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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
<page 37>The OK Stronghold is a weak replacement for the love, security, and fulfillment our Heavenly Father has designed for us to find in His family.
When our heart is caught in the OK Stronghold, we tend to develop an “OK Jury” – a group of people who we allow to judge us. They tell us whether or not we are OK. We watch for subtle and not so subtle hints from them about how we are doing and base our self-worth on what we perceive.
There are many reasons that a person may enter our OK Jury. God is there because He is our Creator and Judge. Our parents show up because their opinion of us gave us one of our first pictures of who we were. If we proved ourselves to them, we probably felt good about ourselves. If we failed them, either because we didn’t work at it or they were unrealistic, we probably started life with a good number of “not OK” feelings.
After parents, we add other authority figures like teachers, coaches, and successful people. Later in life we start to look to friends. Teenagers often try to rearrange their OK Jury by lowering their parents in importance and moving up their friends.
We may also develop specialized OK Jury members. Since I was looking for the perfect father, I found myself putting in anyone who was a likely candidate.
Another interesting group for me was cranky, critical people. In an amazing display of bad judgment, I felt that if I could prove myself to someone who didn’t like me, I would really be OK. I couldn’t trust nice people, because they might accept me too easily.
The rejection or approval we feel may be real or imagined. I remember trying to help one of my daughters with her insecurities after a basketball game. As we talked, I realized she thought that every other girl on the court was secretly criticizing her. I tried to convince her that there was no evidence that this was true, but she was firm in her conviction. Finally, I gave up and decided to try a different tack, perhaps one that was bad parenting. I told her that being able to read people’s minds was a burden she would have to bear in life, but she needed to get past it if she wanted to do well at basketball.
In Exchanged Glory: A Vision of Freedom, I wrote about how our mind records and replays our experiences, mixing past thoughts and feelings with our present situation.[21] It is as if the events that shaped us have been placed on tapes, and our perceptions of them are replayed whenever triggered by some new experience. Sometimes we can control the replaying, and sometimes it forces itself upon us in spite of our best efforts.
<page 38> One kind of tape, called a Fantasy, can be fun to replay. It is a set of thoughts and emotions that helps us feel good regardless of what is going on around us.
Some Fantasies are fairly harmless. During times when I was discouraged as a young man, I would sometimes take out my guitar and play songs I had written. My mind would drift to visions of being a popular song writer, which made me feel loved and didn’t do much damage.
Other Fantasies are very harmful, and the tapes seem to force themselves into our hearts at the worst times. They make us feel extremely OK for a time, but they lay the groundwork for pain. For example, Fantasies of having erotic sex can be incredibly powerful, but they can also destroy our families and lives. We need to know how to stop them or they will slowly (sometimes quickly) eat away at our souls.
Fantasies aren’t the same as heart felt dreams. Dreams motivate us to work hard to achieve goals, and they can be fulfilled in everyday life. The whole point of Fantasies is to find delight in a make believe world. Though we often want to make them come true, their power is found more in playing with them in our mind than in realizing them. Bringing them into reality only brings a temporary thrill, and then we have to find some new fixation.
My Fantasies weren’t just sexual. I had imaginations of artistic expression, ministry, and success that grabbed for control of my heart. It was hard to tell where my valid dreams ended and where my Fantasies began. I had hopes of doing something spectacular, but God’s plans for me seemed plain. Self-centered visions of glory drained me as I forced myself through my seemingly humdrum life of obeying God, raising a family, and making a living.
When I was a child, I sometimes feared that monsters were hiding under my bed. In order to avoid them, I would leap onto my mattress from several feet away. I was afraid to put my foot where they could grab it and pull me under.
Some of the tapes from our past are like these fears of imaginary monsters. We avoid certain situations, often without knowing why except that vague dangers strike irrational terror in our hearts. Our insecurities shape us by getting us to run from opportunities.
I have often faced the boogeyman of fear of failure. Early in life, I decided that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to be just about perfect in everything. When circumstances threatened my success, I would become driven to either work my tail off (“I’ll prove myself”) or run (“I’m out of here”). A spirit of fear seemed so natural to me that it took years for me to recognize it.
The place where I have been most tempted to medicate myself has been on my job. When I doubted my ability, I wanted to flee to the OK feelings of sex, fantasies, and drugs. Pleasure looked like an easy way to quiet the dread inspiring demons that grasped for me at my workplace.
People have all sorts of “Monsters Under the Bed.” The tapes often play at exactly the time when we need to be full of faith and courage. Some of us fear losing control. Others fear losing their youth or beauty. Many fear giving up their freedom to turn to sin for OK feelings.
The OK Stronghold is a weak replacement for the love, security, and fulfillment our Heavenly Father has designed for us to find in His family. When we don’t experience His reality, our hearts <page 39>tend to turn to other experiences to fill the void. Fantasies excite us with the hope of satisfaction. Monsters Under the Bed chase us into desperate attempts to find peace and safety.
Hey there! All who are thirsty, come to the water! Are you penniless? Come anyway — buy and eat! Come, buy your drinks, buy wine and milk. Buy without money — everything's free! Why do you spend your money on junk food, your hard-earned cash on cotton candy? Listen to me, listen well: Eat only the best, fill yourself with only the finest.
(Isaiah 55:1-2, The Message)
Our Heavenly Father enjoys giving us a life that satisfies. When we listen carefully to Him, we eat only the best and fill ourselves with only the finest. He has created us for these kinds of experiences, and His love will rearrange our deepest longings so that we can find them.
Our biggest problem is generally that we don’t trust Him enough to follow Him. We continue to spend ourselves for the wages of sin. We come up with our own definitions of good and evil and hold onto our Fantasies and Monsters even when they fail us.
Then when we do surrender, we often struggle as it takes time for our hearts to learn to walk in His love. The train tracks in our minds need to be rerouted. The process is a trial for us, so we are tempted to turn back to the delights and demons of the OK Stronghold.
Sometimes, our problem is that we don’t know how to be satisfied with God’s love. Even when we experience it, we don’t recognize it for what it is. Sadly, our hearts have become blind to what a fulfilling relationship with Him is like.
I have seen a tragic example of this in people who have a Fantasy deception that equates love with sex. They see the world as a place in which the only way to experience intimacy is in an erotic relationship. Their loneliness can feel unbearable. If such a person isn’t involved with someone, they feel rejected, worthless, and isolated. Their Heavenly Father’s friendship means little. It isn’t sexual, so it doesn’t feel like love.
How bad can the confusion get? I know of women who have difficulty relating to Jesus without feeling erotic desires for Him. Their worship leads them into sensual experiences.
What is the problem? Love and sex have become so joined in their hearts that they can’t conceive of the love of God without it affecting them in this way. That’s what makes it feel real.
The sad fact is that these kinds of Fantasies create an inner world in which it seems impossible to be satisfied with a healthy relationship with God. His love appears to be second rate. Even worse, when a person bound by them repents, Monsters Under the Bed of loneliness and isolation reach out from the dark, making life miserable. A Christian involved in this struggle may feel hopeless.
We are never hopeless with Jesus. He is able to break the OK Stronghold with its Fantasies and Monsters. He loves to do so, and He has sent His Spirit to reroute the train tracks through our hearts. He knows how to bring us to a place where we are satisfied with His pure love.
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