Get down to the root issue!

Recently we had a wonderful caregroup sharing of breakthroughs in members' lives: how God has broken down the strongholds and the chains of bondages had been destroyed in the name of Jesus. One of our precious brother shared that he finally traced the cause of his stress and sleepless nights to the rejection by his parents many years ago. His mum tried to abort him twice but no success. His father also rejected him. Those feelings of rejection caused him subconsciously to condemn himself. This lie is from the pit of hell! The truth is: whether his parents think he is an accident or unwanted, God loved him and has him in mind even when he was in his mother's womb. (Jeremiah 1:5)

3 John 2 says 'Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things even as your soul prospers.' The Lord showed me that whenever you deal with an issue in life, you need to address the root cause. If you only tackle the symptoms, the situation may improve for a while but then the same problem may relapse, even though you thought it had been taken care of. It is like the weeds growing amongst the crops. If you just cut away the weeds without pulling out the roots, the weeds will grow again.

But praise God that when He commences a work in our lives, it is always very deep and enduring. Grace may seem slow in yielding results but its outcome is always sure and permanent as God totally destroys the stronghold. An example is Isaac, the son born in grace is strong, whereas Ishmael, the son born of the flesh (self-efforts) is weak. Hence when your manifestation seems slow in coming, take heart that God is addressing the one area that is hindering your soul prosperity before your miracle comes. No amount of human effort will be able to yield the kind of results God has in mind.

Just like the stone that had to be rolled away before Jesus was resurrected, certain wrong thinking or stronghold needed to be removed first. God would bring to us the awareness of this stronghold and destroy it in the name of Jesus. Sometimes God could be merciful to grant us the miracle despite our wrong thinking but then this issue could recur the next time. He loved us too much to see us go through an emotional roller-coaster. His ideal state is to set us on high, to establish our hearts in His righteousness so that no evil can touch us.

Before God changes things on the outside, He always works on the inner man or our spirit first. When He has completed the work of transforming our spirit (or the heart of the man), things would definitely improve on the outside. You can discern with your spirit how a person's soul starts to prosper in the process and then things start to turn around in the natural. When God causes something to happen in the spiritual realm, we can rest assured that it will always manifest in the physical realm, no matter how long it takes.

Dear brothers and sisters, many of the root causes can be traced to condemnation. Actually God does not condemn us for our sins because they had already been nailed to the cross. Jesus took our punishment and God would not punish the same sins twice. However, when we sin and we are not convinced that we are still the righteousness of God in Christ, then our hearts will condemn us. And this condemnation is dangerous because it can cost us our lives. Christ came to give us the truth and this truth will set us free. The Word of God has the power to break the bondages of condemnation because of the finished work of Christ.