Submitted by Amanda, site moderator.
Hey guys, I think I've developed a little step-by-step program to getting out of a stronghold. Here it is if anybody's interested.
1. Pray for God's Advice Ask God how He would have you get out of this stronghold. Pray about fasting, Bible study, verses that could help you, people that could help you, etc. Pray for ways to upkeep, protect, and cleanse His temple (your body). Then there's time until the next step. It could be a month, a week, a day, or maybe a few hours. But you have to sit and meditate on it.
2. 24-Hour Fast This takes alot of prayer and alot of work, but it's worth it. If you've fasted before and done well, restrict yourself to only water for 24 hours. But if you're new to fasting or don't normally do well with only water, restrict yourself from food but drink thick liquids like milk and orange juice. New fasters might even want to chew some gum. But the point of a fast is for you to spend time trying to focus on God instead of focusing on the hunger, and teaching you how to control your urges. The biggest thing you need to learn from this is self-discipline. Once you've completed a successful fast, it's on to the next step.
3. Cleansing Your Thoughts Cleanse your thoughts of thinking about your stronghold. Everytime you start to get thoughts about sinning or falling, stop yourself IMMEDIATELY and pray. Don't indulge your thoughts with images or plans or anything related to your stronghold. Satan will grab that and run with it. Don't let him. Immediately begin to pray for different thoughts. Start thinking about God, your favorite Bible verse, what you learned in church last week, etc. "Just keep your mind on things above." It takesalot of self-discipline to do this, which is the point of the fast. Once you are able to control your thoughts, move on to the next step.
4. Symbolism Do something symbolic that shows on the outside that you are breaking this hold on your life. Write about it on a sheet of paper and rip the paper to shreds, take your razor or cutting instrument to your pastor or parents and give it to them to destroy, or even destroy it yourself publicly. Do something big that is a show of the change you want to take place on the inside of you. This may be the most embarrassing step (if you do it publicly, which I recommend you do in your church or youth group), but just remember that a wound always has to hurt worse before it can get better. When you've done this, move on to the next step.
5. Take it One Day at a Time Try not to set day number goals for yourself. The goal here is to get over is completely, so what you really want to do is make a concentrated effort to get over this every single day until it becomes a habit and you do it without thinking about it. Keep praying and keep cleansing your thoughts.