Maybe you wasted years of your life. I did. Or maybe it wasn't your fault. Maybe those years were stolen from you by someone else, by an accident or a circumstance beyond your control. No matter the reason, God will restore to you the years that you have lost. The wasted years, even the wicked years.
Believers can be prisoners to sin, lust and pleasures of this world. We can waste our lives seeking pleasure, money, fame, power, sex, or some other form of self indulgence. Prisoners to passivity. More than a few Christians are passive Christians, saved, but not growing in the things of God, not serving God or loving others.
Ephesians 4:7 Nirv says, but each one of us has received a gift of grace. These gifts are given to us by Christ. Grace is undeserved favor, love, kindness and mercy. Grace is also the power to do what God says. Grace is a gift, never earned and requiring nothing in return.
Our response to God is
love, not out of obligation, and certainly not in fear. Uh, God restores our wasted years. And if you don't believe that, pick up the Bible and read about Paul. For the first 30 years of his 61 years on Earth, Saul worked extremely hard to make himself a Pharisee. In his zeal, he became an enemy of Christ and Christian.
Yet Paul, the transformed man at the end of his life, was able to say that he had run his race. He had completed the course God had laid out for him. And even though he had wasted 30 years of his life, even though he had violently chased, captured, imprisoned, and most likely murdered Christians, Paul became one of the greatest Christians in history.
Paul traveled extensively, spreading the gospel. He became a spiritual father to many churches, and he wrote 2/3 of the New Testament. Paul was executed in Rome in 66 AD. He was 61 years old. Having wasted so much of my life and being so broken from a decade of alcoholism, how could I possibly complete God's plan for my life?
In my pain, I cried out to God to help me complete his plan for my life. God answered my prayer. He gave me a scripture. It was a promise. It's Joel 2:25. So I will restore to you the years the swarming locust has eaten the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust.
God made that promise to me. And God has no favorites. This promise is for you too. God will restore to you your wasted years. John 8:36. An expanded Bible says, so if the Son makes you free, you will be truly free. Free indeed. Jesus set you free. Jesus, the Son of God, the all powerful one, set you free.
No reservations. He didn't hold anything back. He didn't say, except for this or except for that. He set you free. Except his freedom. Your past is cut off. Gone. Everything in your spirit was regenerated, made new. You're a new creation. So live that way. Live free.