"Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere..."

Genesis 19:17 and Luke 17:32   Patricia Ann, Originally posted Monday, June 14, 2021

Today, I am standing once again in awe of my Lord! 

Last week, I heard Him say He would send someone with the answer that I had been seeking for so long.

I pondered that all week, as my thinking cleared to a level I hadn't been in for a while.  

There had been so much trauma in my life, sometimes coming from every direction.  One thing after another for several years and I felt like I had lost hope so many times.

Before sending my answer, the Lord put before me a deliverance from the effects of the years of trauma.  He is amazing... how He uses His vessels filled with His power and glory to speak into our lives at just the right moment.  It was in a broadcast on Facebook that I typed in the comments that I needed deliverance for physical and emotional trauma.  I had asked in other places before, but this time was different.  In His timing and in His power working through this woman of God, that spoke freedom to me that day.  I kept silent, as I began to feel different.  I began to feel better. My mind cleared more each day and I believe I even physically look better, too. 

Then, Saturday night came and I got the message that the Lord told me was coming.   It was short and simple , yet it caught my attention in a huge way and I knew this was the answer. Pastor Billy Burke said this in the beginning of his service online.  

"So many people don't receive their healing because of pain and emotional trauma from things that happened in the past that they just can't seem to let go of."  He then said, "Don't be like Lot's wife."  

That was it! That was my answer from God!  He told me it was coming. I cried.  I am till crying, as I write this because the truth is so simple yet so complex.  If I hadn't heard God tell me to expect the message, I might have missed it.  If I hadn't asked for deliverance from the trauma in the days before, I might have missed it.  But God knows!  He simply knows when and how His plans for me are going to come together for the greater Glory of His Kingdom.  

I think about the number of times I have said to people, "Don't be like Lot's wife.  Don't look back.  Forward is were you are going." 

I lived by those words.  Then, when I got remarried almost seven years ago, I thought that I knew the plan for the rest of my life.

I thought that together we would minister. It was always my heart that I have ministry partner,  but it didn't happen as I thought. 

It didn't happen at all.  

And in all the years that I sought an answer for why my life turned upside down , the very words I had spoken so many times to others were my answer, too.  "Don't be like Lot's wife."

With each passing year of my marriage, living with emotional abuse that just kept getting more severe, I was drawn into what I can only call a whirlpool of negativity and sorrow.  Eventually, all I could see was pain.  All I felt was physical and emotional pain.  I tried so hard to give to my husband everything that he needed, that I lost who I was.  My once happy, joyful self was overcome with "looking back" to those first weeks of happily married when he said the sweetest things to me and treated me more special than I had ever been treated. 

I was genuinely happy.  I had hopes and a dream for our future together, but when things began to change within six months of getting married, I made every excuse for why that man I loved would be treating me cruelly and yelling at me, slowly stealing my identity, making me feel so faulty and unworthy of his love. The hardest times were when he told me he had never been this way to anyone except to me. That hurt me so deeply each time. So much more was said, that I cannot even possibly write here.  

But, in an effort to survive and continue to try to have a marriage, I looked back to those first weeks, the times I felt the happiest. However,  in looking back, I just got further lost and when I would try to talk with him about the good times, he would tell me that he didn't remember them. I just couldn't understand that.  How? Why? How could those happy days have only been felt by me?  Had I been completely duped?  Maybe, but does it really matter now?  I don't think so.  I cannot look back any longer.  I am not going to be like Lot's wife. 

In disobedience to the Lord, Lot's wife stopped to look back at where she had been... a place that was in the midst of chaos and destruction. 

Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt because she turned and looked back. She and Lot and their family were being escorted safely out of Sodom and Gomorrah.  (read the story of Lot's wife here in (Genesis 19 and Luke 17).

 God created His people to be salt, to add flavor to life with His word, His truth and His love.  

It is God who created me. It is God who called me into ministry.  I did not call myself. I heard my Lord call me and I answered Him. 

Many may judge me for my testimony of emotional abuse, but unless someone has lived it, they really have no clue or idea of the torment and pain that emotional or physical abuse does to a person's heart and soul. Too often, our spirits are broken and we feel we are left for dead by the very person who broke us.  It seems that nobody else notices or wants to get involved, either.

All behind closed doors, abuse happens and people hide it for the guilt and shame they feel that their friends, or family and society will put on them. 

Today, I stand in awe of my Lord, for bringing me through to this end. He has brought me truth to set me free and I am sharing that same truth, so that others in similar situations can also receive the freedom that God intends for His children. 

Just as He sent people to help me, I am here to help you through my testimony of His goodness and love.  He loves us so much that He hears our cry and He sends just the right people at the right time (His timing) to rescue us.  

In that I can and will always say, "Thank you my Lord.  I hear you.  I am not Like Lot's wife.

I will not look back again.  Forward is where I am going."

My prayer for today is that for anyone who is in an abusive situation...seek the Lord, cry out to Himself and He will hear and answer your cry.  He is the One who loves us the Most. We are His beloved first,  and then in the right place and the right time, if we are to be married, He will provide our perfect one to love us here on this earth.  

And we know...There is no abuse in love.

Love and Blessings to all in Jesus precious Name, Amen  

Luke17:32 Remember Lot's wife. 33 Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.

Genesis 19

God rescues Lot

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the earth 2 and said, “My lords, please turn aside to your servant's house and spend the night and wash your feet. Then you may rise up early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the town square.” 3 But he pressed them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house. And he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread, and they ate.

4 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. 5 And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” 6 Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, 7 and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. 8 Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” 9 But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down. 10 But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. 11 And they struck with blindness the men who were at the entrance of the house, both small and great, so that they wore themselves out groping for the door.

12 Then the men said to Lot, “Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place. 13 For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it.” 14 So Lot went out and said to his sons-in-law, who were to marry his daughters, “Up! Get out of this place, for the Lord is about to destroy the city.” But he seemed to his sons-in-law to be jesting.

15 As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.” 16 But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. 17 And as they brought them out, one said, “Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.” 18 And Lot said to them, “Oh, no, my lords. 19 Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight, and you have shown me great kindness in saving my life. But I cannot escape to the hills, lest the disaster overtake me and I die. 20 Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there—is it not a little one?—and my life will be saved!” 21 He said to him, “Behold, I grant you this favor also, that I will not overthrow the city of which you have spoken. 22 Escape there quickly, for I can do nothing till you arrive there.” Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar.[a]

God Destroys Sodom

23 The sun had risen on the earth when Lot came to Zoar. 24 Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. 25 And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. 26 But Lot's wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

27 And Abraham went early in the morning to the place where he had stood before the Lord. 28 And he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land of the valley, and he looked and, behold, the smoke of the land went up like the smoke of a furnace.

29 So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow when he overthrew the cities in which Lot had lived.

Lot and His Daughters

30 Now Lot went up out of Zoar and lived in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to live in Zoar. So he lived in a cave with his two daughters. 31 And the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth. 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.” 33 So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

34 The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.” 35 So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. 36 Thus both the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father. 37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab.[b] He is the father of the Moabites to this day. 38 The younger also bore a son and called his name Ben-ammi.[c] He is the father of the Ammonites to this day.