II Corinthians 10:4 “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”
Suppose that you had a large tree in your backyard and every fall the leaves would fall off and clog your gutters and create a huge mess in your yard. So one fall you finally decided that you have had enough of the mess this tree makes. You are determined to get rid of the tree. In a fit of anger, you stomp out through the pile of leaves and break several branches off of the tree. You then say to yourself, “That will do it. That tree will be gone in no time.” Of course that would be foolish thinking. You can’t get rid of a tree by simply breaking off a few branches; you have to chop it down at the roots. Breaking off a few branches may make someone who doesn’t like the tree feel better, but it has done absolutely nothing to deal with the source of the problem. The tree will continue to grow and the leaves will continue to fall until an axe is taken to the root of the tree.
Now picture a man with a spiritual problem. The Holy Spirit calls his attention to the sin in his life. For example, a man with an anger problem loses his temper and throws a glass cup across the room. The man is willing to deal with the symptom of the problem, so he apologizes for throwing the glass and he asks God to forgive him as well. But this man never digs deeper to deal with the root of his problem, which is the sin of anger. He breaks a few branches off the tree so to speak, but because he does not lay the axe to the root, his anger will continue to grow and manifest itself in different ways.
The Holy Spirit realizes the need for God’s people to plunge beneath the surface and deal with the root sins in their lives. This is why he inspired the Apostle Paul to write to the church at Corinth that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. In other words, the Bible is clear that God has the power, not just to deal with the surface symptoms of our sin, but God has the power to lay axe to the root of our sin so that we can walk in victory that is ours through Christ.
Why is it then, that we are so reluctant to allow God to go to work and destroy the sinful roots that have entrenched themselves in our hearts and minds? I believe the answer to this question is that dealing with the root is painful. It is painful to have the roots of sin cut out of our heart so we would much rather deal with the symptoms. It seems less painful to deal with the symptoms but in reality it is not beneficial for us because the root continues to entrench itself in our heart.
Some years ago, I was speaking to a lady who was suffering health issues. I enquired about her health and she said, “I am in the process of finding another doctor. The doctor I was seeing is a quack”. I asked her what had happened and she said, “The doctor told me I need to change my diet and lose weight and that would solve a lot of my problems. How dare he say that”? She was clearly offended but the reason she was offended was that this doctor had been willing to address what was in her case, the root of the problem. She did not want a doctor to deal with the root of the problem; she wanted a doctor to treat her symptoms.
How true is this spiritually as well. I have talked to many people who have sought Biblical counsel for some symptom in their life, but when you begin to allow the Holy Spirit to dig below the surface with the Word of God and you begin to address the root of the problem, they many times become offended and resist dealing with that issue. They begin to make excuses about that area of sin, because it is one thing to read about the pulling down of strongholds, but it is another thing to allow the reality of it to be lived out in our lives. Yet if we would walk in victory, we must deal with the root. May we ask God to search our hearts, may we then be sensitive to what He reveals about the sin in our lives, and may we then confess our sin and follow the Biblical pattern for victory in that area. Freedom will come, not by breaking a few branches off the tree of sin, but by pulling down of the strongholds of sin through the power of God.
Written by Pastor Denny Patterson
Higher Ground 