Joel 2:25

New American Standard Bible (©1995)
"Then I will make up to you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten, The creeping locust, the stripping locust and the gnawing locust, My great army which I sent among you.


Restoration, what a great topic.  Isn't that what we all dream of--to have everything that has been taken from us, either emotionally or physically, restored?   Don't we all want for God to fill some huge hole in our lives?


Once, I had a pastor who talked all the time about the "God shaped hole" in each of us.  We each have one, a place that nothing seems to fill.  Some of us come by the God shaped hole due to terrible events in our lives.  Perhaps a man with no father, a child who was traumatized, or someone who was born with a disorder.  Some of us just have a God shaped hole because, well, there is no God in our lives.


I used to think of our lives as roads.  As we continue in life we tend to lose a few stones here, get marked up here, and pretty soon, we are damaged and covered in potholes.  They start small, but the more traffic that we endure, the deeper those potholes become.


So we hope that God will come along and fill those holes, making our road nice and smooth.  But God doesn't do that.  


What?  He doesn't?  He's a God of restoration!  


Yes..but he also goes FURTHER--he restores and ADDS!  He wants to do more than make a smooth road, he wants to overfill and mound your potholes over with blessings!  Let's look at Job.  He lost everything:  his fortune, his family, his friends and his health.  And God restored him.  BUT he went above and beyond.  He not only restored these, he gave above and beyond what Job had lost.


That is our God. Always doing more than we expect.  We put our head down and we pray in our human condition for what we feel is huge.  And God must look down at us as a loving father who is all powerful, shake his head and say to Himself, "Is that all you want?  But I can give you so much more, child.  I want to provide more."


Why do we put our human limitations on the only totally powerful being in existence?  How many blessings do we miss because we ask too small and believe too little?


Is there anything that our God cannot do?