Spotting Patterns to Resolve in Prayer Ministry
We continue this week talking about Strongholds in preparation for our upcoming webinar Foundations for Freedom. This week I’m sharing about patterns.
Spotting a pattern of a repeated struggle in our lives can actually be good news. The very pattern that so frustrates us can point out the solution. Patterns can help us connect bad fruit with the bad root.
So, how do you kno
w if you have a pattern of bad fruit? When you seem to hit a wall over and over in your life, running into the same circumstances and situations.
Some people seem to end up with overbearing authority figures in their lives again and again. Others start to do okay financially only to have the bottom fall out on them repeatedly. I’ve ministered to people who get walked on or betrayed time after time, with each episode looking very similar to the one before.
Frank found himself in one bad business partnership after another. His partner would end up finding fault with him, saying he was incompetent and then use that to take his clients. There was a lot of pain here for Frank. He could see where it had happened over and over, even as far back as when he was on high school sports teams.
As Frank held this before the Lord, he was reminded of how his own father had betrayed him, promising things and then not coming through and even telling him he couldn’t do anything right and was “good for nothing.”
Frank knew his dad had been like this and had even at some level forgiven him. But what he had not seen before was the connection of this root of bitterness to how it was defiling his present-tense relationships. As Frank pulled up these roots, he found a new freedom.
Hebrews 12:15 encourages us to look carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.
Romans 2:1 Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.
Seeing these truths puts powerful tools in our hands for freedom.