About ten years ago I found an interesting passage in Isaiah 35 while sitting in church waiting for a meeting to start. I felt as if God said to hide verses 3-6 in my heart and let them incubate. Throughout the next year I read them over and over and looked up some of the more significant words.
I was fascinated by the words “vengeance” and “recompense.” I looked up “vengeance” in a very old Webster’s dictionary and found that it was defined as “the righteous recompense of God for Zion’s sake.” Recompense is “due season.”
Quite often we associate the word “vengeance” with something bad that is going to happen to us. How many of you have begun to read Isaiah 35:3-6 but stopped when you came to this word?
Because of erroneous teaching in the body of Christ we have come to believe that God is mad at us. Therefore, we assume this passage refers to the vengeance that God is going to take on His own people.
But that is not what the passage says. It literally says that this is the time in which God is going to take vengeance on the devil for the sake of His body, the church, and that He is going to heal us of the diseases, sicknesses and brokenness the devil has put on us.
Try reading the verses with the interpretation given above in mind: “Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; He will come and save you.’ Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert” (Is. 35:3-6, NKJV).
After studying and meditating on this passage from Isaiah for about a year, I began to minister on it regularly. Each time I do, I read through it aloud and pause after each part of the anatomy is mentioned. The healer, Jesus, steps in and delivers people from carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, tendonitis and stiff joints. He restores feeble knees.
One man named Don was scheduled for surgery because a kneecap was totally blown-out. God restored it like new. One girl took a brace off her leg and hung it up on the wall of the church. She was supposed to wear the brace for six weeks. But when the fire of God hit her knee, she knew she was healed. She went back to the doctor, and he gave her a clean bill of health.
I have seen blind eyes restored to 20-20 vision and hundreds of deaf ears opened. I have watched several people take off their hearing aids, and when I saw them months later they could still hear without the hearing aid.
One lady ran off and left me as she was using her four-pronged walker. The power of God hit her, and she left the walker and began to walk very fast, praising the Lord that she was healed. The passage says, “the lame shall leap like a deer”!
This same lady had TMJ. She had been operated on four times and had not been able to chew food for two years. All she could eat was soft food. God totally healed not only her legs but also her jaw and her back. He restored other functions of her body as well.
God wants to pour out His love to you as He did to those I have mentioned. He does not want you to be broken, beat-up and sick! He wants to demonstrate that He is a God of power and might and that there is nothing too hard for Him.
In his third epistle, John says, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (v. 2). Notice the use of the term “beloved.” Jesus wants you to know He loves you.
I believe God wants you to “prosper in all things”-to have enough money to meet all your needs, a decent car, a nice home and good health. You can appropriate these things as you learn to prosper in your soul by meditating on the Word of God.
Try meditating on Isaiah 35, taking time to reflect on the goodness of God, and see what begins to happen in your life!