The Years the Locusts Have Eaten
It’s three in the morning. The house is quiet, but your mind is a roaring furnace of regret. You’re staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks, but really you’re counting the years. The lost years. The years the locusts have eaten. Maybe it was a bad decision, a relationship that turned to ash, an addiction that bled you dry, or a season of aimless wandering that left you with nothing but dust and echoes. The enemy, the great accuser, loves this hour; he projects his highlight reel of your failures onto the dark screen of your memory, whispering that the damage is permanent, the field is barren forever, and the harvest you once dreamed of will never come. It’s a cold, heavy blanket of despair, this feeling that what was taken can never be gotten back.
You know, Peter felt that. He was standing right there, smelling the dust of the Galilean road, feeling the warmth of the sun, and he had a clear picture of how things were supposed to go. He’d left everything to follow this man, this Messiah who was supposed to overthrow Rome and restore Israel. Then Jesus opens his mouth and speaks the unthinkable. 'The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected... and be killed, and after three days rise again.' In that moment, Peter’s entire future dissolved. He saw the locusts coming for everything he held dear, and he did what any of us would do. He grabbed Jesus, his friend and his Lord, and began to rebuke him. It wasn't just disagreement. It was the raw cry of a man trying to stop a thief from stealing his entire world, a desperate attempt to protect the future he had so carefully constructed in his own mind.
But here’s the thing about our God. His economy is not like ours. Where we see endings, He sees beginnings. Where we see irreparable loss, He promises impossible restoration. The prophet Joel spoke a word that echoes from his ancient page directly into your three-in-the-morning despair: 'And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.' This isn't just about patching a hole or planting a new crop. The word 'restore' in the Hebrew, 'shalam,' means to make whole, to make complete, to pay back in full. It’s the same root for 'shalom,' for peace. God’s promise isn't to pretend the locusts never came; it's to make the field so abundant after their devastation that the memory of the loss is swallowed up by the miracle of the harvest. The cross and the empty tomb are the ultimate proof; the enemy stole Christ's life for three days, but God restored it for all eternity.
And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.— Joel 2:25, KJV
The Things That Be of God
Jesus turned on Peter with fire in his eyes. 'Get thee behind me, Satan.' Why such a harsh rebuke for a friend’s well-meaning concern? Because Peter, in that moment, was speaking the language of the world, not the language of heaven. He was thinking like a man. 'For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.' Man's logic is about self-preservation. It’s about minimizing risk, maximizing gain, and holding on tight to what you have. It’s the same fearful, calculating logic that trapped the chief priests in Mark 11, who couldn’t answer Jesus' question about John the Baptist because they were more afraid of the people than they were of God. This human way of thinking is the enemy’s native tongue. He uses it to convince you that your past defines you, that your losses are final, and that your only hope is to claw back what you can through your own strength and cleverness, a strategy that only leads to deeper exhaustion and despair.
Then Jesus drops the bombshell of the Kingdom. The divine paradox that turns the world’s logic on its head. 'For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.' This is the key that unlocks the prison of regret. The command to 'lose your life' is a call to surrender your frantic efforts at self-salvation. You can't fix the past. You can't earn back the years. But at the cross, Christ took your lost life—all the shame, all the failure, all the locust-eaten years—and nailed it to the tree. He lost His life so you could find yours, not the old one you were trying so hard to protect, but a new one, hidden with Him in God. His finished work cancels the enemy's claim on you completely. The locusts may have eaten the field, but Christ has bought the farm.
Let’s look again at Joel’s promise. God calls the swarming locust, the cankerworm, the caterpillar, and the palmerworm 'my great army which I sent among you.' This is a hard word. It means that sometimes the devastation we experience is not outside of God’s sovereign knowledge or even His permissive will. He allowed the stripping. He allowed the field to be laid bare. This truth doesn’t make God cruel; it makes Him trustworthy. If He was powerful enough to allow the devastation, He is more than powerful enough to command the restoration. The promise isn't for the person whose life is neat and tidy. The promise of restoration is specifically for the one who has been through the swarm, the one who is standing in a field of stubble, wondering how they'll ever survive. It's in that place of total dependence that God does His most profound work.
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.— Mark 8:35, KJV
Taking Up Your Cross Daily
So what does this restoration look like on a Tuesday afternoon? It’s rarely a lightning strike that resets the clock. More often, it's a quiet, steady rain on dry ground. It’s the forgiveness you extend to the person who hurt you, not because they deserve it, but because you’ve been forgiven, and in that act, a bitter root in your own soul dies. It’s the wisdom you now offer a younger person walking through the same mess you made, realizing with a start that God has redeemed your foolishness into counsel. The enemy intended that broken marriage to destroy your faith in love, but God is restoring it by teaching you to love with a grace and depth you never knew before. He isn't erasing the scars. No, He’s turning them into testimonies, powerful markers of the place where His grace met your greatest need and proved sufficient.
Friend, please hear me. You have to stop trying to fix the past. You can't. The very effort to 'make up for lost time' is a heavy yoke, a form of works-righteousness that denies the sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice. Jesus said, 'Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.' Taking up your cross is not a grim march of religious duty; it’s the daily act of laying down your own plans for restoration. It is surrendering your timeline, your definition of success, and your ledger of what you’re owed. It is the profound rest that comes from trusting the Lord of time, the one who holds all your days in His hands. He can redeem a single moment so powerfully that it outweighs a decade of waste.
Walking in this grace day by day means you learn to talk back to the accuser. When he brings up the memory of the locusts—and he will—you don't argue with him on his terms. You don't try to justify your past or minimize the damage. You simply point to the cross. You declare that the one who lost everything for you has already paid for that. It means you begin to look at the empty places in your life not as monuments to your failure, but as prepared ground for God’s next miracle. It's a conscious, deliberate choice to believe God's promise is more real than your past, to water the seed of His word with faith even when you can't see a single green shoot. This is not a passive waiting; it is an active, stubborn hope.
And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.— Mark 8:34, KJV
The Unshakeable Exchange
It all comes down to a single, terrifyingly clear question from Jesus. 'For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' The enemy’s bargain is always the same: he offers you control, pleasure, recognition—the world—in exchange for the one thing of eternal value, your soul. He convinces you that the years the locusts ate were a loss of worldly things, and you must spend the rest of your life clawing back worldly things to compensate. But Jesus exposes this as a fool's errand. The promise of Joel 2:25 is not about God restoring your 401k or your reputation. It’s about something infinitely deeper. God can and will restore the lesser things—the joy, the peace, the purpose—because His Son has already secured the greatest thing: your immortal soul, bought back from the brink of eternal loss.
So be on guard. The moment you begin to walk in the freedom of His restoration, the temptation will be to slip back into the old currency of men. The enemy will tempt you to be ashamed of the gospel, to hide the scars that God has redeemed, to start measuring your worth by your progress instead of by Christ's position. He will whisper that grace is too easy, that you must add your own works to the pile to truly earn back what was lost. This is the path back to chains. It is the logic of Peter saying, 'This can't be right.' It is the logic that savors the approval of men over the truth of God. Don't trade the glorious, messy, grace-filled work of divine restoration for the clean, sterile, soul-crushing prison of religious performance. Stand on His promise alone.
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?— Mark 8:36, KJV
The field that you mourn today, the one you see as a testament to your failure and the enemy's victory, is not the final chapter. Look closer. The Restorer is walking through the stubble. The years you thought were wasted, He is gathering up as fertilizer for a new planting. The pain that you thought would disqualify you, He is weaving into a story of redemption that will bring Him glory. The enemy saw a crop to devour, but God sees a canvas for resurrection. So lay down your frantic striving, quiet your accusing heart, and rest in the finished work of Jesus. He who promised to restore is faithful, and He is making all things new, even and especially the broken things.