Cover of Strongholds: Breaking the Lies That Keep You Bound
Author Joel Leggett
New devotional from the senior pastor of COR Church Atlanta addresses recurring spiritual struggles among active churchgoers.
NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, October 2, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Pastor Joel Leggett has released Strongholds: Breaking the Lies That Keep You Bound, a 21-day devotional written for Christians who worship, serve, and pray but continue to struggle with the same patterns. In the book, Leggett writes that many strongholds are found in the lives of people who genuinely love God, and that recurring battles with insecurity, fear, lust, or shame often go deeper than behavior. “A stronghold is a lie you’ve believed for so long that it has started shaping how you live,” he says.
Leggett traces the book’s origins to the summer of 2017. Sitting in his Toyota Corolla on a day date with his wife, Tiffany, he took a call telling him he had advanced to the second round of interviews for a teaching pastor role. Instead of celebrating, he wept. He later identified the cause as insecurity, which he says had been shaping his marriage, his parenting, and his leadership for years. “I could preach freedom while still having areas in my own life where I wasn’t free,” Leggett says.
Strongholds is organized into four sections across 21 days: Agreement, Bondage, Exposure and Surrender, and Freedom. Each day pairs a morning teaching with a night reflection and a closing Demolition Prayer. Drawing on the stories of Saul, Nicodemus, Ananias and Sapphira, and the rich young ruler, Leggett examines how insecurity, performance, deception, misplaced trust, and anxiety take root. The book distinguishes between a struggle and a stronghold: in Leggett’s words, a struggle fights sin, while a stronghold starts making peace with it.
Leggett argues that freedom takes discipline as well as prayer, citing his own experience of praying for confidence while still feeding comparison. “You cannot continually feed what you are asking God to starve,” he says.
He also addresses how churches talk about freedom. “Sometimes we preach freedom like it is only a moment at the altar, when freedom also has to become a way of living,” Leggett says. According to Leggett, the daily devotional format is intended to have readers reflect on each day rather than read straight through. The book closes with the idea that freedom is not perfection overnight, but becoming less controlled by what once mastered you.
Strongholds is available exclusively on the author’s website.
About the Author
Joel Leggett is Senior Pastor of COR Church Atlanta, which also publishes Strongholds. Before becoming a senior pastor, he served as a youth pastor in Augusta, Georgia. He and his wife, Tiffany, have two sons, Carson and Hendrix.
Guy Rinzema
Aster & Ink
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