“So it will be in that day, that his burden will be removed from your shoulders and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be broken because of fatness.”
—Isaiah 10:27
God gave my husband and me a passion to extend our outreach beyond the US in 2013. When we were invited to preach the gospel in Haiti, I learned that the United States and other countries were pouring millions of dollars into Haiti to lift the nation out of extreme poverty. But I was devastated to see that the many dollars spent had not relieved Haiti of the oppressive poverty.
As I spoke with missionaries who had served in Haiti for many years, I realized that years of dependence on foreign assistance and a spiritual history in which occult leaders made allegiances with demonic spirits had left many Haitians trapped in a horrible cycle of oppression. The term zombie has roots in voodoo, which is practiced in Haiti. It refers to a will-less, speechless human whose body has died but been reanimated by a demonic spirit.
As if oppressed by a zombie spirit, many Haitians seemed to willlessly keep doing what they’d always done and thus get the same results. For example, after receiving a water filtration system that purified their drinking water, one community failed to perform the required system maintenance and returned to drinking contaminated water. This served as a stark reminder to me that without the Lord breaking in to change our habits and ways of thinking, we cannot create and maintain new systems that will improve the quality of our lives. But the good news is that the anointing of God destroys yokes and sets people free from all kinds of bondage.
The word fatness in today’s verse refers to the anointing. As we call on the Lord to release His anointing that gives us revelation and divine creativity, He empowers us to destroy negative patterns, even those that have afflicted our families for generations. The Spirit of the Lord anointed Jesus “to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18–19, ESV). Let’s walk in this same anointing to experience breakthrough and see others set free.
Father, You know the strongholds, even those from generations past, that hinder my ability to see, think, and walk in Your divine, creative, life-giving ways. Your Word says Yeshua came to set me free. I receive Yeshua’s anointing, which breaks off evil yokes. Move through me by the power of Your Spirit.
Cynthia Schneider, From Passover to Pentecost (Lake Mary, FL: Charisma House, 2021), Used by permission.
