Psalm 90:15 (NLT) Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good.
Joel 2:25 (NKJV) So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, The crawling locust, The consuming locust, And the chewing locust.
Psalm 30:5b (NKJV) Weeping may endure for a night, But joy [comes] in the morning.
GOD’S WONDERFUL PROMISE for those redeemed in Christ — who have received God’s free gift of salvation through faith in Christ — is that He will bring joy and wonder in abundance, more than enough to compensate for the lean years, those years we lived without Him in our hearts.
Anyone who has “come to faith” as an adult, whether in their 30s or 70s or in-between, sees a clear demarcation between the “before” years and the “after” years and may well fall into the sin of remorse, of wishing so much that they had come to know the Lord in a personal and intimate way earlier in life, that they fail to rejoice at the new gift they’ve been given.
†††
WHEN OUR ENERGY is turned from living-for-God to remorse for having rejected Him earlier, God can’t use us for His Kingdom.
We need to focus on how God’s Holy Spirit redeems our hearts and souls and energizes us with a desire to live out the Gospel.
Then, we don’t need to look back with remorse but look ahead with anticipation. The Bible says God will “replace the evil years with good” and “restore … the years … the swarming locus has eaten.”
Our eternal life starts the day we receive the Holy Spirit into our hearts and lives and extends past our earthly deaths into all eternity. While our yesterday was filled with weeping, the psalmist assures us “joy comes in the morning.”
Praise God!
PRAYER
O LORD, we praise Your wonderful name! We give thanks, O Most High, for your steadfast love and bountiful mercy and grace. You not only have promised us an eternity with You in paradise, where we will look upon Your name and You will be our God and we will be Your people, but You have assured us that eternity starts here, in this life, in this world, the day we come to You in childlike innocence and proclaim, “Lord, I’m a sinner in need of Your grace. Thank You, O Lord, for Christ’s work on the cross for me. I believe He died for my sins and rose to glory as the first to be resurrected from the dead.” So, too, we, O Lord, will be raised from the dead at Your command. Thank You. We praise You, O Lord. In Jesus’ powerful and majestic name we lift this prayer. AMEN
LoveAndGrace 