Four messages on what biblical deliverance actually is. Not a show, not a fight with shadows, but truth breaking the lies that hold people and a mind renewed in Jesus.
These deliverance sermons are the four parts of The Setting Free, a series I taught at Sound of Heaven and posted in January 2021. Their message is simple: deliverance is victory, God has already placed the power for it inside you by His Spirit, and it grows as your mind is renewed.
All four videos are below, with a short note on what each one covers.
Deliverance gets talked about all over the Body of Christ, and a lot of believers are still confused about how to actually break through. That confusion is what these messages set out to clear up.
Here is the part I want you to hear before you press play. Unlike the central message of many deliverance sermons out there, this series does not tell you that freedom depends on finding the right minister, the right formula or the right night. Jesus died and rose so that the power of sin and death cannot stop you. The victory is already His, and by His Spirit it is already in you.
Each part was posted to Vimeo as it was taught, and the order matters. The series starts with foundations, moves through the things that oppose your promise, turns to restoration, and lands where deliverance always has to land, in how you think.
The foundation. What true biblical deliverance is, before anything else gets built on it.
Truth can be hard, and it sets you free. Seeking deliverance means seeking victory in a specific area of life.
Restoration. Your past and present challenges do not get to dictate your future.
The finale. Renew your mind and carry what you see of God's presence into every part of your life.
Watch them in order if you can. Part 4 makes the most sense once Part 1 has reset what you think the word deliverance means.
If your browser blocks a player, the link under it opens the message on Vimeo.
The first message lays the foundation for what true biblical deliverance is. It is an important subject that has been distorted throughout church history, and especially in recent times. You may never have been taught deliverance this way. God wants the chains off you so you can run, not only toward your victory but with it already in your hand.
Watch Part 1 on VimeoTruth can be difficult, and it will set you free. We do not fight from an earthly perspective, because our help comes from heaven. To seek deliverance is to seek victory in a certain area of life. God wants you to have control over the choices you make. Opposition will show up, and when you pursue the path God has made for you, even what opposes you has already been defeated.
Watch Part 2 on VimeoSomething may have been taken from you, and this message is about getting it back. Deliverance means total victory, and your past and present challenges do not dictate your future. If you have lost something, deliverance means taking back what is rightfully yours and refusing to keep handing power to what has held you. God has your back and is ready to restore you.
Watch Part 3 on VimeoThe finale is the most challenging of the four. As our perception of deliverance shifts, we see that God has empowered us for total victory. He wants to remove every filter that keeps us from seeing His will. Renew your mind, uncover the reality of God's full presence in your life, and take that new perception into every area where you need to walk free.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
If you want to know what Jesus meant by deliverance, start with the first sermon He preached in His hometown. He stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth, was handed the scroll of Isaiah, and read this.
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.”
Luke 4:18 · KJVThen He rolled up the scroll, sat down and said that the Scripture was fulfilled that day in their hearing. Not someday. That day. Deliverance in Jesus' mouth is a present announcement, and it has been in force ever since.
A sending away, a letting go, a release. It is the word behind both “deliverance to the captives” and “set at liberty” in this verse.
The same word is regularly translated forgiveness or remission of sins. Release and forgiveness are one idea in the New Testament, which tells you a lot about what binds people.
The Hebrew behind the passage Jesus read is dror, the word for the liberty proclaimed in the year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25.
That Jubilee background is the key. As William K. Gilders explains at Bible Odyssey, under Leviticus 25 the Jubilee was the year “when slaves were freed and debts were forgiven,” and dror is “best translated as ‘release’.” Nobody in Israel had to wrestle their debt to the ground. The release was proclaimed, and people walked out on the strength of the proclamation.
That is how the New Testament frames deliverance, and it is the heart of this series. Jesus proclaimed the release. Our part is believing it, agreeing with it and walking in it.
A lot of what gets taught under the word deliverance comes from films and fear rather than from the Gospels. Most people who teach it are sincere. They have watched people stay stuck and want to take that seriously. So do I. I just believe the popular model misreads the problem and the cure.
Your struggle is an invading personality to be identified by name, confronted and driven out in a dramatic session, often with a gifted minister doing the work and you waiting to be fixed.
Your struggle is the grip of deception, trauma, fear and old patterns. Freedom comes as truth replaces lies, the Spirit renews your mind, and you learn to walk in what Jesus already won.
At Sound of Heaven we do not teach that demons are personal beings with names and personalities that take up residence in people. We read that language in Scripture as describing real forces of deception, trauma, chaos and oppression, and Satan as the accuser and adversary, the opposition to truth. Those forces are real. Their grip on a person is real. And the way that grip breaks is truth.
That means deliverance is not a performance. It is renewal of the mind, encountering the truth of who God is and who you are in Jesus, and breaking lies through prayer and the Spirit. It can happen in a moment and it can take a season. Both are deliverance.
I also want to cut the other way. Some people hear this and decide deliverance is just positive thinking. It is not. It is the Holy Spirit at work, the gifts of the Spirit are active today, and prayer for freedom is a real ministry in our church.
Who does the fear-based model hurt most? The already anxious. The person with trauma who is told their panic is an invader. The teenager who starts seeing threats in every shadow. If you have been there, read what we wrote about monitoring spirits and why fear is not discernment. Our fuller teaching on the subject is in what deliverance is.
In Luke 4:18 (KJV), what does Jesus say He was sent to preach to the captives?
Deliverance, from the Greek aphesis, release. And He said it was fulfilled that day, not held back for later. The release is proclaimed, and we walk in it.
Everything in the series lands in Part 4, because the mind is where Scripture puts the battle.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
Romans 12:2 · KJVPaul describes the fight the same way in 2 Corinthians 10: pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations, and bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The strongholds he names are arguments and thoughts. Spiritual warfare in the New Testament is truth against deception, not people against monsters.
So what does deliverance look like on a Tuesday? Here is what it tends to look like in real people.
“I will always be this way.” “God is tired of me.” Freedom usually starts when the thought you have lived under is said out loud and seen for what it is. Proverbs says as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he, and we unpack that in As A Man Thinketh In His Heart.
You do not just evict a lie. You replace it with what God says. John 8:32 is the promise: ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. This is where learning the mind of Christ becomes practical.
Some of what holds people is relational: an unhealthy attachment, a loyalty to someone who harmed you, a pattern you learned at home. We walk through that in soul ties in the Bible and in generational curses.
James calls it being double minded. Deliverance is the slow joy of one heart, one direction, and choices that finally match what you believe. More on that in what it means to be double minded.
If what holds you comes from abuse, trauma or a long season of fear, please hear this. You are not weak and you are not being punished. Nothing in you is a monster. You are a person who has been hurt, and Jesus is gentle with hurt people.
Prayer and good counseling are not rivals. Many of the freest people I know had both. Freedom that takes time is still freedom, and you do not have to walk into it alone. You can ask us to pray with you today.
God has always made a way for His people to be delivered from what holds them captive. Out of Egypt, out of exile, and finally in Jesus, who stood up in Nazareth and announced the release as done.
God does not want you confused. He has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind, as Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:7. And Jesus put it as plainly as anyone could in John 8:36: if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
So press play on Part 1, and let the Spirit show you the lie you have been living under. Deliverance does not need to be a complicated process. It is Jesus, the finished work of the cross, and a mind learning to agree with Him.
For more on the same ground, read your true identity in Christ and whether demons are fallen angels, see what we believe, or come visit us in Deer Park on a Sunday.
Deliverance is the release Jesus already proclaimed, received as truth breaks the lies that hold you and your mind is renewed by His Spirit, and these four sermons walk you into it one step at a time.
Tell us what you are walking out of, and someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you by name.
The Setting Free is a four part series of deliverance sermons Apostle Johnny Ova taught at Sound of Heaven Church in early 2021. Part 1, The Place That God Has Prepared, lays the foundation. Part 2, Defeating the 7 Enemies to Your Promise, is about seeking victory in a specific area of life. Part 3, Take It All Back and Possess What Is Yours, is about restoration. Part 4, Mastering Your Mind, Reality, and Perception, is about the renewed mind. All four can be watched on this page.
In the New Testament, deliverance is release. In Luke 4:18 Jesus reads Isaiah and says He was sent to preach deliverance to the captives and to set at liberty them that are bruised. The Greek word is aphesis, a letting go or release, the same word often translated forgiveness. It echoes the Jubilee, when debts were cancelled and slaves went free. Jesus said that Scripture was fulfilled the day He read it, so deliverance is something He has already proclaimed.
Yes, in the sense Sound of Heaven teaches it. A believer belongs to Jesus and has the Spirit, and can still live under lies, fear, shame, trauma or old patterns that do not match who they are in Christ. Deliverance is not about removing an occupant. It is about truth replacing deception and the mind being renewed, as Romans 12:2 says. Many sincere Christians walk through seasons like that, and prayer, good teaching and community help them walk free.
Not in the way films portray it. At Sound of Heaven we do not teach that demons are personal beings that live inside people. We understand that language in Scripture as describing real forces of deception, trauma, chaos and oppression. Their grip is real, and it breaks through truth, prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit. Deliverance is renewal of the mind and freedom from lies. There is no need for fear, drama or a special formula.
Start with Jesus and with the truth. Watch the four sermons in order, and ask the Holy Spirit to show you the lie you have been living under. Name it, then replace it with what God says about you in Scripture. Tell a trusted believer, because freedom grows in community. If you are carrying trauma, get good counsel as well as prayer. And if you would like someone to pray with you, Sound of Heaven Church is glad to do that.