“One of the angels ordered, “Run for your lives! And don’t look back or stop anywhere in the valley! Escape to the mountains, or you will be swept away!” “But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt.” Genesis 19:17, 26 NLT
Years ago some friends and I were at a house out in town when a typhoon warning was issued. We should have headed back as soon as we heard the warning but we stayed a little longer and ran out of time to safely get back onto the military base before the storm hit. So, we had to remain where we were until it passed by. Thankfully, God spared us from harm that day. He could have permitted a very different outcome.
There are times when even though we know what action is required of us, we need a little shove to get us moving in the right direction! Lot knew about the impending destruction of Sodom, yet he and his family lingered there. They had to be forced to leave by a couple of angels! In today’s dose verse, we see that Lot’s wife didn’t abide by the plan that the angels had put together for her family—to run away from Sodom and never look back. She gave into the temptation to take one last look back and it cost her life.
Is there a place in your life that you continue to return, physically or mentally, that you know the Holy Spirit has called you away from? Maybe it’s a previous relationship, or an unhealthy habit that you just can’t seem to shake. Perhaps you constantly entertain or verbalize negative thoughts about yourself.
We’re not immune to the daily struggles of sin and temptation just because we enter into a relationship with the Lord. We continue to be tempted to go back to the familiar, even if it’s destructive, because we’re not really comfortable with change. ‘The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know’, right?
As we change from the person we used to be into the person God calls us to be, we’ll be tempted to lingeringly reminisce on the old and familiar.
But we must look forward—no holding onto the old ways, because that will result in our destruction. Run and don’t look back! God will provide the angels you need to help you each step of the way!
What price are you willing to pay for lingering?
[Read Genesis chapter 19 for the account of Lot and his wife]
By grace through faith,
Rita
Luke, chapter eight, gives the account of a woman who’d been afflicted for twelve years with non-stop bleeding. In that day, she was considered “unclean”—someone nobody wanted to come in contact with. As such, she was likely an outcast, not connected in her community, and unable to find a cure for her bleeding. One day, while Jesus was passing through a town, she made her way through the crowd of people in an effort to get close enough to touch Him. She reached His clothing and touched the edge of His robe. Right then, she stopped bleeding. Jesus wanted to know who touched Him. Everyone around Him said they didn’t do it. The apostle Peter told Jesus the entire crowd was pressing on Him because so many people were there.
One day while I was at the mall, I watched a little girl try desperately but unsuccessfully to convince her family of something she’d seen. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen what she described to them, but that each time her family came around to checkout what she described, they saw nothing. She was so frustrated as her mother and siblings practically dragged her off down the mall. The little girl wasn’t making up a story; I’d witnessed the same thing she had. Two boys would come to the front of a store and position themselves in the display window, standing perfectly still, or posing, like mannequins. Many people didn’t see them or passed by without acknowledging them. When any passersby stopped to investigate, and noticed that they were indeed real people, they’d laugh victoriously and run back into the store, away from the window and out of sight. They repeated this little trick over and over, more elated with each surprised ‘victim’. They were children having fun at the expense of others. My daughter recognized that they were not really mannequins when one of the boys blinked. The little girl saw one of the boys blink also, and they were discovered, so they ran away. By the time the girl got her family to come back over to the store, the boys were gone. Her family never witnessed their mannequin imitations and subsequently didn’t believe her story.