In his days, Hiel the Bethelite built Jericho… – 1 Kings 16:34, Amplified Bible

Merriam-Webster.com defines the word “stronghold” as a “a fortified place” or “a place of security or survival.” (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stronghold) The word “fortification” is derived from the Latin words fortis, or “strong,” and facere, or “to make.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold) So, the intent of a stronghold is to make strong something (or someone) in an effort to make it safe, secure, and able to survive.

Military bases are obvious examples of strongholds. Our homes, which we try to make as safe and secure as possible, are strongholds as well. We also have strongholds in our spiritual lives, but when it comes to spiritual matters, strongholds are not virtuous. Iin fact, they are just the opposite.

The Bible connects spiritual strongholds with sin, meaning that spiritual strongholds have one purpose: to make sin safe, secure, and strong in our lives. In 2 Corinthians 10:4 God makes it clear that He wants His children to destroy all the strongholds of sin in our lives, and He wants us to keep them destroyed. Should we choose to rebuild any strongholds that He has cast down, we can expect to pay a great price for our disobedience.

In Joshua 6 God utterly destroyed the pagan stronghold of Jericho, removing any possibility that the city could become a snare to His people as they claimed the Promised Land. To cap off the victory at Jericho, God (through Joshua) pronounced the following curse:

Cursed is the man before the Lord who rises up and rebuilds this city, Jericho. With the loss of his firstborn shall he lay its foundation, and with the loss of his youngest son shall he set up its gates. (Joshua 6:26, Amplified Bible),

God’s purpose was clear – don’t rebuild the stronghold.

Several hundred years later, however, a fellow named Hiel from Bethel decided that he would rebuild Jericho during the reign of Ahab. And, in doing so, he paid the heavy price laid out in Joshua 6:26. As 1 Kings 16:34 (AMP) reports:

In his days, Hiel the Bethelite built Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of the life of Abiram his firstborn, and set up its gates with the loss of his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord which He spoke through Joshua son of Nun.

When God throws down a stronghold of sin, He intends for it to remain cast down. If we choose to rebuild it, we have just told God that our sin is more important to us than His presence in our lives. We will have resurrected an idol that He had destroyed, and we will have rejected His best life in favor of our foolish one.

No matter how enticing it might be to reacquaint ourselves with a sin we once enjoyed, remember this: there is pleasure in sin only for a season (a short time). Before too much time has passed, sin will always bring people to the same end: destruction. God casts down strongholds to help us, not to hurt us, and we ought not be so ungrateful as to rebuild the stronghold from which He has saved us.