You have already experienced the greatest transformation of all. You are saved, you are a new creature in Christ!

Once you’re saved, the Lord tells His children to become more like Christ, to “pick up your cross and follow Me.” This means developing qualities like the fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Please note that none of these include hating people for their professions or politics. Just saying.)

Transformation in Christ happens when you take the Word of God seriously by reading it, studying it, and/or listening to it every day; and when you live it out the way you deal with other people, and the way you follow the will of God.

A Big Fat Thorn in the Garden

There is, however, a thorn in the rose garden. And that’s allowing sick and/or sinful emotional attitudes to dominate your mind and spirit until attitudes turn into tough spiritual strongholds.

Certainly, the Lord is our stronghold, our mighty fortress. Spiritual strongholds are not by themselves bad things, not when the Lord is our stronghold, the mighty fortress where we run to be safe in Him.

But the New Testament also names some spiritual strongholds that are not of God at all, but are directly opposed to him. The most straightforward of these verses is 1 Cor. 10:3-4: “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.”

Spiritual strongholds can present themselves in different ways, sometimes through symptoms that mask the underlying master stronghold.

One such common spiritual strongholds is fear. Now, fear itself is NOT a bad thing. I’ve actually heard Christians teach that fear is always a sin.

In a word, nonsense.

Jesus Christ was so fearful of His coming Passion when he was in the garden of Gethsemane that he swept drops like blood. This is a human physiological reaction to extreme stress: the capillaries just under the skin’s surface burst, creating bloody drops of sweat.

Very frankly, if Christ was so afraid that His skin was bleeding, I don’t have to worry that fear is a sin! The vastly important thing of course, is that Jesus went through with the thing He feared so badly because God the Father willed it, and Jesus placed His will under His Father’s.

So, if you fear something that God told you to do, whether it’s dramatic or simply an everyday occurrence that scares you or makes you feel anxious, the feeling itself is not sinful.

What is sinful is deciding that you WON’T do the thing God wants you to do. Decide often enough, and putting something important off because you fear it will become a spiritual stronghold. A big one, and a sneaky one because fear strongholds often masquerade as their symptoms, as secondary emotional states like anxiety, depression, irritability, perfectionism, or procrastination. These attitudes don’t automatically have fear as their source, but they often do. And if you suffering badly from one or more of them, fear may well be the root stronghold.

Ask the Lord to reveal whatever is causing you to act in way you don’t want, over and over again. He WILL reveal the truth to you as you seek healing.

Strongholds Vs. Your Calling

What does a spiritual stronghold of fear have to do with Christian women with a calling? What does it have to do with you?

It’s because misguided fear is so common. In fact, fear in general is a huge part of our fallen world. It’s not always bad! Fear seeks to keep us from harm. If you never look both ways for oncoming cars, never go to a doctor because they’re all quacks, or traipse about a war zone, it’s not because you conquer fear. It’s because something is wrong with you.

But when you fear something around your calling, that’s probably a sin and a spiritual stronghold. Common types of fears are focused on not making the money you need, or marketing because you don’t want to feel rejected, or fear of not being good enough to meet people’s expectations.

My fear-based stronghold is based on two of these: money for fear that I don’t manage it well, and marketing because I fear feeling less-than if people don’t need me.

And God is transforming me. He is breaking a spiritual stronghold of decades in duration. This has taken years, and I’m only going to share the last week. Don’t worry, that will make sense. Let me sum up the history of my healing with these points, and then we’ll go on to what happened over the last few days.

First, and this is going to sound super weird to some of you, I had a physical cause of anxiety. I was born with a chemical imbalance in my brain that caused generalized anxiety. By taking medication (specifically a serotonin re-uptake inhibitor), I healed the imbalance that was helping the stronghold of fear. That was only part of the picture, but it was an important part. So, if you need medication and therapy, do that! If there are strongholds left over, you’ll deal with them from a place of better health.
Once my anxiety levels returned to normal, I recognized I had a stronghold as well as an anxiety disorder. I didn’t know it was fear at first, I only knew that I never seemed to have any money even when I was making a lot. I also never, ever liked to market even though I’ve been in business for myself for over 25 years. The upshot? If you’ve got some weird symptoms or behaviors in your life that neither you nor others understand, you might have a spiritual stronghold behind them.
Recognizing and actively dealing with my fear was the next important step. This took, and takes, regular Bible study and meditation, prayer, worship, confession, and prayer partners who intercede for me. If this sounds like a lot, most of these things are basic parts of living the Christian life anyway. The confession might be uncomfortable, but the stronghold is a lot worse.
I celebrated as I felt the stronghold breaking down. Don’t only think of how far you have to go. Praise the Lord at how far you have come. My fear over money went first, and it was a huge relief.

The Latest Chapter

Now we’re up to the present moment. My dislike for marketing directly affected how much money I make. As an entrepreneur, that’s obvious.

I help Christian women with a calling to hear God at an incredibly deep level in the Word and in prayer, and to act in His will. This is a huge calling for me. But telling people about it?

“Oh, I’m scared.”
“Oh, they’ll think I’m weird.”
“Oh, I’ll bother them.”

And I was freaking terrified about that, even though I’m a risk taker by nature! Also, God is calling these women to a life-long transformation in Christ, and I’m like, “I can’t tell them what You said Lord, I’ll bother them.”

WHAT??!! Yes, THIS is what fear as a spiritual stronghold says, even when the outcome is entirely between women and God! I am being ridiculous and just need to open the door!

I had built up fear over marketing to the point where I simply wasn’t doing it. People were going unblessed and I was living on my retirement income. My subconscious was even pretending that I wasn’t really afraid of marketing, I just didn’t like it. I felt very confused when I considered a marketing system. In a way that my excuse: I can’t do it because I’m too confused, and I don’t know why.

OH PLEASE! Really? I’m too dopey to figure out a simple marketing when I read books and hire excellent coaches who know exactly how to do it?

I DON’T THINK SO.

No. That confusion was real, but it was a protective mechanism borne out of fear of doing something I didn’t want to do. I only started to suspect it a symptom of fear because honestly, the confusion was so weird that it made no sense. Aha! Another sneaky symptom.

I. Was. Simply. Afraid.

And I was sick of it.

Healing in His Wings

Just as the Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in His wings (Malachi 4:2), the Lord rose in my life with even more healing for fear and its symptom of confusion.

The healing came on the wings of two specific Bible stories.

The first one was Moses parting the Red Sea.

In Exodus 14, Pharaoh and his army have chased the Hebrews to the shore of the Red Sea. God’s barrier of cloud and fire was keeping the two forces apart, but the Hebrews had a couple really bad choices. The first was to surrender the Pharaoh, who would murder many in his like the rest. Or throw themselves into the ocean and drown.

However, Moses told the people what the Lord told him: to only be still in the Lord would fight for them.

Then something amazing, and I think really funny happened. The very next passage after Moses reassures the people is God. He says to Moses, “Why are you crying to me? Raise your staff!!” and Moses did, just as God had had him do in Egypt with the plagues. And when Moses raised his staff and hand, the sea rolled back and let the Hebrews go.

I have read this passage hundreds of times over the years, and never noticed what God said. This time, it hit me very hard because God was saying the same to me: “What are you crying to me for? I gave you deep knowledge and wisdom about marketing, so go do it. I’ll be with you in power!” When I read it, I laughed aloud, and praised the Lord for reminding me.

I suddenly knew I was capable of doing what God wanted me to do. Fear would have to wait.

Two days later, God brought back to my mind a chapter that I also know very well. Joshua 1, where the phrase “be strong and courageous” appears four times in a single chapter.

Just like the Hebrews, I was at the border of the Promised Land. I had to believe, I had to fight in the will of God. There were spiritual forces arrayed against me, they looked like giants! And the first time the Hebrews reached that border, they ran!

Now that they came back after 40 years, they had to be strong and courageous to take the land. They were, and they did.

And I will do the same. I might do it afraid, but I’ll do it. I’ll take my Promised Land.