Many times, the Lord speaks to me through object lessons or happenings from the natural world. As I was having my quiet time the following morning, thinking back to those huge oaks being torn out from the earth by their very roots, I sensed that quiet, yet familiar whisper,
"Those trees represent strongholds."
Okay. hmmmm. I pondered on. Strongholds. If you look at a Biblical meaning, we can see either the term stronghold can define something good, as in God being our stronghold, or something negative.
In 2 Corinthians 10:4 says, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds." Further in 2 Corinthians it discusses "taking thoughts into captivity." This would imply that one stronghold we are constantly battling for truth to reign is in our own mind.
In terms of war, a stronghold was a place where the opposing side set up camp by taking over, displacing old authority and setting up a new rule.
I wondered again. Was the storm like God's judgment, even His wrath against sin and strongholds?
Yes, yes. That's it. It was God's anger and judgement against sin. This thought produced quite a lot of fear in me, I admit. God's judgement was real and not something to downplay. I immediately pictured a violent twister wrapping itself around those tree trunks, lifting them out of the ground and then each tree dropping with a crash next to its former home.
I thoroughly considered "Am I struggling against any strongholds right now?" "Was God telling me I was heading towards a season of judgement?" Nail biting ensued of course.
Fast forward 7 days later. A kind hearted stranger was warning us to head home from our local swimming creek as there as a large storm headed our way. As we surveyed the landscape around the creek bed we noticed a huge oak tree again fallen down to its roots. As we examined the fallen tree, the older man made a comment about the Good Lord and then described the reason behind the roots being pulled up. He explained, "The ground is so moist from all this rain, so these old beauties just end up coming straight out of the ground, roots and all during these strong storms."
Hours later, as I considered what he said, I felt that same familiar whisper echo on the inside.
"That strong rain is like my love being poured out to soften the hard ground."
Ohhhh. Wow. This changed my perspective in profound ways. God's love was actually paving the way for all this uprooting business! This was far different than the first image of His wrath coming in the form of a storm to destroy our strongholds.
I breathed a sigh of relief. God wants us to receive His love! This is step number 1 to displacing a stronghold of the enemy. He wants us to soak in, drink deeply, and receive, even in our weakness. Even our sin cannot deter His love. In that place of receiving, even enormous, ancient strongholds cannot stand. This was vastly different from my initial ideas about the storm and these trees. Does God discipline those He loves? I believe so. But one thing remains, even in the midst of our struggle against sin. His consistent downpour of love paves the way for old thought patterns to be broken, old mindsets to die and for strongholds to be completely uprooted.
God, as the perfect Father, can simultaneously hate our sin and also be raining down His perfect love to soften our hearts.
A PRAYER FOR TODAY:
Lord, thank you for your love. Thank you for the permission to receive your love even in the midst of weakness and discipline. Thank you that you love us perfectly and know how to extract even the largest of strongholds. Help me to receive your unconditional love today.
