“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
The crawling locust,
The consuming locust,
And the chewing locust,
My great army which I sent among you.
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 be put to shame.
Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel:
I am the Lord your God
And there is no other.
My people shall never be put to shame.” Joel 2: 25-27
The courage to let God “restore” to me the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust”. what a mighty and sometimes fierce yielding to God it takes. Sometimes I cling so strongly to my resignation or rebellion. I messed up.
As we take time to look back into last year, and this too can be a mighty task for some of us, we might feel frustration, despair…man how I wish things had been better!
My dearest sister, let go.
let Christ come, let Him be incarnated in in the barren parts of your life.
He came to set free.
He came to restore and heal.
Let’s come back to the verse from the book of Joel.
God says “So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten”
Restore. From the Hebrew verb שׁלם – salam.
in Hebrew it means :
to make peace with, to cause to be at peace, to live in peace
to be complete, be sound, be uninjured, to make safe, to make whole or good, restore, make compensation.
Has your heart been ravaged and destroyed by sin ? has it been eaten by the locusts ? Christ is come ! Christ is come on Earth, has found His way in your heart, your ravaged heart, and He was incarnate for you. To RESTORE. to make you new. to heal. to mend.
But yield yourself to the Lord.
He is near.
So much more nearer than the air your breathe !
He is everywhere.
I used to find much comfort in this; take a minute. sit down. breathe. Then, think. Christ is infinitely nearer than the air particles right in front of you. He is IN YOU.
Talk to Him.
“Pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us” psalm 62:8
He is here. and He wants to restore. He desires to make you holy. so. Stand up. Do the mighty sign of the cross. take a deep deep breath and tell Him : “Jesus, I feel completely broken, wounded, ravaged. I need to start over. I need a new heart. A new spirit. Come. restore. heal. mend. make holy.”
You are His beloved daughter and how pleased He is to restore you. to make you Holy to Him. to crown you, clothe you in His glory.
Be brave. We stand on the same ground. Fear not. We all need to be healed and restored. This very minute, I too, sigh and cry for a new heart. a new spirit. He will hear us. He will have pity on us for we belong to Him. We are His beloved daughters. Precious. Beloved. Delighted in. Be brave, my dearest sister.
“It may be that in various parts of our lives we shall have to follow the path-possibly a difficult one-that leads from rebellion or resignation to consent […]
the most important thing in our lives is not so much what we can do as leaving room for what God can do. The great secret of all spiritual fruitfulness and growth is learning to let God act. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus tells us. God’s love is infinitely more powerful than anything we can do by our own wisdom or our own strength. Yet one of the most essential conditions for God’s grace to act in our lives is saying yes to what we are and to the situations in which we find ourselves.
That is because God is “realistic”. His grace does not operate in our imaginings, ideals, or dreams. It works on reality, the specific, concrete elements of our lives. Even if the fabric of our everyday lives doesn’t look very glorious to us, only there can we be touched by God’s grace. The person God loves with the tenderness of a Father, the person he wants to touch and to transform with His love, is not the person we’d have liked to be or ought to be. It’s the person we are. God doesn’t love “ideal persons” or “virtual beings”. He loves actual, real people. He is not interested in saintly figures in stained glass windows, but in us sinners.” – Jacques Philippe