"I've wasted my best years. I'll never get that time back."
How it sounds in your head: I'm 22 and I've already blown years on this addiction. My friends are graduating, getting promotions, getting engaged. I'm starting from scratch while they're miles ahead. I can't recover what I lost.
"So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you."
-- Joel 2:25Source: comparison culture and linear thinking that doesn't account for God's ability to REDEEM time.
He sees peers hitting milestones he feels he should've reached, making him feel permanently behind. The 'lost years' feel like a deficit he'll spend his whole life trying to make up.
Joseph spent 13 YEARS as a slave and prisoner—his entire young adulthood wasted in chains. In ONE DAY, Pharaoh promoted him from prisoner to second-in-command of Egypt, and Joseph said, 'God has made me FORGET all my toil.' Instant restoration of lost years.
I REFUSE the lie that I've wasted irredeemable time. IT IS WRITTEN that God will RESTORE the years the locust has eaten—not just give me a future, but REDEEM my past. IT IS WRITTEN that He does exceedingly abundantly above all I ask or think. One encounter with His favor can catapult me past people who've been 'ahead' for years. The BARAK that made Abraham leave Egypt RICHER than when he arrived makes me GAIN from what the enemy meant to steal. I'm not behind; I'm being SET UP.
The Father doesn't see you as permanently behind schedule, scrambling to catch up. He's about to do in ONE DAY what would've taken years, restoring what was stolen and ADDING favor on top. You're not making up for lost time—you're stepping into REDEEMED time.