Recently through my studies with Restoring the Foundations Ministry, the Lord has revealed to me a major demonic stronghold that is attacking our family relationships both with our children and in our marriages. It is called the Control-Rebellion-Rejection (C-R-R) stronghold and I wanted to briefly talk about how it operates in our  homes. It is a sly "devil" in that it operates under the banner of helping the other person or many times "quietly responding" to another persons attempts to control.

There are two main assumptions: First, that we try to control things to maintain power or to avoid pain. And pain can be a wide range of things from fear of something bad happening to fear of not getting needs met but usually is generated by some form of fear and we don't want to feel that pain;  Second, that when one person begins to control the other person in any point of time in a relationship, the other person will react to that attempt to be  controlled.  This reaction will be either Rebellion or Rejection. And that reaction can either be in an Active or Passive outward expression. So let me draw a little picture and the "bubbles" we jump into when the C-R-R stronghold is operating. 
 
So here's how it works. Something happens in any point of time in a relationship between two people lets say a Mother and her son. Mom is afraid of decisions the son has been making so she jumps into the "Control Bubble".  She begins to scheme, reason, argue her point or manipulate the son in a discussion over those decisions. Her motives may be power ("I'm in control here") or they could be fear of pain("I  don't want you to get arrested or hurt"). Either way the control begins.

The son then instantly jumps into one of the two bubbles above, Rebellion or Rejection. And he can either outwardly express his rebellion or rejection or he could passively respond and then act out deceptively in private. One son may argue or resist your control but ultimately respond correctly or incorrectly.... but at least you knew where he was. The other son may say, "Oh, yes ma'am" and then later just quietly do what he wanted to do anyway. 

So here's the stronghold: once the son reacts to mom the controller, he then jumps out of his bubble into the bubble of Control in order to recover power or stop the pain and in that instant becomes the Controller. When that occurs the original Controller, Mom,  does what? She reacts and ends up jumping into one of the other two bubbles, Rebellion or Rejection. Most of the time, especially if their is not a supporting Father in the picture, the bubble jumped into is almost always Rejection. The mom feels hurt, disrespected, unloved and may even get angry initially but usually ends up withdrawing and isolating from the conflict.

The reason this stronghold is so deadly in family relationships is that we can be in all three bubbles at the same time and the shifting of reactions and hurt goes on in a death spiral until there is an emotional or mental breakdown  OR until we learn how to let God break us free.

Well, God's solution is simple. We need to give up the need to Control. Whether the parent, spouse or child, the Control bubble is the only place where the C-R-R stronghold can really be broken.  We teach about this in our School of Ministry classes and we see healing in families and marriages because God's promise in          2 Peter 1:3,4: where God promises us that "...His divine nature has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his glory and goodness...that we can escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires..." In this case the evil desire is the need to control....

As parents what we need to learn from Abba Father, is the ability to transition from "parenting our child's performance" to "fathering or mothering their hearts."  When we walk in His divine nature, and learn to trust God with our children we are able to die to self in terms of having to be right or in control and begin to operate in the relationship with Agape love. Now don't get me wrong. We still can be concerned and engaged parents or spouses but we don't have to live in anxiety over dealing with our children or spouse.
Breaking the stronghold of C-R-R in families can result in a totally new and peaceful environment.

If you'd like to learn about C-R-R and how God wants us to break free from this stronghold, give me a call or set up an appointment to come talk with me. You can also sign up this fall for our next semester of classes.