“I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten.” — Joel 2:25 (ESV).
Friend, locusts don’t just nibble — they strip a field bare. That’s what the old life did to my years. Addiction ate my time, my choices, my relationships. There were seasons I look back on and think: that’s just gone. The years with my children, the years I should have been present, the years I spent running — the locusts had them.
But God doesn’t deal in ‘gone.’ He deals in restoration. And His restoration isn’t just giving back what was lost — it’s redeeming it. He took the very years the enemy used to break me and turned them into the testimony I now teach from. The pain became the place I meet other hurting people. The ashes became the beauty.
Look what God has done: He restored connections I thought were dead — my children, my family, my purpose. He gave me a voice for the very rooms I once hid from. That’s what restoration looks like: not pretending the locust years never happened, but watching God harvest good from the same ground they stripped.
So if you’re staring at years you think are wasted — years of addiction, of broken relationships, of choices you can’t undo — hear this: He is not finished with your story. Bring Him the bare field. He knows how to make it grow again. He restores, and He restores completely.
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