Fear brings bondage. There is no getting around that fact. When a spirit of fear takes root in your life, you become a slave to that fear. This fact is really a principle that is stated clearly in Hebrews 2:14-15:
For as much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he (Jesus) 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.
A fear of death or of any other aspect of the law of sin and death brings with it an awful bondage. The good news is that Jesus paid the price for our freedom. Those two verses in Hebrews tell us that one of His purposes in allowing Himself to be crucified was to "deliver those who through fear" have spent their lives in bondage to fear.

Whatever type of bondage a person is involved in—cigarettes, drugs, sex, food, or anything else—fear produced it.

I have had people tell me, "I'd quit smoking, but I'm afraid I'll gain weight." Fear! Bondage! If fear invariably produces bondage, what does fear's reciprocal—faith—produce? Faith produces liberty, of course!

Faith brings freedom, which is why the devil works so hard to keep Christians in fear and out of faith. If he cannot take a person to hell, he will at least try to keep that person bound up, paralyzed, and ineffective as a Christian witness. If any Christian ever gets hold of faith and the liberty faith brings, the devil knows he is in trouble!

For a believer in Christ Jesus to live in bondage to fear is as unnatural as a fish trying to live out of water. Part of being born again is being born to freedom, being released from bondage to sin. And fear is sin, because the Bible says that whatever is not of faith is sin (Rom. 14:23).

The Apostle Paul wrote: "For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Rom. 8:15). Fear is totally alien to your reborn spirit.

In fact, your spirit cannot produce fear. It has to come from the outside. You can receive fear, but you cannot manufacture it. You can act on it. You can be choked by it and let it paralyze you.

Only you, by an act of your will, can keep this from happening. This truth is echoed by Paul in 2 Timothy 1:7: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

Get this truth established in your mind once and for all: Fear is never from God. I have heard religious people talk about God giving them a "healthy fear" of something or other. Child of God, there is no such thing as a "healthy fear." If it is fear, it did not come from your Heavenly Father.

Source: Uprooting the Spirit of Fear by Creflo A. Dollar, Jr.
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers