Don’t Be Deceived. Don’t Look Back.

There we were, a small group of women seated at tables that formed a rectangle. It was prayer request time, a lengthy slew of health concerns.

As the teacher readied to pray, a woman spoke up, asking for guidance regarding a decision. Should she accept an invitation for an event in which her six-year-old was most eager to attend?

I remember sitting in that stuffy room, fluorescent lights blazing overhead, stunned by the rapid-fire advice that peppered the air, in this room full of professing Christians. One woman dominated, confidently offering advice based on fresh enlightenment from secular magazines and pop psychology.

Biblically speaking, her advice was nothing short of reckless.

Brazen words; void of wisdom.

I glanced around the room. Surely someone would speak up?

As the room fell quiet, I caught the mother’s eye. My words, no matter how gently spoken, would offend at least a handful of these women–this I knew. If I plunged ahead there would be fallout.

I think we must consider what God says, I began, speaking 1 Corinthians 15:33: “Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” An affirmative RSVP to this invitation will crack open the door to your vulnerable grade-schooler, a door that will be difficult to close.

The blessing and beauty of Psalm 1 is a helpful and powerful reminder. As mothers, we are designed to be our children’s truth-tellers, shields, and guides. Remember, a young child’s spiritual roots are neither strong nor anchored.

We please God when we choose to flee the voices of the ungodly, wrapping up our little ones in godly counsel, and pointing them to decisions that honor the Lord. We must resolve to seriously pursue what God loves, modeling godly decisions for our sons and daughters who are watching and learning.

She listened and nodded and thanked me, later on.

You told me the truth, she said.

Around the table, a fair measure of verbal and nonverbal resistance fell painfully atop my shoulders.

***

According to Jesus, we must do three things to become his disciples:

Deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow him. This involves some form of suffering as we are called to take a stand for the truth. As disciples, we must be willing to follow Christ, unashamedly.

Remember Lot’s wife, who disobeyed the angel’s precise instructions? Escape for your life. Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away. (Genesis 19:17)

Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. But Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. (Genesis 19:24-26)

In the New Testament, Jesus reminds his followers of this Old Testament story:

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)

Lot’s wife looked back with a longing for the home she had fled, a longing to be back in that evil city, where wickedness and worldliness reigned. She was deceived, delighting in the pleasures of man rather than the truth of God.

Matthew Henry said it well:

“Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, that she might remain a lasting monument of God’s displeasure against apostates, who (seemingly) begin in the spirit and end in the flesh.”

And from Charles Spurgeon:

“If God would save a man, he must fetch him out from the world–no man can remain part and parcel of an ungodly world and yet be God’s elect one…When the time for separation arrived, Lot’s wife could not tear herself away from the world. She had always been in it and loved it and delighted in it…Flight without so much as looking back was demanded, but this was too much–she did look back and thus proved that she had sufficient presumption in her heart to defy God’s command and risk her all–to give a lingering love-glance at the condemned and wicked world. By that glance she perished.”

***

The treasure of our hearts will eventually be revealed. Our words and actions prove the state of our souls.

Are you giving a lingering love-glance at this wicked world? Or are you anchored in Christ?

Don’t be deceived.

Don’t look back.

Remember Lot’s wife.

“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and its collapse was great.”

(Matthew 7:24-27)