Happy Passover! There are many aspects of the Feast of Passover that communicate to us how God desires to heal the strongholds of our hearts. First, let’s take a look at 1 Corin 5:7-8 – “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Messiah our Pesach, has been sacrificed in our place. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
The old leaven refers to the starter-dough left over from the previous day’s batch. When it was tossed in with the flour and the water, it quickly spread through the new batch of dough, causing it to rise. A single culture of leaven was passed on from loaf to loaf.
To me, the old leaven also refers to our strongholds! They are what is left over from “the batch” of our old life – those old messages and lies that we believe about ourselves and that distort how we see God and how we think He sees us! They often pass from generation to generation (loaf to loaf). Messages such as, “I’m bad, I have to be perfect, I’m not wanted, I deserve to be rejected, I have to hold all things/people together, I’m on my own, God’s disappointed in me/mad at me, He wants me to be perfect, He’s distant, He’s not there, I don’t deserve His attention, etc.
In the bible, leaven is often symbolic of sin, and we need to see it as sin when we believe these strongholds and allow them to control us instead of God’s Word and His Spirit! When we continue to believe and act upon these old messages, we’re allowing that leaven of sin to rise up within us, and we’re giving the enemy a handle or a foothold in our lives.
The verse “just as you are in fact unleavened” gives us hope for healing. As believers, Yeshua has already made us unleavened! When He sees us, He doesn’t see a person with all of the “old strongholds.” He sees us as holy and blameless in Him (Eph 1:4), a son or daughter of the King (Gal 4:5-7), with access into the Holy of Holies (Heb 10:19), pure and cleansed (Eph 5:25-26), having His righteousness – the worthiness to stand in God’s presence (2 Cor 5:21)! Yeshua bore all of our iniquities (Is. 53:4), and I believe this includes all of our strongholds too! We don’t have to “carry them around” anymore. We have been freed from having to take in anything that is not from Him, and these stronghold lies are not from Him. They are straight from the enemy – the father of lies (John 8:44).
Since we’ve already been made new or unleavened, when these old lies and strongholds try to “rise up” and fill us with leaven, we are to “clean them out”! That is, we are to use our weapons of warfare to destroy them (confess; forgive; cancel Satan’s authority; offer praise, thanksgiving, and blessings) and ask God to help us see ourselves as He sees us! Then we will be able to experience who Yeshua has already made us – the unleavened loaf!
The second way that I believe Passover relates to healing strongholds of the heart is through the blood over the doorposts. When the Israelites splashed the blood over the doorposts of their homes, death passed over their household. I like to picture His blood covering the doorpost of our hearts. This means that not only have we been freed from experiencing eternal death, but we have also been freed from experiencing death that could come in the form of: disease (from unforgiveness, bitterness, fear, self-hatred); division, conflict and withdrawal in our relationships; lack of intimacy with God; and restrictions in our lives resulting from fears of failure, rejection and exposure.
Ask God to show you the old leaven in your heart, use your weapons of warfare to clean it out, and be free to enter into the new land that God has for you! A land flowing with milk and honey, a land that Yeshua describes in John 10:10 as the abundant life.
As you celebrate Passover this week, see yourself as God sees you – an unleavened batch, a son or daughter of the King, a co-heir with Yeshua, holy and blameless, pure and cleansed, having the worthiness to enter into the Holy of Holies, with Yeshua’s blood covering the doorposts of your heart – freeing you from death not only eternally but every day of your life!
