Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the

word, prayers, and our heart. I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me,

which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent. I love the Old Testament. I love the

whole Bible, of course, but since I really started studying the Old Testament about 10 years ago, I have fallen in deep love with the richness of so many amazing passages

and stories.

And sometimes I just sit and marvel at how the epic of Abraham and Moses and Elijah in that

crazy showdown of the little G gods, remember in the one true God in First Kings, is my same and

your same God today. And I want to get into one of my favorite passages in the Old Testament in the

book of Joel, how it's often interpreted and what it really means for us today in the area

of our past and one of my favorite words, redemption.

Joel 2 is a powerful chapter in the Bible, and the book of Joel is written by the

prophet Joel to the people of Judah, and of course all of God's people including us because they had

become quite prosperous and quite complacent which sounds familiar I think to us today.

In my Bible commentary it tells me that the people of Judah had begun to take God for granted

and begun to turn to self-centeredness, idolatry, and obviously sin.

And Joel was warning them that though they might enjoy it and they might get away with it for a

time, this kind of lifestyle was one that would eventually bring God's judgment.

So chapter one talks all about this locust plague where the locusts are literally devastating everything. And he even goes into great specifics into the types of locusts plague where the locusts are literally devastating everything.

And he even goes into great specifics into the types of locust, the cutting locusts that eat the

crops and the swarming locusts take what's left. And then the hopping locusts come along. And

finally the stripping locusts as well. And he says, it's a vast army of locusts that come and

invade the land too many to count. And they have teeth as's a vast army of locusts that come and invade the land, too many to count,

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