Curse Breaking: Obliterating Strongholds for Permanent Freedom from Generational Cycles

(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 KJV).

In the natural, a stronghold is a fortress or a fortified place.

This could be like a castle, tower, or a well-defended hold of any sort. In the spiritual realm, a stronghold is a mindset based on deception. A strong- hold is an ungodly imagination, an argument against the truth, or a deceptive way of reasoning. Strongholds are deceptive thought patterns. These deceptive thought patterns can become safe havens for works of the flesh, as well as demonic influence. Once established, these ungodly thought patterns become ungodly behavior patterns, and those ungodly behavior patterns are what we refer to as “spiritual bondage.”

If you want to be permanently freed from spiritual bondage, you have to get to the root of the issue. You have to address the problem beyond just the symptoms of your actions and feelings; you have to get to the source of the deception. For the believer, the root of every kind of spiritual bondage is a stronghold of deception. Deception is the root of all defeat. The devil is the father of all deception. Spiritual warfare is the fight to believe God’s truth over the enemy’s lies. What we believe can give power to or take power from the devil and the sin nature. Thankfully, we’re told how to deal with strongholds of deception.

Paul writes, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.” This, of course, speaks to the spiritual nature of how the believer engages in battle. Though the spiritual can often affect the material and vice versa, you and I don’t fight our enemy through carnal means. Demons and deceptions don’t respond to shows of physical strength. They’re not impressed by intellect, by what we think we know about them or the spiritual realm. Nor does emotion work against the enemy. Neither deceptions nor demons have any compassion toward us, so our frustrations or sorrows cannot persuade them to show mercy. Screaming and yelling don’t intimidate them. Human effort cannot remove or silence them. Moreover, we can’t outthink them. So we use God’s weapons, which are the powerful effects of truth and divine authority.

The phrase “mighty through God,” tells of the effectiveness of our weapons and how our spiritual weapons accomplish for the sake of God’s cause.

“To the pulling down of strongholds” is especially powerful. What’s being described is the absolute destruction and the complete removal of the spiritual obstacle. To visualize this insight, picture a brick wall. If the wall were to be pulled down in the way described in this verse, not one brick would be left upon another. This is more than the toppling of a structure—it’s the vanishing of it. The Scripture isn’t describing a dam- aged stronghold or a partially removed barrier. It’s not even describing a pile of rubble. The Bible tells us of a path completely cleared. Not even a hint of the strong- hold can remain. Stepping into victory, you wouldn’t even have to worry about getting a pebble in your shoe. That’s what God promises—total victory.

When Paul writes, “Casting down imaginations,” he is speaking of reasonings, mindsets, or deception. These “imaginations” are the things we tell ourselves that don’t align with divine truth. They are also the lies that demons tell us repeatedly. So “casting down imaginations” is a reference to the dispelling of deception.

We are told that “every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God” will be torn down. This can be both every mindset or deception that prevents us from knowing God and every mindset or deception that prevents us from knowing truth about God. The former has to do with our personal relationship with God; the latter has to do with our personal revelation about God.

Finally, the Scripture tells us of “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” I love that the Scripture describes the act of combatting deception as taking captives. Just as the spoils of war are taken only after a city falls, so you cannot take your thoughts captive until you have dismantled the stronghold, the pattern of thinking, in which they find refuge. Demonic and fleshly influence hide in the strongholds that are built upon the lies we believe. When a stronghold is torn down, only then are we able to take our thoughts as captives and bring them under subjection.

This is how strongholds work: the enemy lies to you through his demons, secular culture, other people, media, and even you. Every day, you are bombarded by lies. Every so often, a lie will slip past your guard. The lie, once believed, becomes deception. That deception becomes a thought pattern. That thought pattern becomes a behavior. That behavior becomes a habit. That habit becomes a long-term cycle. That cycle is what we call spiritual bondage.

Most believers spend years trying to address the surface of a stronghold, which would be the bad habits or the negative feelings. They go after the symptoms instead of the sickness, the fruit instead of the root, the consequence instead of the cause. They go after the bondage instead of the stronghold that is causing the bondage. This would be like trimming a tree instead of uprooting it. You can trim a tree to look tame for a season, but its leaves will grow again if it isn’t cut down at the root. This explains why some can experience a form of freedom or deliverance for days, weeks, or even months, only to find themselves back where they started. They keep addressing the outcome while ignoring the origin.

Internal dysfunction is the result of a stronghold, not a curse or a hex. So how do you sever a stronghold at its root? You find the lie and then overcome it by your belief in the truth.

To find the lie, get into the Word. The brighter the light of the Word in your life, the more intense the exposure of deception. The more you read the Word, the more you begin to see how your thoughts might contradict the Word. Then you need to make a commitment to the truth by correcting the lies.

Think According to Truth

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (Philippians 4:8, NIV).

You can choose what you believe. While it may be difficult to change a current pattern of thought, you can change this pattern through the constant washing with God’s Word. Thinking about it this way might encourage you to be faithful in reading the Word: as you read the Word, imagine that a river is washing through your mind. That river is the Word, and it is washing your mind, even reforming the entire landscape. Old pathways are being rerouted.

When you develop a Word-based mind, it’s easier to spot and dismiss the lies of the enemy and strange doctrines.

Once you become grounded on and confident in the truth of the Word of God, you become more difficult to deceive. Choose to think about what God’s Word says. Choose to believe the truth even when your emotions, circumstances, and demonic lies try to convince you otherwise. This takes practice, but it can be done. And you’ll find that as soon as you expose and eliminate the lie, peace and joy return. Of course, there are also practical measures to take should there be an aspect of mental illness: counseling, Christian therapy, account- ability, godly relationships, and so forth. I’m mostly writing about dealing with the demonic attacks, the spiritual aspect. The enemy is defeated by the truth of the Word. You need to make a long-term commitment to the Word, and you will see the change.

Satanic Manipulation

The enemy doesn’t want you to address the deception, so he keeps you distracted with the lie that you’re cursed. He uses the negative thoughts and feelings to reinforce this distraction so that you end up wondering, “Why haven’t I been able to break free from this after all these years? Who can I go to for prayer to finally be free? Why does it seem like God is ignoring me?”

The negative thoughts and emotions give rise to the belief that you’re under a curse, and the belief that you’re under a curse gives rise to more negative thoughts and emotions. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Only identifying the lie at the root of the stronghold can finally break the oppression of heaviness and torment—and with that stronghold goes the internal dysfunction, everything from intrusive thoughts to night terrors to emotional heaviness to paranoia.

If we believe the voice of the enemy and embrace the unbiblical idea that we are cursed, the belief that we are cursed becomes the lens through which we see all things. This lens causes us to hyper focus on every negative thought, feeling, or situation. It also causes us to ignore God’s power and goodness. Whenever some- thing bad happens, the lens we see through causes us to say, “See! There it is. There’s the power of the curse.” Whenever something good happens, the lens we see through causes us to say, “This won’t last,” or cynically speak, “Finally, something good actually happened. But this won’t likely happen again.”

That’s what happened to Elijah. When Jezebel spoke against the prophet Elijah, he was overcome with fear. She had no actual power to harm him, but her words got to him.

Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, “May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them.”

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep (1 Kings 19:1-5, NIV).

Think about this. The prophet who called down fire from Heaven, who was backed by the very hand of God, so allowed a wicked person’s words to affect him that he became afraid, depressed, and physically exhausted. Here, we see the true effects of what we would normally call a “word curse.” It’s the devil’s use of psychological warfare.

The power of the curse is the belief in it. The power of the curse is the credit we give to it. The power of the curse is the mental and emotional drainage that results when we fret about it. When I teach people these truths, I’m sometimes told, “David, you’re keeping people in bondage by telling them that they can’t be cursed!” It’s actually the opposite. Once the believer realizes that they can’t be cursed, they immediately have peace and joy again. It’s amazing to me that the Christians who believe we can be cursed are always the ones who are constantly dealing with curses, whereas the believers who trust that God keeps them free never deal with them.

One might say, “But I know I was under a curse, because once I broke it, I had peace!” But here’s the biblical reality: it wasn’t a curse they were freed from but the belief in the curse. The problem is that because they still believe another curse can possibly come upon them, they will likely deal with this problem again and again, until they finally come to believe the truth.