Divine Restoration & Catherine Ponder continued:

The years which the locust has eaten symbolize those periods of your life that have seemed empty of good, or even filled with trouble.  They can be periods that you were inclined to look back on with bitterness, condemnation or deep hurt.  God promises to restore our good and God will restore yours, too, if you will change your thinking about those difficult periods.  Those periods of apparent loss of good can be restored to you with accrued interest, when you begin to believe they can.  Write the word gain over all the pages of your life!

Think back on those painful periods and say to yourself: “That was not loss.  That was actually an experience of gain.  I gained something good from that experience, because I learned something from it.  I grew through it and so I pronounce it growth. I pronounce it gain.”

You cannot forget these times until you first restore them to their rightful place in your own thoughts and feelings.  They cannot be shut out; they must be mentally and emotionally restored.  That is why they stay with you and why you cannot forget them.  They must be restored in your thinking as years of growth and learning and therefore years of good – regardless of appearances.

In one sense the past cannot be changed; but mentally and emotionally the past can be lifted up and recognized as a time when you were growing into greater understanding and wisdom – a time that opened the way for you to experience greater good.

You would not be the person you are today, you would not have the love, the understanding, the maturity, the depth, the compassion, the soul-searching desire for more of God’s goodness in your life – if you had not had the past experiences you have been condemning.  Out of the past you have grown, matured, unfolded and expanded your understanding and your world.  So do not try to run away from the past.  Do not condemn it.  Just try to put it in its rightful place in your own thinking.  Those experiences were for good, because through them you came forth into “a larger place” in your understanding. 

Release all anxiety, condemnation or negativity of yourself or others about your past.

Just as God is in your present, so was God in your past.  God was with you when you were having the experiences you now feel were wasted.  God was there, helping you grow, leading you through those experiences (whether he seemed to be or not) toward fulfillment.  If God was with you, bringing you into greater good, how could the past have been evil, futile or wasted?

So let the years that the locust has eaten now be restored to you!  They were the way your soul took to reach your present level of understanding as a child of God.

“Today is the day of my amazing good fortune.”

Prosperously Yours,

:)Lee