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (NIV): "For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ."
Any argument anyone has against God is a lie because God is the highest authority. No argument will stand against Him. Still, many of us think we know better than God and refuse to follow what we know He wants us to do. When we are following what we think, feel or desire instead of what we know God wants, we are behaving like we know more than God. This becomes a stronghold if we don't recognize it as a lie, address it and refute it.
False Mindsets
A stronghold is a false mindset that imprisons a part of us. It begins as a lie. It gains a foothold as we begin to feel it is helping us in some way. It develops into a mental stronghold we think we need to survive. We see it as protection, but it is becoming a prison that keeps us further from God.
How we think will affect what we do. This is where sugar addiction, overeating and binging come into play. We try to push thoughts out of our minds about incidents like emotional, verbal, sexual or physical abuse. These incidents may be the very root of the stronghold, which is taking us further away from God and His truth.
We push the thoughts away by overeating, drinking alcohol, taking both legal and illegal drugs to excess, watching pornography, gambling, over-spending, smoking, controlling, the constant drive to achieve or any myriad of other addictions.
Can Strongholds Be Broken?
God says strongholds must be broken. Many, though, are scared to even ask God to help them get to the core of what's going on. We may think when the stronghold falls, we will fall apart. In reality, the stronghold must fall before God can begin to rebuild us from the foundation up.
God knows and will help us get to the root issue if we ask Him. We must allow Him to replace the lies we believe with His truth. God is good and wants more than anything to help us get to the root of our problem and destroy the stronghold.
We don't break strongholds by self-effort. Only God can break strongholds. We have to learn how to rely completely on Him. This takes commitment, hard work and a desire to always keep Him as our main focus.
God is ready to set us free from the strongholds that have held us captive. It's time for us to allow Him to help us rise victorious.
Teresa Shields Parker
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