Pam Boyd's Blog

Freedom from Rational Strongholds

(Excerpts taken from “Sparkling Gems from the Greek” by Rick Renner)

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 states, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. …We are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.”

If we want to be free from every stronghold of the enemy in our life, we have to understand that there are 2 kinds of strongholds: rational and irrational.  The rational ones are the most difficult to deal with…because they make sense!

When talking about ‘taking every thought captive’, Paul refers to rational strongholds.  The greek word for ‘imaginations’ is logismos, which is where we get the word “logic” as in “logical thinking”.  A sound mind must be submitted to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; otherwise, your mind will develop a stronghold of ‘natural’ reasoning that starts to let all kinds of lies in your life dictate what you do.  Your logical mind will always try to talk you out of obeying God.  It will tell you that you can’t afford to obey the Lord and that it isn’t a good time to step out in faith. Your natural mind will come up with all kinds of logical reasons to explain why you shouldn’t do what the Spirit of God is telling you to do.

I experienced this about 12 yrs ago when we were living in Amarillo TX before we had children.  We had been trying to get pregnant from 1991-1998 but to no avail.  We had tried artificial insemination 3 times with no luck. Our money had run out, too.  So we took a break from it for a year and started saving our money again for the next try.  In May of 1998 Brady got a call for an interview with a television station in Monroe, Louisiana and we both thought, “Wow! We could live close to our families again, only 30 minutes apart!”  We started getting excited about that opportunity and looking at how all of the pros outweighed the cons in our ‘logicial’ minds.  Then we began to pray about it and Brady told me on the way to the airport that if this was God’s will for us, then he’d know immediately when he walked in the building and sat down for the interview.  Well, much to my dismay and brokenheart, he called me afterwards and said that this was not God’s will for us.  The company had not made a decision on whether to hire him or not, but he felt compelled to let them know that he was no longer interested.  We were sad for a few days, but really trusted the Lord that He had something better for us.  

That ‘something better’ turned out to be our son, Abram Neal Boyd!!  You  see, if we had disobeyed God and followed our own ‘logical’ thinking and moved back to Louisiana, we would have missed out on God’s promise for us to have children!  In July of 1998, that same year, just 2 months later, we found out about the opportunity to adopt a little boy who was to be born in October.  We were able to use the money we had saved on his adoption! It still gives me goosebumps when I think about it.  Satan will try any and every little trick in his book to distract us from hearing the Lord.  

Most of us knows what the Lord declares in Isaiah 55:9, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts”, but do we really believe it?  If we constantly give in to rational strongholds, and do not start to recognize them and denounce them, then it seems for sure that we don’t believe this declaration from the Lord.

I am so thankful we did not walk in our flesh and move just because ‘it made sense’.  We would have missed out on not just our first child from the Lord; but also, our second child.  Both Abram and Callie were born in Amarillo TX.  Both were adopted at birth and both are the greatest blessings in our life!