When I Lost All I Once Again Turned My Thoughts to God

Money can be restored. Property can exist restored—jerry-built cars, stripped painting, onetime houses. Relationships can be restored. Only ane thing that tin can never exist restored is fourth dimension. Fourth dimension flies and it does not render. Years pass and nosotros never become them dorsum.

Yet God promises the impossible: "I will restore the years that the locust has eaten" (Joel 2:25). The immediate pregnant of this hope is clear. God's people had suffered the complete destruction of their entire harvest through swarms of locusts that marched like an insect ground forces through the fields, destroying the crops, multiplying their number as they went.

For iv consecutive years, the harvest was completely wiped out. God'due south people were brought to their knees in more ways than one. But "the Lord became jealous for his land and had pity on his people." God said, "Behold I am sending to you grain, wine and oil, and you will exist satisfied (Joel 2:18-nineteen).

In the coming years, God said, their fields would yield an affluence that would make up for what had been lost: "The threshing floor shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. . . . Y'all shall eat in plenty and exist satisfied" (Joel 2:24, 26).

This wonderful hope for those people meant that years of abundant harvests would follow the years of desolation brought about by the locusts.

Merely God has also put this promise in the Bible for us today.

Lost Years of Our Lives

What practise "lost years" look like for us? Lost years (or locust years) are years that you can't go back, and they come in many varieties.

Lost years are fruitless years. A lot of hard work was done in the years the locusts had eaten. Later everything was destroyed, the people must take thought, All this work and what practice I have to show for it? Some of you know this pain in the world of business organisation—a failed venture, a bad investment, a misguided policy, and all the attempt that you put in day-by-twenty-four hours, month-by-month, twelvemonth-by-year led merely to massive disappointment. You think, What has come of all my time and all my endeavor?

Lost years are painful years. I'k thinking of those who have lost a loved one. You had plans for the time to come, but now you fear the coming years may be empty. I'chiliad thinking also of those who live with illness in the trunk or the mind. You assumed that you lot would always be able to do what you used to do. You have to find a style to live with the thwarting that you lot cannot.

Lost years are selfish years. Here's a story that's been repeated thousands of times. There's a person (let's call him Jim) who made a commitment to Christ, only it didn't run deep. Faith in Jesus was a slice of the big pie of his busy life, filled with all the things that Jim wanted to pursue. Then one day, God gets hold of Jim. He is spiritually awakened. He says to himself, What in the world have I been doing? At that place's no substance in my life. I really want it to count for Christ. I want to alive in the power of the Spirit. I desire to make a difference in the world, but the locusts accept eaten one-half my life! I've wasted my years on myself.

Lost years are loveless years. A partitioning comes to a family, alienating loved ones. Children grow up, and those years cannot be recovered. A marriage quietly endures in which love has been burning low for many years. You run into a couple who are really in love, and you say, "I wish I could be loved similar that." Or you accept not nevertheless met the person you lot would similar to see. It feels like the years are moving on. Yous tin never get them back. The locusts accept eaten them.

Lost years are rebellious years. Perhaps yous grew upward with many blessings, but in your middle you wanted to rebel. You didn't fully understand this urge, just you gave yourself to it. Instead of bringing you pleasance, rebellion brought you hurting. Now yous look back on those years with regret, the years that the locusts have eaten.

Lost years are misdirected years. The path you chose in your career or at college was a expressionless terminate. You just didn't fit. Oft in your heed, and sometimes in your conversation, y'all say, "How did I end up here? If only. . . . If only I had made that move. . . . If only I had taken that opportunity. . . . If simply I had called a unlike path." But the moment has passed. It's gone. You lot can't become back to information technology. You're left with locust years.

Lost years are Christ-less years. All Christ-less years are locust years. This point is worth thinking about if you lot have not nonetheless made a delivery to Christ. Ask anyone who came to faith in Christ later in life, and they will tell you that they wish they'd come to Christ sooner than they did: "How much foolishness I would accept avoided. How much more good might take been done through my life."

How God Restores Lost Years

Accept eye! There is promise, because God tin restore your lost, locust years. He does then in iii ways.

God can restore lost years by deepening your communion with Christ. "Y'all shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God" (Joel 2:27). These people, who have endured then much, enjoy a communion with the Lord that is far greater than anything they had ever known earlier in their religious lives. Christ tin restore lost years by deepening your fellowship with him.

Why not inquire him for this? Tell him, "Lord, I have spent likewise many years without you, too many years at a distance from you. Fill up my heart with honey and gratitude for Christ. Let the loss of these years make my beloved for Christ greater than it would ever have been. Restore to me the years the locusts have eaten. "

God can restore lost years by multiplying your fruitfulness. The harvests for these people had been wiped out for four years, but God restored the years that the locusts had eaten by giving bumper harvests.

This provision makes me think most the parable where Jesus spoke most a harvest that could exist 30-, 60-, or 100-fold. There'southward a huge difference between these three harvests. Three years at 100-fold is as much fruit equally a decade at 30-fold.

Why not ask him for this? "Lord, the locusts take eaten likewise many years of our lives. You have chosen us as your disciples to deport fruit that will last. As well many fruitless years have passed. Now Lord, we ask of you, give u.s. some years now in which more lasting fruit will be born than in all of our years of small harvests."

God tin can restore lost years by bringing long-term gain from brusk-term loss. The event of these great trials in your life will be that "the tested genuineness of your faith . . . may result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ" (one Peter one:seven). The praise, glory, and honor get to Christ because his ability guarded yous and kept you lot through the hardest years of your life.

Thinking about "years that the locust has eaten," years that take been taken, I think of something Isaiah said near our Lord Jesus: "He was cut off out of the land of the living" (Isaiah 53:8).

Here was the Lord Jesus in the prime of life. He was three years into his ministry at 33 years old. You would think that a man launching a new enterprise at the age of 33 has everything in front end of him. Just Isaiah says, "He was cut off." He was cutting off because he came under the judgment of God, not for his ain sins—because he had none—but for ours.

Our sins, our grief, our sorrows, were laid on him. Our judgment barbarous on him. Our locusts swarmed all over him. The life of God'south tender shoot was "cut off." And then, on the third day, the Son of God rose in the power of an eternal life. He offers himself to you, and he says what no one else tin always say: "I will restore the years that the locusts accept eaten."

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Source: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-can-restor-your-lost-years/

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