Daily Devotional

July 03

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

The years that the locust hath eaten

Remember what is perhaps one of the most comforting and wonderful things that is found anywhere in Scripture. It was spoken to the prophet Joel as he was given that great vision and understanding of the coming of Christ, the Christ that was to come. This was the word he was given to utter: ‘I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten’ (Joel 2:25). He has promised to do it; He can do it. The wasted years, the barren years, the years that the locusts and the canker-worms and the caterpillars and all these other things have devoured, until there was nothing apparently left, of them He says: ‘I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.’ If you think of it in terms of what you can do with your strength and power, then time is of the essence of the contract.

But we are in a realm in which that does not matter.
He comes in and He can give us a crop in one year that will make up for ten—’I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten.’ That is the character of our Master, that is our Saviour, that is our God. I say, therefore, in the light of this: Never look back again; never waste your time in the present; never waste your energy; forget the past and rejoice in the fact that you are what you are by the grace of God, and that in the Divine alchemy of His marvellous grace you may yet have the greatest surprise of your life and existence and find that even in your case it will come to pass that the last shall be first. Praise God for the fact that you are what you are, and that you are in the Kingdom.

Spiritual Depression, pp. 89–90

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”