God's Response to Repentance

“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

In Joel 1, God sent an army of locusts against Judah as judgment for their sin. Along with the locusts, God also sent a prophet named Joel to call His people to repent of their sin and return to Him. And apparently... Judah did just that, because the second half of Joel 2 presents God’s response to the heartfelt return of His people.

Look at how God responds to repentant Judah. In Joel 2:25 God promises, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.” The locusts had done several years worth of damage to the land. It should have taken years to catch up from that. But God promises to speed up their recovery by blessing their upcoming harvests.

What does this tell us about how God responds when we repent and return to Him? It tells us that if we will repent and return to the Lord, He will not turn us away. God blesses those who return to Him. And His blessing can go a long way to making us whole again, to restoring and rebuilding what sin cost us.

God can repay the years the locusts have eaten in your life. No matter how big a mess you’ve made of your life, no matter how high the cost of your sin has been, God can fix it. Now, I’m not saying that it will all go away overnight or that there will be no lasting effects of your sin. I’m saying that God has a unique way of healing the pain that sin has caused and of redeeming the scars and consequences that are left behind. So, repent and return to the Lord today.