Remember Lot’s Wife

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Remember Lot’s Wife

9/29/26 HERspace Blog

This weekend, I heard & saw these words, “Remember Lot’s Wife” as someone sent a text requesting prayer. I knew the Lord was speaking as this is the 2nd shortest verse recorded in the Bible Luke 17:32.

For those unfamiliar with Lot’s wife, I’ll give a brief summary but read fully in Genesis 19.

Lot, his wife and daughters were visited by two angels that shared Sodom and ultimately Gomorrah would be destroyed due to the sin. They were helped in the escape leaving everything they had and everyone they knew behind, family included, despite Lot’s lingering but they experienced mercy for the sake of Abraham’s intercession (Genesis 19:15-16).

The family was given the instruction of where to go, which Lot pleaded for another location (only to end where they initially instructed to go later) and the angels acquiesced. They gave them a three word instruction already having saved them once, DON’T LOOK BACK.

However, in the escaped, Lot’s wife behind him, looked back and turned to a pillar of salt.

Now, I began with hearing the words: “Remember Lot’s Wife.” & after some reflection, I left with three questions, lessons and a conclusion:

Pause: before we begin, have you noticed that both warnings were only three words?

When getting a word of caution, wisdom or warning, we have to be tapped in to the source of the speaker. Here, the Source was clear, not a true intermediary and also not a lot of words. It reminds me of the scripture, when we hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your heart (Hebrews 3:15). Obey what this saith the Lord.

#1. Why no name?

While there are approximately 600 unnamed women, 150 named women in the Bible & less than 100 who spoke in scripture. We didn’t get her name but we do have her story… It’s a cautionary account for everyone.

The name we do have actually matters most, Lot. Women were often unnamed especially in the Old Testament if they were married. As the men held tremendous responsibility for the family.

Greatest takeaway, who you marry or leads you matters.

Leading only has two roads, life or death. It begins with the tongue (Proverbs 18:21) as homosapiens, we communicate majority with our words. However, our nonverbal language often follows what we speak.

Lot had the opportunity to go to the land promised and heard from the Lord with his uncle Abraham. Instead, he went by what looked good and landed beside and eventually fully assimilated in Sodom.

He didn’t learn his lesson because upon escaping, he still didn’t take the initial guidance of the angels but ended up in the mountains anyway.

His story ended with a salty wife, incestuous daughters and in a cave. His decision to not follow Abraham in the Word of the Lord cost him his wife’s life and bloodline turmoil.

The choice to follow Abraham again wasn’t “loud” or filled with a bunch of instructions. It was simple and short but the Word was from the Lord. Here is the way, walk in it (Isaiah 30:21). When the Lord is speaking, even if it looks better, we have to go with what He says.

The notoriety, thriving land and seeming life was a temporary attraction that cost him the life the Lord intended not just for him but the bloodline.

We must all stay in the way, and follow the leading of the Lord even when it is not loud or long instructions.

Lesson: The Lord determines the end from the beginning and His counsel shall stand (Isaiah 46:10). As you’re making “starting” decisions, include the Lord in your coursework. Where you live, who you marry, what/who leads you etc. are pivotal choices that determine provision as Jehovah Jireh is a place. & prevents looking back because you began and ended with God said.

#2. Why salt?

I’ve always asked the Lord of all the things You could have turned her into, why salt? Salt is meant to preserve as was Lot’s wife. She was a birther and preserver of the bloodline.

Matthew 5:13 ESV discusses that WE (Body of Christ) are the salt of the earth, meant to preserve the Word of the Lord across the earth. But if salt loses flavor, it has no purpose and will be trampled on.

Sound familiar?

Lot’s wife turned to salt and they kept running as instructed. The Bible said a pillar of salt. Pillar can be a person who is renowned like mothers and wives often are in families. Or a pillar is a stone that can help to hold something up that people look at.

Lot’s wife had two choices, God’s way or her own. Her disobedience cost her life. Instead of being a pillar of the family, she became a pillar of Jesus saying what not to do.

Hosea 4:6 states that people perish due to a lack of knowledge.

The people in this Hosea chapter had the knowledge but chose not to obey. Weighty choices…

The irony here is they made it outside the city gates. All they had to do was run, not look back, & keep moving forward until they made it to their destination.

But in her place of release, she got stuck.

Unfortunately, this is many people on the precipice of freedom but never arrive because of the holding pattern of fear, the unknown or the grip of the past.

By Lot’s wife not being in place and rendered useless because she looked back, perversion entered the course. I wrote in the book, “Identity Crisis” whenever we get off the course God has set for us, our course becomes perverted as in off track, and perversion enters.

Look at what her daughters said in her absence:

“Come, let us make our father drunk with wine, and we will lie with him so that we may preserve our family through our father.”

Then the next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay with my father last night; let us make him drunk with wine tonight also, and then you go in and lie with him, so that we may preserve our family through our father.””

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭19‬:‭32‬, ‭34‬ ‭AMP‬‬

They were looking to operate as preservers of the bloodline but through the sin of incest. We can look and see the results of their erroneous decision for generations.

Lesson: we have two choices, obedience or not to obey. Not obeying, costs us life. & when we’re not in place, the bloodline suffers. If the Lord has released you, run and don’t look back!

#3. Why the shortest verse in the Bible?

He emphasized it’s the 2nd shortest to direct us back to the shortest verse, Jesus Wept (John 11:35).

This was after his friend Lazarus died and his siblings were crying and upset. He wept with them but later resurrected Lazarus from the dead.

I asked the Lord, why weep when You were about to raise Lazarus up? I believe it was because the Lord did not discount their human experience, if anything He was moved by it.

Lot’s wife was said to linger which means, slow in parting of to leave, as she was behind her husband when leaving Sodom.

This was likely for many reasons, her life she knew that was wealthy was there, her children and their families and she was moving to the unknown in less than 24 hours.

Lot’s wife is really an opportunity to assess where we are lingering? What has the Lord given you to move forward on that you refuse to let go?

Many of us look back due to…fear, the unknown, we were comfortable, or things aren’t blowing up yet!

I’ll challenge us with this, what if what He instructs you to leave behind and not look back to never blows up? Or at least not the time of His instruction?

This is where confidence in the Lord’s character and voice comes. Father, although I don’t see it, I’ll choose not to lean to my understanding and trust that your vantage point is at the end.

Taking the advice of Jesus, we should Remember Lot’s Wife and not look back because it can cost us our lives.

Wisdom nugget:

Lot was really saved due to Abraham’s intercession. When Lot lingered (Genesis 19:14-17 AMP), he was saved because the Lord had mercy on him.

Some of us haven’t been consumed due to the prayers of the righteous but there are some things we need to let go.

If we’re honest, we have to focus on knowing the Lord. One of the scriptures that grips me is in Matthew 7:21-23 where these people who thought they knew God because of their gifting or being used, they mistakes for relationship and knowing the Lord intimately.

Our gifts come without repentance. I am not oblivious that one of my gifts is revelation but revelation doesn’t not automatically equate to relationship. However, just because I have been given knowledge on a particular area or matter does mean I am relational with God.

Signs of a relationship is similar to Moses (talk to the Lord face to face); Abraham (God’s friend); Enoch (walked with God & didn’t meet death); and David (deeply spiritual & transparent relationship with the Lord) who all had the below key attributes in various ways.

Key attributes are:

• Regular communion without any other purpose but to be in His presence;

• Humility & obedience…doing what the Lord said to do;

• Heart of God, they interceded and cared for His people and what the Lord cared about;

• Unwavering Faith - Abraham trusted the Lord to have a child in his old age…his Faith was in the Lord, not science, biology, or experience of others;

• Deep trust - Abraham went to an unknown land solely because God said;

• Relational - not just talking to God, let Him talk to you I.e. be quiet or silent long enough before Him. Make room for the Lord to speak.

• Worship in Spirit and Truth. David was not without sin but he was real with God. He did not make excuses for his faults & ran quickly back to the Lord’s presence after a wrong. He knew above all, having the Lord’s Spirit mattered most. He worshipped openly and aloud, we should do the same.

If you haven’t been walking intimately with the Lord, today is a great day to begin. Enoch was 65 after fathering the son who had the longest lifespan on earth. He began his close relationship with the Lord that ran so deep it countered the times he was living in and due to intimacy the Lord took him instead of experiencing death. Start now.

I shared the aforementioned because we can sometimes major in the minors. We wouldn’t have Lot’s story after his settling in Gomorrah without the relationship and intercession of his uncle Abraham. We need to zero in on the parts of this account that matters most, know the Father intimately.

Jesus says those that place their hand to the plow and look back are not fit for the Kingdom (Luke 9:62).

Diving deeper, if you’re plowing a field without complete focus, the field can get off track. I.e. we have to lose the distractions. As I studied and wrote today, the sin of slow obedience (we should move and obey with urgency when the Lord speaks (Psalm 115:60; James 1:22 (NIV)), often causes distraction. Lingering is a distraction.

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing not looking back but how? Some times the hurt, fear of the unknown, and impact of our past is very tangible.

When distractions of any kind or pride rises that makes us feel or operate we know more or better than the only living God that knows everything, we have to aggressively and intentionally put it out & force your mind & ways to align with God’s truth and will (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). Give satan a loud no (James 4:7)!

Declaration:

My life will be all that God has purposed for it. Nothing behind me is more attractive or better than what’s to come. I choose to believe God’s Word is true, my best is still to come. I let go of every regret of what could have or should have been. My story is already written by the Lord, He has made way for my human condition. Nothing that I did or did not do surprised Him. He is working in me a work that will continue until the day of Jesus Christ.

If I was off the Lord’s course. I repent (which means “to turn” away from sin) and move forward.

I would have fainted if I did not believe I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living (Psalms 27:13-14).

He’s rewriting my story now! My best is yet to come. Today, I am not looking back but up (Hebrews 12:2)!

Closing:

In this hour, the Lord wants us to make Him our priority. He is the only way to be fully healed of the past and has the best life package forward for not only you but your bloodline and posterity.

Trust that with Him the best is yet to come. Don’t look back and if you feel you’re lingering, remember Lot’s wife.