Demolishing Strongholds: The Battle for Identity

Dr. David Fraze: The first call I made when we decided we had a budget for chapel is to my friend Ryann Young.
The Bible says, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
And our relationship has been one of sharpening.
He's one of a handful of people that we can look at each other in the eyes and talk truth
and encourage all at the same time.
And I'm not afraid of him, but I should be.
He's huge.
Now, Ryan has a heart for God.
His testimony tonight, again,
I want to encourage all of you, even if you don't make the kickball game, be there at 8 o'clock tonight to hear how God's worked in his life.
It's truly amazing.
People have been praying for Ryan before he ever knew it.
Greg Ellis, who was coaching on the field the other day at a Cowboy game we went to back when they were winning, I guess it was last season.
And Ryan got a little intimidated.
I said, you got to go tell Greg what you're doing.
Because Greg would pray for Ryan before he knew the Lord and said, you need to do something.
You need to do something.
And to see that reunion is pretty amazing.
God does amazing things.
Ryan is an NFL veteran, but the best part of his life is he's loved on my family.
I've loved on his family.
He's a loyal friend.
He has a master's in theology.
And when I came here, he went back to the hills.
We switched places.
And God's always had us together, and I get to share him with you.
So, Ryan, thanks for being here.
Let's welcome Ryan.
Ryan Young: It's so good to be with you guys.
I'm excited to be a budget-friendly option for chapel service.
So, yeah, that's really cool.
Yeah, again, tonight I get the opportunity to share two messages,
and both messages together present a fullness of my personal story.
And really, not to be Christian cheesy or anything like that, but God's glory in my life.
It's a pretty extensive journey into faith.
And, man, I want to invite you out.
If you like what you hear this morning, then come on out to the staff and senate kickball game.
Yeah, tonight I won't be playing, thank God, but I will be there to share my story at some point.
But I want you guys to think about this.
In every generation, two questions have shaped the human story.
Who am I and why am I here?
And while I love having this conversation and wrestling with those questions from an evangelistic standpoint as a minister with people who don't share a Christian worldview or the same worldview that I have, that question and the need behind it is the same for all of us.
What is the meaning of life?
To my atheist and agnostic friends, identity is something that is self-made.
to my religious friends, and it doesn't matter which lane of religion they're in. Identity is
something that is by divine design. And in between, most of us are just trying to figure it out,
right? I don't know where you guys are today, but that was my journey, right? Just trying to figure
out, man, God, who did you create me to be? Or at least, who am I? And what is my purpose in this
world? Modern thinkers like Sam Harris and Neil deGrasse Tyson believe that identity isn't something
that's given from a deity, right? It's something that we as human beings create. Tyson suggests
that most people recognize that in life, they create their own love, they manufacture their
own meaning, and they generate their own motivation. And here's the problem with this line of thinking,
right? If our identity is self-made, then it can also be self-broken. Because if my worth, if our
worth depends on our performance, every single failure in life is proof that we're not enough.
And if we can't control how others respond to how we exist in this world, then who we are
is always up for debate. And that's the tension that I lived in for years, believing lies about
who I was and how those lives shaped how I lived. And this conflict with my identity is what the
Bible calls strongholds, right? Strongholds are, it's a fortress of lies built in the mind that
defends what's false and resist what's true. And for the follower of Jesus Christ, strongholds
specifically resist the truth of God. And for me, life and this world started building strongholds
in the early years of my life.
At the age of 10, I had this dream of being a ninja, right, of all things.
And nothing says ninja warrior like a chunky black kid from the hood.
But, y'all, my mom was the best mom.
She supported every single one of my dreams,
from African dance classes to Boy Scouts and everything in between.
She supported those dreams.
And so she signed me up for a free three-class trial
at a local karate dojo in St. Louis, Missouri.
And so classes one and two, y'all, I was a black belt in my own mind.
I had this thing figured out.
And then class three of this free trial period, I learned one of life's greatest lessons,
that nothing in life is free, right?
You see, at class three, or the day of class three, the sensei of the house decided that
I was going to spar one of the best fighters in the class, which happened to be a girl.
And I don't remember the color of her belt, but I do remember the look of rage in her
eyes, right?
And my little 10-year-old brain fueled on false confidence and Skittles thought, you know what?
I fought a girl before.
I can fight her again.
This won't be a big deal.
So I step out into the mat.
We bow to Sensei.
We bow to each other.
And then wham, roundhouse kick to the face.
She bloodies my nose, and I tap out, y'all.
And if tapping out after a bloody nose wasn't embarrassing enough, man, that disappointing look on my father's face is a look that I've never forgotten.
gotten, right? In that moment, something shifted in me, right? My dad's response created a lie
that would hijack my life and my identity for years, right? The first thing that my dad's look
told me was that it was the truth, that I would never be a ninja. The second thing, though,
my dad's response told me that I had to perform well to please my father. And the sad reality
reality of it is, is that from that karate class all the way through my professional football
career, my dad never told me that I made him proud. My dad never said, son, you're doing a
great job. I'm so proud of you. Keep it up. He never affirmed anything that I was doing.
And so I lived most of my life believing that I wasn't enough. And what I believed about my
earthly father began to shape what I believed about God, who I now call my heavenly father.
Right? And so from a young age, those beliefs began to build walls between me and our creator.
And this is the goal of a stronghold, right? It holds us in this perpetual state of sin,
and it keeps us separated from God. And strongholds show up like this in our lives,
right? They show up as persistent negative self-talk and shame, destructive habits we just
can't seem to break, wounds from our past that still control our present, and if we don't let
them heal, they threaten our future. That's my story for tonight. Beliefs about God that don't
line up with his word. And that was my story, right? I lived a lie, chained to a prison in my
mine, a prison built from one simple disappointing look from my dad when I was 10 years old.
And so fast forward to my first collegiate game at Kansas State University. We played the team
right down the road at home. It was the first Big 12 game ever against Texas Tech. And as a
sophomore, I drew the assignment of blocking All-American defensive end Monte Rigger. Now,
Now, the season before, Monty led the nation in sacks.
And as a backup at Kansas State, I'm pretty sure that I led the nation in sideline snacks.
And so I played horrible against Monty, right?
And on the first play of the game, Monty essentially takes me by my chest.
He picks me up, and he plants me in the ground at my quarterback's feet, right?
The play felt horrible in the moment, and it looked worse on film.
And, y'all, the game, the rest of the game wasn't much better.
I played so poorly that my offensive line coach wasn't just frustrated with me.
I'm pretty sure that I offended him.
Because in the Monday morning film session, right, he took the time.
We're watching it as a team.
He took the time to pause the film at the exact moment where my feet were off the ground, my arms were in the air, and Monty was in my chest.
And he paused it, and he just let it hang there in silence.
And he said nothing.
I'm sitting on the front row right behind him.
And after what seemed like an eternity, he turned to me and he said, I'll never let a 300-pound you-know-what play another game for this team.
He slams the remote, and he walks out the room.
And I sat there in shame, humiliated, embarrassed in front of my entire team, all of my teammates.
And I thought, here we go again.
I failed to make another man in my life proud.
And I wish I knew then what I know now.
But the biggest battles in life aren't against people in front of us or circumstances around us.
They're the battles we fight within.
They're the battles in the mind and in the soul where lies about who we are take root and they rise up against the truth of who we are created to be.
And that's what strongholds do.
They turn lies into labels and labels into limitations.
And so how do we fight back against strongholds?
How do we fight back against these lies?
Well, the Apostle Paul helps us identify the battlefield and the weapons we choose to fight these battles with.
In 2 Corinthians 10, verses 3 through 5, Paul writes this.
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.
On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
And we take captive every thought and we make it obedient to Jesus Christ.
listening, y'all, when the power of God shows up, lies, limitations, and labels, man, they lose their
power over our lives. The weapons that God has given us to fight with don't just manage strongholds,
they demolish them. I love one of my favorite authors and theologians, man, may you rest in
peace, Tim Keller had this to say. He said, when we become a Christian, we don't move from warfare
to peace. We move from a battle that we could not win to a new battle that we cannot lose. That's
And in Christ, I've learned we don't fight for victory.
We fight from victory.
And my dad's silence and my coach's frustration when they told me that I wasn't enough.
Man, God was standing by in the redeeming work of Jesus to tell me that I've always been enough.
And through that love, I discovered four divine weapons that we can use to fight and demolish strongholds in our lives.
The first is the truth of scripture, right?
We must systematically replace lies of the world with God's word, right?
When the world tells us that we're not enough, God says we're complete, we're made whole, we're full, we're redeemed in Jesus Christ.
Second, prayer and surrender.
Freedom comes when we invite Jesus into our pain, into our wounds, and we don't hide them from him.
That is, again, a part of my story that I'll share tonight.
The places that we're most ashamed of is exactly where the power of Jesus wants to do its best work in our lives.
Strongholds don't fall by trying harder.
They fall when we surrender deeper.
Next is authentic community.
And I hear that you guys here at LCU do community really well.
If you've walked into this room and you didn't follow the instructions on connecting with somebody,
if you come in by yourself, don't leave by yourself.
Because freedom rarely happens in isolation.
We need others who can speak truth when we can't see it.
We need community that can help remind us who we are and whose we are.
And then finally, the Holy Spirit.
And I don't know where you guys are.
And I know that typically the Church of Christ has a different relationship with the power of the Holy Spirit.
But here's what I want to say.
We have access to a power beyond our own strength, right?
The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in each and every one of us.
Romans 8, 11 tells us, and if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you,
he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because his spirit who lives in you, right?
You see, the spirit just doesn't want to reveal what's broken.
And the spirit of God wants to heal what's broken.
Psalm 147.3 says, and he, God, heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds.
You see, when God tears down strongholds, everything changes.
Our identity becomes secure.
Our shame loses its grip.
And God's purpose for our lives begins to be revealed in our faith and our discipleship with Jesus Christ.
And so I want to invite you guys to reflect for a moment.
What lies have you believed?
What strongholds have been holding you back from living in the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ?
Maybe you're like me and you believe that you had to perform to be loved.
Maybe you believe that you're defined by your worst mistakes.
Or maybe you believe that God is distant and he's disempoiding in you.
Whatever the lie is, today is the day to start tearing them down.
Not through your own strength, but through the divine power available to us in the redemptive blood of Jesus.
And so one final story.
And after a brutal college football start, I made a vow that I would never play like that again.
So fast forward to my first NFL game.
It was on Monday Night Football.
I was with the New York Jets.
We were playing the New England Patriots on the road.
And I was determined that my experience in the past would not be the way that I would remember this game and this night in the future.
And so I played my tail off, right?
I played my heart out.
And we won that game.
And I personally won big.
And we leave the field.
We get into the locker room.
And our head coach, Hall of Fame coach, Bill Parcells, has me stand on a table about this tall in the middle of the locker room.
And thank God it held my weight.
And as I stood on that table, coach hands me the game ball.
And he says to me, great job, son.
That's the way you start an NFL career.
Y'all, that was the first time in my life that a male mentor that I wanted his approval, that I wanted him to tell me that he was proud of me.
It was the first time in my life that I felt seen, I felt valued.
Coach Parcells delighted in me.
But here's where it gets tricky.
You see, the stronghold that was built from one disappointing look from my father when I was 10 was still driving me.
I truly believe that part of what pushed me to success in the NFL was this deep, unhealed hope that maybe, just maybe, I could make my father proud.
And it's tempting to look at the situation and say, well, Ryan, it looks like the stronghold worked in your life.
It pushed you to success in the NFL.
But here's the truth.
Whatever we build on a lie will eventually collapse under its own weight.
And so there I was, game ball in hand.
I stepped down from that table.
I sat down in my locker.
And my mind went from being delighted in to wondering if this moment was enough to make my father proud.
and thank God today that that memory no longer defines me because I've discovered a greater
truth. Win, lose, a roundhouse kick to the face. I'm already loved, right? Not because of anything
that I've done, but because of my faith in what Jesus has done. My identity is no longer earned
or broken. It's restored and redeemed in him, and I believe that God wants to do the same for you
because when his truth gets louder than the lies we've lived,
strongholds fall, and y'all, we're able to live and live in his love.
And so let me pray for you guys as we wind this thing down.
I'll close this up.
Father, thank you for today, Lord.
Today we surrender every lie, every wound,
and every fortress of thought that has rised up against your truth.
Jesus, replace our lives with your love.
Holy Spirit, fill us with the freedom and strength to walk in it.
And we declare that every stronghold falls in your name because we are already loved.
We love you, we praise you, and we thank you, and we live for you.
It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Thank you guys so much.
Thank you.