Life’s Strongholds is a new section within The StillPoint Project.

If you currently receive God’s Encounters by email, you will continue receiving those writings exactly as before.

Because Life’s Strongholds is a separate section, you will need to subscribe to it separately if you would like these articles delivered to your inbox.

Both God’s Encounters and Life’s Strongholds remain part of The StillPoint Project. They simply explore two different dimensions of the same journey.

The story that follows is the story of how God's Encounters and Life's Strongholds came to meet one another.

It would be understandable and appropriate to think that my writings on God’s Encounters were the beginning of a journey. But that would be incorrect. Long before I began writing these poems that explore the mystery of God through the pages of scripture, another question had already occupied my mind and heart. It was a question about me. Why do I do the things I do?

Why do I hide? Why do I compare myself to others? Why do I carry fears I cannot seem to shake? Why do I return to patterns I wish I could leave behind? Why do some struggles seem to have a grip on me that feels stronger than my desire to change?

That primary question has been with me for a long time. But the intensity increased in an unexpected place. One Sunday morning I was worshiping and singing songs as I do each week. And there was one particular song that always touches me deep within my heart. That song is “I Speak Jesus.” I was singing from my heart and mind when one particular phrase gut-punched me. That phrase was me asking God to “break every stronghold.”

I had sung that song and those words many times before. This time, something was different. That word stronghold was not unfamiliar. But the phrase would not leave me alone. For days afterward, I found myself returning to that phrase. I could not shake it. It felt as though God had placed His finger on a question I had spent years walking around. I knew I had many strongholds in my life, but over time I had simply accepted them as part of who I was. A stronghold is not merely a biblical term. Not merely a theological concept. It is a real and deeply personal word that has the power to shape our lives.

That word and that question began a journey that lasted for months. I found myself studying the life of King David, looking not only at his victories and failures, but at the deeper forces operating beneath them. What began as a study of strongholds slowly became something more personal. I was no longer asking why David did what he did. I was asking: “Why do I do what I do.”

I began to see his fear, shame, insecurity, self-protection, control, pride, comparison, regret, and longing. Through David’s pain and weaknesses, I saw that human beings construct protections inside themselves in order to survive pain, disappointment, rejection, uncertainty, and loss.

At first those structures protect us. In many cases they are necessary for our emotional and mental survival. But over time, they often begin to confine us. They are barriers from our real selves, from others, and from God. The more I studied, the more I became convinced that many of our deepest struggles are not random. They are connected to hidden structures within us that were built for protection but have become emotional prisons.

Then something quite unexpected occurred. A second question emerged. What if I could step into the mystery of God? What if, instead of analyzing a biblical chapter, I imagined God sitting across the table from me and sharing His perspective on what was taking place? That question, which actually grew out of my first question, “Why do I do the things I do?” eventually became “God’s Encounters.” For months I followed that path. And I began to realize something important. These were never two separate journeys. They were always moving toward one another.

I realized that every encounter with God takes place within a human life. Adam is hiding. Cain is comparing. Noah lives among corruption. The builders of Babel seek control. Abram wrestles with fear. Lot is drawn by appearances. The Scriptures reveal more than events. They reveal God. And they reveal us.

The more I have written “God’s Encounters,” the more I have become aware that beneath nearly every chapter lies a human struggle that remains familiar today: same fears–same wounds–same longings–same attempts to protect ourselves–same strongholds.

This realization has led me to begin a second stream within The StillPoint Project: “Life’s Strongholds.” These writings will not be self-help. They will not be psychology disguised as theology. They will be an exploration of the hidden struggles we construct inside ourselves, the reasons we build them, the ways they shape our lives, and the ways they can lose their power.

Together, “God’s Encounters” and “Life’s Strongholds” will explore two sides of the same reality. One reveals the mystery of God. The other reveals the mystery of ourselves. And where those two realities meet, transformation becomes possible.

I hope you will join me on this next part of the journey.

—Robert

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