SPIRITUAL BONDAGE

Spiritual bondage is the term often applied to a Christian who has spiritual strongholds that impair the Christian's ability to effectively function as God intended. Strongholds are negative patterns of thought and/or behavior that are burned into our minds, through either a traumatic experience or continuing habits that are contrary to God's plan for man. These destructive strongholds are usually the result of a number of subtle steps which lead the individual away from God's plan for their lives and into more self reliance. Everyone is affected by activities they engage in, books they read, music they listen to, movies they watch, and the friends they associate with. In addition, events which the individual experience, or even observes, along with how the individual responds to the events and resolve the conflicts produced by the events. It is important to not underestimate the power that relationships with family members, peers, friends, neighbors, teachers and coworkers can have on our spiritual lives. Through all of these interactions the individual develops a philosophy about how to survive, cope, and succeed in life.

When a person becomes a Christian their sins are washed away, but their tendency to behave and think in certain ways, and to respond to life situations, remains. That is the basis of Paul's admonitions in Romans for the renewing of our minds. (Romans 12:2) There is however another source of spiritual bondage that is not often addressed in Christian literature. That is Christians that fall into bondage after their acceptance of Christ, through continuing to live apart from conformance to the Christian life demanded by the Bible. Christians will enter into sin to address some need in their lives, then continue into a pattern of sin. Often the Christian justifies the sin as being necessary because of situations in their lives that they feel are beyond their control.

Temptation is the stimulation to conform to the world's pattern of behavior instead of God's pattern. The core issue in temptation is the invitation to live independent of God and to meet needs and desires through the world, the flesh, or the devil instead of through Christ. Temptation begins with a thought. Most of us are familiar with the admonition in 2 Cor 10 to take captive every thought that is contrary to the will of God. However, if that vital step is not taken and the thought is entertained in our minds, the thought will lead to an action. When the action is repeated enough, it becomes a habit. As habits continue unchecked in our lives they become strongholds. The strongholds are the result of prevailing patterns of thinking and behaving. Once a stronghold is entrenched in your mind, it is virtually impossible to act contrary to that pattern. That is virtually impossible without the intervention of the power of God.

However, thanks be to God, there is provision for Christians to be brought out of bondage to strongholds in their lives! In Romans Chapter 6, Paul provides the basis for understanding the battle between the renewed spirit of the Christian and the strongholds in the Christian's life. Some key points are:

The key to achieving freedom form sin is to believe, not simply acknowledge, that we are free from sin because of Christ's death and resurrection. Often we justify our behavior by reasoning that we are only mortal and that humans have sin natures and fleshly desires. But that is contrary to what Paul says. By our spiritual participation in the death and resurrection of Christ we are dead to sin. We can only be truly free from the power of sin when we are perfected by Christ after His return. However, by accepting on faith the exhortations of Paul that we can live a life of freedom because of the death and resurrection of Christ.