From His Heart

Speaker 1

Are there strongholds in your life you just simply can't conquer? Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

Today we want to talk about the giant of strongholds. It's just some kind of sin, and it's different for different people, but it's some kind of sin that just seems to always trip you up, to always mess you up. It's something that you can't seem to get loose from. It just has you bound and held.

And I think if we're honest, we can all identify with a sin that seems to have a strong hold on us. Well, here's the good news. The Lord wants to break every stronghold so that you and I can walk in freedom and in victory with the Lord Jesus Christ.

He can heal every scar with real truth, real love, real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

When you hear the word stronghold, you might think of alcohol, drugs, or some type of sexual immorality. But there are more than that. Did you realize that? Worry, anger, or even being negative, among other things, are strongholds that can take a grip on your heart, your testimony, and your relationships with people. And they won't let go. They can wreak havoc in your life, creating a great deal of damage or disruption if you let them.

This is from his heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. And all this month, we've been learning how to overthrow the giant problems in our lives. And today we begin the last message on the theme called the Giant of Strongholds. You can have victory over all of these terrible chains in your life.

So let's begin learning how to. Here's Pastor Jeff again with part one of the last message in the Facing the Giants series. It's entitled the Giant of Strongholds.

Speaker 2

Does anybody have a fear of snakes? I don't like snakes at all. When I went to Africa a few years back, man, I was just really scared. It helped my prayer life every time I would walk through the bush. One time I was walking through waist-deep brush, and the guy said, "Well, this is a shortcut to the next village." Man, I was just praying every step, "Oh, God, don't let me encounter a snake." They have snakes over there that can kill you in about five or ten minutes, and I was just so afraid. I just don't like snakes. I identify with that Jim Stafford song, "I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes." You remember that song? That was out when I was in about fifth or sixth grade.

Well, I ran across a story about a snake. It was about a big snake. Actually, the biggest snake in the world is found in South America; it's called an anaconda. These things can grow to be up to 30 feet long and can weigh 550 pounds. They're big snakes—definitely a big dude. They have really sharp teeth, 100 teeth that are like razor sharp.

Well, true story: this year, a little boy in Brazil, an 8-year-old boy, was playing on his grandfather's farm, down by the river, when he got attacked by a 15-foot anaconda. It bit him in the chest, held him there, and began to wrap its body around him to squeeze him to death and to eat him. He was with a friend, and obviously, the boy that was being attacked began to scream. The other boy started to scream as well, and their screams reached the grandfather's ear. He ran to help his grandson, who was in the clutches of the anaconda and couldn't move. The grandfather began to beat on that snake with rocks to no avail. He had a machete and began to slash at the snake with it. In the grandfather's own words, he said hitting that snake was like trying to defeat a rubber tire, a car tire. Everything seemed to bounce off. After 30 minutes, he finally killed the snake and freed his grandson from the stronghold of the anaconda.

Now, we have been in a series called "Facing the Giants." We've talked about the different giants that the Bible mentions, which represent various giants in our own lives. We've discussed Goliath, the giant of shame; Ishbi, the giant of discouragement; Saf, the giant of fear; and La Me, the giant of evil desires. Today, we want to talk about the giant of strongholds.

Somebody asked one time, "What exactly is a stronghold?" A stronghold is a sin that has a stronghold on you. That's basically what it is—some kind of sin that is different for different people, but it just seems to always trip you up, always mess you up. It's something that you can't seem to get loose from. It's like that anaconda around you; it just has you bound and held in its grip.

You know, lots of people, when we think of strongholds, we think of alcohol. Alcohol has so many people in its grip. Maybe you're here today, and that's your stronghold sin—alcohol. Maybe for you, it's drugs. Drugs can get a stronghold grip on you. Perhaps it's food—gluttony. You're a glutton. Maybe it's lust, pornography, sexual immorality. Maybe it's worry, bitterness, negativity, depression, or anger. I don't know what it is, but you know what it is, and God knows what it is. If we're honest, we can all identify with a sin that seems to have a stronghold on us.

Well, here's the good news: The Lord wants to break every stronghold. He wants to destroy the strongholds so that you and I can walk in freedom and victory with the Lord Jesus Christ.

In 1 Chronicles 20, I'll begin reading in verse 6. The Bible says, "And again, there was war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature who had 24 fingers and toes—six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. He also was descended from the giants. When he taunted Israel, Jonathan, the son of Shimea, David's brother, killed him. These were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants."

Five giants total that David and his servants faced: Goliath, Ishbi, Benob, Lami, Saph, and then this giant. God doesn't give him a name. We don't know what his name is, but he had an interesting characteristic. I think the reason God doesn't give a name is that He doesn't want you to focus on the name; He wants you to focus on the fact that this guy had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. They call that malady polydactylism, from the Greek "poly," which means many, and "dactylosm" or "dactyli," meaning finger—many fingers.

Have you ever seen somebody with six fingers? What's the picture here? Here is a giant. He's already got a strong grip. Why? Because he's a giant. He's a big old boy, descended from the giants at Gath—some kind of a descendant of Goliath, a son, a brother, a nephew, something. He's a big dude, and he's got six fingers on each hand. He can grab you and hold you in a vice grip. This guy is a picture of a stronghold of sin. The giant with six fingers pictures a stronghold of sin.

Now, just as this giant was defeated in David's life and in David's kingdom, God wants to defeat the giant of a stronghold of sin in your life and in my life, breaking every stronghold that the devil puts in our path.

Now, I want you to notice with me three truths concerning this passage and concerning this six-fingered giant, this stronghold of sin. Truth number one: the giant of strongholds seems to be too strong. That's very simple, but it's so true. It seems to be too strong.

Now, the word "stronghold," as it's used in the scripture, is a military term. It's used all the time in the Old Testament, and it refers to a fortress, a strong place, a fortified place—a place that's hard to penetrate and hard to defeat. Jericho was a stronghold because, if you'll remember, it had a wall around it that was seemingly impenetrable. When the Israelites came up against Jericho, the people of Jericho just went inside their city, laughed at the Israelites, and said, "What are you going to do? How are you going to get to us? We have this wall around our city; we have this stronghold."

The only way that wall was defeated was by the power of God. As the people praised, the Lord did what God said, and God knocked the wall down. But that is a picture of a stronghold. When a stronghold gets in your life or mine, it seems so strong—too strong. A stronghold sin is not like other sins. Other sins in the Christian life are sins that we can defeat. We don't come up against every sin and say, "Oh, I can't defeat this; I can't defeat that." I mean, Christians have victory in life. If you're walking with God, you're experiencing victory in life.

I'm reminded in the book of Judges, as God's people went into the promised land, God said, "There are enemies in the promised land—the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Philistines, and all these people that you have to drive out of the land." Well, you read in the Book of Judges, chapter one, that they started to do good. They were going into the land, starting to mow down the enemy, and things were going well. Then the Bible says they hit the people that lived in the valley, and they couldn't drive out those people. The reason they couldn't drive out those people was that they had iron chariots.

Speaker 1

Ugh.

Speaker 2

How can we go up against these people? God, they have iron chariots. What's a stronghold? It's an iron chariot. Sin in your life. I got saved when I was 17 years old. And when God saved me, I was a drinker, a partier. I had an x-rated mouth. And I loved to chase girls. That's who I was. And then God saved me. And God began to work in me. God began to change me. God says, "Jeff, we're gonna work on your mouth. We're gonna take out all the profanity, all the vulgarity, all the times you take my name in vain. We're taking that out." And the Lord changed that. He worked that out.

And then God said, "Now listen, you can't be a witness to your friends if you're drinking and partying with them. So we're changing that." And the Lord made that change in my life, and he made the change in my speech and those things. I was mowing down those enemies. And then we hit lust. Pure thoughts, impure thoughts, actually. And God said, "Okay, Jeff, we gotta work on this." And that enemy didn't fall quite as fast. That was an iron chariot sin for me, as it is for so many men. Steve Audubon wrote the book *Every Man's Battle*, talking about lust, talking about temptation in the area of sexual immorality for a man, and thought life for man. Well, that's an iron chariot sin. That's a stronghold area for so many people.

See, it's not like other sins. That kind of sin has six fingers. That kind of sin just gets ahold of you. And it's different for different people. Look what the scripture says in Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 1. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down. Now, watch this. Especially the sin that so easily trips us up." It's not the same sin. You might struggle with something that I don't struggle with. I might struggle with something you don't struggle with.

I have a really good friend of mine in Houston. I remember he and I were talking one day. We were part of an accountability group. And we were talking, we were sharing, and a couple of the other guys were sharing about this iron chariot sin called lust. And my friend Ron said, "You know, that's not a big struggle for me." He said, "You know what's a big struggle for me? Greed. Greed. Wanting things, wanting the best of things, and spending money I don't have to get the best of things." And I thought, "Well, I don't have that. Well, you're weird, Ron. You ought to have what I have." But see, not everybody's the same.

And your Achilles heel might be different than my Achilles heel, but it's a stronghold nonetheless because it's something that has a strong hold on you. That sin is not like other sins. It's a sin that has a stronger grip on you. It's a six-fingered grip from the giant. And what happens with a stronghold is you try and defeat it. And you try and defeat it. And you try and defeat it, and you try and defeat it. You try and get that angry temper under control. But it seems to just hold on. You can get very defeated as you face that six-fingered giant.

What's the first truth? The giant of strongholds seems to be too strong. Truth number two, because the giant seems to be too strong, then the giant of strongholds begins to steal our hope. You know, you go up against this giant and you say, "All right, I'm gonna defeat this giant." And you fail. "All right, I'm gonna defeat this giant," and you fail. "All right, I'm gonna regroup and defeat this giant." And you fail again. "And I'm gonna get free of this giant." And the six-fingered giant just has you. And you can't get free from like fighting that anaconda. You can't seem to make a dent, and you can lose hope.

You can say, "This is hopeless." And verse seven says about this giant that he taunted Israel. He taunted, he defied, he reproached Israel, just like his relative Goliath did. That word "defy" means to expose by stripping. And he exposed God's people. And that's what the devil does to you and me. That's what the giant of strongholds does to you and me. It says, "You're never gonna break free. You're never going to have victory over this area in your life. I own you, boy." That's what you hear the giant say. And you look at the scoreboard and you say. And you look at the track record and you say, "You know what? I think the giant is right."

Because I can't seem to get victory in Area X in my life. And you begin to lose hope. And you begin to believe the lie that victory is impossible. Victory is... How can I have victory? I've never had victory in this area, Lord. I've never been able to go up against the enemy that has iron chariots, Lord. Victory is impossible for me. Maybe other people can walk in victory, but I can't. And you begin to believe that lie, that taunt of the enemy that he owns you. You'll never break free. You're never gonna be anything more than a drunk. You're never gonna be anything more than a pill-popping drug head. You're never gonna be anything more than an immoral woman. You're never gonna be anything more than some sex fiend. Never gonna be anything more than some worrywart, some bitter prune.

You start to believe that victory is impossible. Hey, Jesus said in Mark 9:23, "All things are possible to him who believes." All things are possible to him who believes. But the grip of the giant says, "No, no, no, you'll never break free. Victory is impossible for you." We begin to believe that lie. And then we begin to believe the lie that the only thing that's left for you to do with this stronghold is to give up and give in. Give up and give in. That's all that you can do. Why? Because you've tried and tried and tried. You're trying to run through a brick wall. That giant will tell you there is no way you're gonna run through a brick wall.

So why don't you quit bloodying your body by running into that wall? Why don't you just give up? Why don't you just accept defeat and say, "You know what, I can't beat them. I might as well join them. I might as well just say, you know, this is just gonna be an area that I'm not gonna be able to have victory over." That's what the Israelites did when they faced the iron chariots in the valley. They just began to live in the hill country and let the enemy live in the valley because they said we can't have victory there. God doesn't want you to live a life where you have victory in a part of your life and you have defeat in this area and you have the enemy holding onto you in an area that's not, that's not God's plan for you and for me.

And that's a lie from hell that says you can't win. So just give up and give in. I read about a Christian man who had been struggling with homosexuality. He's a true believer, but he had these tendencies, he had these thoughts, these desires. He knew it was wrong. He knew it was wrong. He had an internal struggle going on in his life and he heard the taunts of the six-fingered giant. "You'll never break free. I own you, boy. I have you, boy. Why don't you just accept the fact that this is the way you were made, this is the way you were born. This is the life for you. Just give up and give in."

And you know what this man did? He went through all those struggles and finally what he did was he raised the white flag of surrender to the giant with six fingers and said, "You're right, I believe you, and I surrender and I give up and I give in. And this is just the way I'm gonna be homosexual for the rest of my life." Have you given up and given in? Because there's a sin that has a hold of you and you can't break it and you can't shake it.

Winston Churchill was the leader in England during World War II. Great leader and a great speaker and motivator of people. Well, he was speaking in October 1941 at the Harrow School for Boys, and he gave a speech in the dark days of World War II. And he said this to those boys: "Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never. In nothing great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy. Never give in."

Hey, I don't care what has a hold of you. I don't care what sin has a hold of you. I don't care if you've been an alcoholic for 50 years. Don't give in. Don't give in to that. Don't believe the lie of the devil that he owns you, that this sin owns you, that you'll never be different, that you'll never, never be changed. That that's just the way you are. God is the God of hope. Now, may the God of hope, the Bible says, fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord can do anything.

Speaker 1

Be sure to join us again tomorrow for the final chapter of this message called the Giant of Strongholds, from Pastor Jeff Shreve's series, Facing the Giants, when Pastor Jeff will share three things that you must do to break strongholds in your life through the power that Jesus freely gives you.

And I live in a land of giants, and we can name them. What are the biggies? Well, they're all big, and we've covered many of them this month. As we've been talking about giants, we covered the giant of anger, discouragement, evil desires, fear, guilt, shame, insecurity, lust, the giant of worry, and the giant of discontentment. And of course, today's message is about strongholds.

Any of these or a combination of any of these giants feel familiar to you? Most of us don't know how much real damage they may be doing to our friendships, our families, and our Christian testimony. What can we do about these problems when we live in a land of giants? And how can we defeat these giants? Pastor Jeff has a powerful series that we aired earlier this month that'll help. It's called the Land of the Seven Messages about how to deal with your biggest problems.

This series, plus his booklet, When You Don't Like Yourself, are both our gifts of thanks to you for your support to From His Heart this month. When you give, you'll be helping us launch a new international outreach initiative to join with Pray.com to add Spanish and Portuguese translated versions of our worldwide outreach arsenal. So please know that your gift today is very timely and will be impactful to a lost and hurting world.

These two languages are spoken by nearly three quarters of a billion people around the world, and we can reach them with your help. To get these two resources, you can make that gift by calling 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromhisheart.org. Know that we greatly appreciate your gifts and prayers for this new expansion of our mission.

Again, call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhisheart.org. Tomorrow will be the last day we'll be making this offer, so we hope that you'll get yours this month. Thank you for joining us to touch the world that is full of giants.

And thank you for listening today. We pray that the program has been a blessing to you and that we can be a blessing to you in the days to come. We'll close with a final encouragement from God's Word that tells us in Psalm chapter 91, verses 1 and 2: "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust." We pray that's in your heart today.

Thank you for joining us. I'm Larry Nobles, inviting you to be right back here tomorrow for part of the message that will conclude the lesson on how to defeat the giant of strongholds. That's on Tuesday when Pastor Jeff will again open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from his heart.

Speaker 2

There is truth, there is hope that you always dream of. He can heal every scars.

Speaker 1

From his heart. Is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more. Go to fromisheart.org.