“You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.” Joel 2:26
God can restore your lost years by bringing long-term gain from short-term loss. The effect of these great trials in your life will be that “the tested genuineness of your faith… may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:7). The praise, glory, and honor go to Christ because his power guarded you and kept you through the hardest years of your life.
Thinking about the years that the locust has eaten, the years that have been taken reminds us of something Isaiah prophesied about our Lord Jesus: “He was cut off out of the land of the living” (Isa. 53:8). Here was Jesus in the prime of life—33 years old. You would think that a man launching a new enterprise at that age has everything in front of him, but Isaiah says that “he was cut off.” The reason he was cut off was that he came under the judgment of God, not for his own sins, but for ours.
Our sins, our griefs, our sorrows were laid on him. Our judgment fell on him; our locusts swarmed over him. The life of God’s tender shoot was “cut off.” 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 can ever say: “I will restore the years that the locust has eaten.”
Ask God to restore your hope in Christ for what is yet to come.
