Remember Lot's wife...

I've been doing a 'Bible study' of sorts with She Reads Truth which sends you the Scripture and a reflection in your inbox. Very cool and convenient :) This particular study is about Women in the Bible. Even though I have heard all of these stories before, they seem to have come at a perfect time where I needed to be reminded of them the most.

One of the women I am doing my best to learn from is Sarai, Abraham's wife (later to be known as Sarah). For whatever reason, the Lord made it impossible for her to get pregnant. She and Abram lived their married life without conceiving. And she got tired of waiting on the Lord, so sent her servant Hagar to conceive with Abram so that they could have a son to carry on their family. Now, this isn't really the typical way things happen these days, but much can be learned from this situation. Because in the end, Hagar was resentful toward Sarai and no one was really happy with what happened. It was just bad news. Eventually Hagar and her son even got sent into the desert... but that is more to the story you can read in Genesis! 

So what is my point here? Sometimes we get tired of waiting on the Lord and don't understand what the heck He is doing, so we try to take matters into our own hands. I am guilty of doing this occasionally all the time. I get frustrated, I get tired of waiting to see what He is going to do, and so I try to do things on my own...and let me tell you, it never ends well. So I'm trying to learn from Sarai's impatience and try to be more trusting. But hey, in the end, God still loved Sarah and gave her a son in her old age. Good things come to those who wait! 

The second woman I am learning from is Lot's wife. I can't remember if the poor woman's name was ever mentioned, but almost everyone knows the story of the woman who turned into a pillar of salt because she looked back on her home being destroyed when she was specifically told not to. Even though the Lord saved their family from destruction and called them out of the city, she still looked back. Now typically whole cities these days are not lit up and bombed by the Heavens. But what do Sodom and Gomorrah represent? They represent sin, evil, immorality...all the crap in our past that maybe we are still holding on to. Maybe we look back because we are still struggling, maybe the temptation is too strong for us, maybe we look back because we just aren't ready to let go, and maybe we aren't as strongly focused on the Lord as we should be. Because if we were really walking in trust with Him, we wouldn't want to look back. We would know the Glory that awaits us if we were to keep pressing onward and not look back on our own Sodom and Gomorrah. When He calls us in His mercy from a life of sin, we need to run straight to Him, never looking back. 

"Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it." -Luke 17: 32-33