Puzzle pieces come through people and when you have ears to hear the Lord will put the puzzle pieces people speak together to create a picture He wants us to see. This is why the body of Christ needs every member, for we each carry something that makes the picture visible and accessible. Aaron Kolb had the puzzle piece Isaiah 35 this morning that he showed me in a picture he presented to me and as I looked at it this chapter Isaiah 35 caught my attention. Listen to these verses from Isaiah 35…

“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.
The parched ground shall become a pool,
And the thirsty land springs of water;
In the habitation of jackals, where each lay,
There shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
A highway shall be there, and a road,
And it shall be called the Highway of Holiness.”

As I was reading this I remembered a word my dear friend Autumn Hope Darden spoke early last year as the Lord said to her, “Recompense!” Isaiah 35 says, Behold your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. Recompense in the Hebrew means reward, benefit, to treat well, to ripen, deal bountifully, repay, ripe almonds. Immediately to ripen and ripe almonds caught my attention because that is a nod to Jeremiah 1:11-12 which says, “Moreover the word of the LORD came to me, saying, Jeremiah, what do you see? And I said, I see a branch of an almond tree. Then the LORD said to me, You have seen well, for I am ready to perform My word.” When God does what He said He is going to do that is repcompense. Romans 2:4 says, “Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” This too is recompense.

Here is what I sense the Lord saying to us, God is releasing recompense and when He does it will be a reward, benefit, Him treating us well, for two reasons, one His kindness leads us to repentance and two because He is watching over His word to perform it. This recompense will result in blind eyes seeing, deaf ears hearing, lame leaping, tongues singing, water bursting, streams flowing, pools filling, springs erupting and a highway of holiness being seen in the nations. God’s recompense results in His kindness leading us to repentance. He is not going to whack us, He is about to kiss us with His kindness and it is going to catch so many people off guard because they are bracing for a whacking, they are not prepared for a kissing.