John K. Jenkins Sr - I Will Restore (The Year of Restoration)

Grab your Bibles, your iPhone, your iPad, your Android, your Galaxy-whatever it is that you have for the word of God-and open it to a little book in the Old Testament called The Book of Joel . It is a minor prophet named Joel. Just be honest and go ahead and look at the table of contents. We 're going to read from chapter two. I'm actually going to be preaching from chapters one and two , but I want to start at chapter two. I want to read verses 25 and 26 of chapter two of Joel: "So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, the great army which I sent among you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied , and praise the name of the Lord your God who has dealt wondrously with you, and my people shall never be put to shame. Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and I am the Lord your God, and there is no other, and my people shall never be put to shame." I like the beginning of verse 25: "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." I want to talk about the theme for our church. The word that I believe God has given me for now and for 2015 is that this is the year of restoration. Somebody got that already! Somebody's ready to receive that already! Look at two or three people and say, "It's the year of restoration." Somebody, somebody needs to get excited about that ! It is the year, the time, the season that everything the devil took from you, God is going to give back. Woo! I wish I had somebody that could just help me praise the Lord for a moment. Amen! I believe that you can be seated. Amen, amen! I'm going to try to finish by 12-by 11:59. The last few years have already busted me out because I keep preaching past 12, so I'm working hard to be finished by 11:59 . This way, we can bring in the New Year without me preaching through it! Y 'all are supposed to say, "Take your time, Pastor, don't worry about it," but I see what kind of people I'm dealing with ! I don't know if you've ever had to speak before, but as a preacher, I never want to stand up and preach and be just blah blah blah blah blah , hurry up and sit down. I want to have a word from God. I work diligently in my life to stay open to hear from Him, and sometimes I know that God is speaking to me because of things that people say. I know that sometimes someone will come up to me and say, "Pastor, who told you about my life? Why did you take the whole sermon to talk to me?" Or somebody will say, "Sometimes I'm sitting in church , and you're preaching, and I feel like you're talking directly to me and nobody else in the building." When people say things like that to me , I know they feel and hear God talking to them , and that the message I have is the right word from God for that day and time. But sometimes you come to preach, and you're not really sure whether that word is the word that God has for you . There come seasons and times when you just have to go by faith. I was struggling with this word : What is the word that God has for First Baptist and the people to whom God has given us influence , and the ability to speak into their lives? Sometimes- for this particular year coming up, 2015-and closing out-when I was preaching this afternoon , I wanted to know , "God, is this the right message?" I don't know if you know what it's like to feel one moment that it's the right message, then in another moment say , "That ain't going to fly." Just as I came in today at the noon service- we had a noon service and a 7:30 service - when I came into the early noon service, just before I entered the sanctuary , one of our members grabbed me in the hallway, stopped me , and had to testify. They started telling me something going on in their life that blew my mind. I didn't quite understand all the details, so I said , "Slow down, catch me up, because I think you think I know more than I actually do." So when he stopped , slowed down , rewound, and gave me the story , the bottom line is this: His son had gotten married and lived in another state. His wife decided , after the son got married , that she no longer wanted to be married to him. She left, and they were separated. The son -our member 's son- relocated to this area because he thought the marriage was over . He believed the marriage was never going to be repaired , so he moved here . He stopped me in the hallway to say ( and here's the word) to me . Now, he doesn't know-he does not know what I want to talk about .