Date: 14th January, 2026
Message: Deliverance from the Fear of Bondage through Death
Minister: Pst. Laide Olaniyan
The secret of service is fear. In the spirit, fear is love. What you love, you fear to lose. What you love, you fear not to have. Satan holds us captive by our fears and that is how we do service to Satan. When what you fear losing is delivered to you, it doesn’t appear as fear again because you are living in the reality of it, but this doesn’t mean the fear is not there. That a person is married does not mean that the fear of not being married is not there; it doesn’t mean that the person has been delivered from the fear, it just masks it.
One of the wisdom by which Satan puts us in bondage is to sell fear into our hearts. The first thing he told Eve is that ‘it is not so’, he told her that what God said was not correct (Gen. 3:1-4). He sold it to her that God’s design is to keep them roaming and never become gods; to keep them on a long leash and never arrive there. The first sin was not something carnal but was around that which seemed spiritual. It was not faith but a fear: he sold a lot into the heart and by selling that lie, he introduced another kind of service and love. They loved that estate so much that they were willing to disobey God for it, and they were willing to try out what Satan was offering; it is a fear.
There is the fear that prompts us to disobey God, and there is a fear that makes us cleave to His commandments even seemingly at the detriment of the promise because His word is better than life. The understanding has been enabled that the way to Him is obeying Him. We cannot arrive at His promise outside of obedience to His word. We can’t obey Him fully until we have learnt to trust Him and abandon our lives in His hands. Love is trust, Trust is love. Why do we let our guards down when we love a person? It’s acceptance and comfortability; our defences go down because we have accepted his or her person.
God doesn’t want Satan to cheat us this year. The root of every disobedience is fear. If you trace it down, every disobedience is a fear; if you see the fear and you can also see the counsel of God around it, freedom will come to your heart.
(Heb 2:10 -15) — “For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
The fear of death in the scriptures above is not the fear of physical death. This fear is missing out of the life that Satan has painted. He also designed a life and he makes it feels like not partaking of that life is death or suffering. There is a life that one is absent in and what might have designed that life may be accumulation of material wealth or earthly positions; not being present in that kind of life is a death that many dread; they see it as ‘suffering’.
Souls labour in the fear of ‘suffering’ as long as that fear is present, such soul has capacity to deny God or deny the faith. Even though you have masked that fear with a provision and it looks like one is comfortable, God knows what lies behind it and will trouble the waters to unearth the fears. If Satan’s fear is in your heart, then it’s him you are serving; God also doesn’t trust it.
There are certain fears that are buried under certain layers of comfort or things that have been sealed and long forgotten but they are places where we dread that the Lord should lead us; if the Lord will lead us in that zone, it will be easier to yield to Satan and forget God because it is much more than we can bear; the design, definition and construct of the life in the soul is not present in that reality at all.
(Psalm 139:1-10) — “O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, And laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, And thy right hand shall hold me.”
God understands why we are the way we are. He understands everything that contributes to what we are and what we are thinking. Everyone is a bundle of ways and we sometimes think our ways are hidden from the Lord, but He knows us inside out. This doesn’t mean He approves of our ways. We can’t outsmart God. He wants us to come sincerely knowing that He knows us.
For God to edge us in is love; to see that His will be done in our lives. Sometimes, we feel it’s too much and just want to ‘breathe’ but many times, what we want to breathe in, is our lust. We must know that we can’t deceive God. Atimes, our brain deceives us that we have ideas but God knows where to get us every time. God has an investment in our lives and His stakes are high so we can’t run away with his property. We are not the only ones that have inheritance in God, He also has inheritance in us and He is committed to guarding and defending his stake in us.
You cannot successfully run away from God. Satan would deceive us but what he actually wants to do is to kill us because the only way to escape from God is to kill yourself; to kill the seed of God in you which is second death. Satan wants to teach a man how to kill his soul, so he lobbying for man to escape from God is to actually train and frustrate him and show him that God is his frustration and the reason why he is not enjoying life. His goal is to show God as the enemy of man.
Satan wants man to be alive to another life. What he calls death is another life; a life that he designed which we are afraid of losing. The only thing that counts in the sight of God is you obeying his counsel, the prophecy and the script from the foundation of the earth. Satan has worked overtime in rewiring us. It’s surprising to know that Satan is not omnipresent but he has worked a system to keep things in place which he just comes once in a while to supervise. He worked a work of nature and understanding that we will defend with our lives so he doesn’t have to be present to oversee it. We should take an audit of all our fears and trust God that He will puncture them all because those are the places where our service is tied to and where we find it difficult to obey God; it becomes a contest to yield to the Spirit of God.
(Genesis 6:3) — “And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”
(Isaiah 45:9) — “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?”
Something informs us to wrestle with the Spirit of God and resist His making hand. We can receive things from the Spirit of God but we find it difficult to yield to Him. We will not prosper in the giving of God if we do not come to a place where we will be malleable to the Spirit of God. The reason for malleability is so we can be freed from all our fears. God wants to touch our very nature that is giving worship to Satan; He will crumble things to see if those fears are still there. For example, when God is asking you to give, He wants to set you free from something; a fear.
There are different shades of fear. Behind every disobedience, you can almost categorically see a fear which is also a love that is not the love of the Father; it’s a love for yourself, love your life, love for the world.
Being malleable to God is the ability and willingness to be used and twisted by God however, wherever God decides. It is a surrender that makes you usable, twistable and adaptable to any use and any purpose in the hand of God without feeling abused or reduced, at will and without prior notice. The goal of God is to deliver us from all our fears. While a person may not be afraid of physical danger, he might be afraid of aligning with God’s position. The only thing that undo this is gospel and leading.
(John 21:18) — “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.”
Why must we be led in a way we don’t want to go? It is to lead us against our fears. We would be led in some peculiar ways this year, the gain will be that we will be delivered from all our fears.
(1 John 4:18) — “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”
Fear has torment. It tortures the soul. Fearful thoughts can torment a person for years. Our contentment and satisfaction must be in God such that wherever He is leading is our satisfaction. Our desire must be nothing but God. The pace of our walk as individuals and corporately as a people will be quickened when we are thus minded. We must know that anything outside of God is bondage and darkness.
The Lord will deliver us from our fears. The things we fear are our idols because they are things we love. We should not love being like God more than God Himself. If we love anything more than God himself, Satan will show us another alternative; another path.
The way they lead you determines the things they unearth in you. If they lead you by the byways and not the highways, there are limited things that will be discovered (Judges 5:6). For certain discoveries, you must be led in an everlasting way. Some certain fears are buried so deep that you don’t even know your heart (Ps. 139:23-24). Some ways are deeply written in the core of our persons that need leading in an everlasting way to unearth them. Ways are used to undo ways and leadings are used to undo leadings.