Have you “blown it” in the past? I certainly understand your pain - I struggle mightily with feeling that I wasted great potential. I mentioned before that I spent around 10 years hanging out in bars that delayed my career, forming a family, and my walk with Christ.

I look around now and see people much younger than me doing far more with their lives. That isn’t the truth - but comparisons shaded by personal bias is just one of the reasons why God doesn’t want us comparing ourselves to others. Besides, it leads to coveting. That sin usually just hurts ourselves, but could lead to hurting others emotionally or physically.

Do you have “Lost Years”?

Do you Have “Lost” Years?

For now the best thing we can do is to remember that God has a future and plan for us.

“For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11).

These aren’t backup plans, either. God didn’t say, “Wow, I had no idea he would screw that up… I’d better go to plan B!”

God is in past, present, and future. When he says that he has plans to prosper us, those plans existed with his full knowledge of the precise path we would take in life. Weird to think, huh?

So, what do we do to restore those lost years? Work twice as hard? We do need to work dilligently, because proverbs backs up the notion that dilligence will bring prosperity. However, the precise method by which our lives will be restored may be a bit different than most of us may imagine.

25 “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten—
the great locust and the young locust,
the other locusts and the locust swarm —
my great army that I sent among you.
Joel 2:25

God spoke these words to the Jewish people through the prophet Joel to bring God’s people to repentance.

That is such a powerful verse for those whose life has been sabotaged by themselves or external forces. Do not worry. God has a plan that exceeds all we could ask or imagine, and to him will be the glory.

Memorize Joel 2:25 and keep it close to your heart. Have a blessed day!

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