Remember Lot's wife.
Jesus is warning his followers about the danger of turning back toward what God has called them to leave. He is referencing a story from Genesis 19, where Abraham's nephew Lot and his family were fleeing the city of Sodom just before God destroyed it. God told them to run and not look back. Lot's wife disobeyed — she turned around to look — and was immediately turned into a pillar of salt. Jesus uses this haunting three-word reminder in the middle of a teaching about the end times to caution his disciples against clinging to their old lives. The brevity is intentional: he doesn't elaborate. He just says, 'Remember.'
Lord, you know what I keep turning back toward — the things I've 'left' but haven't truly let go of. Give me the courage to keep moving forward without looking over my shoulder. Free my heart from the pull of what's behind me, and fix my eyes on where you are leading me. Amen.
Three words. That's the whole verse. In the middle of a long and weighty teaching about judgment and the end of things, Jesus stops and drops this quiet, haunting line: 'Remember Lot's wife.' You don't need to know every detail of her story to feel the weight of it. She was already running. She was already free. She just looked back — maybe at her home, her friends, the life she had spent years building — and that one backward glance was the last thing she ever did. She didn't turn around and walk back. She just looked. And it cost her everything. There's something searingly honest in this warning, because God doesn't only ask us to physically leave certain things behind — He asks us not to pine for them either. You might already know what your 'Sodom' is: the relationship you keep revisiting in your mind even though it was destroying you, the version of yourself that felt easier before you started following Jesus, the bitterness you keep picking back up because it's familiar. The question isn't whether you've walked away. It's whether your heart is still turned backward. Three words. They don't need any more company than that.
What do you think Lot's wife was feeling in that moment when she looked back — and why do you think Jesus chooses her as a warning rather than offering her any sympathy?
Is there something in your past you have physically 'left' but find yourself emotionally turning back toward — a relationship, a habit, a former version of your life?
Is it always wrong to look back? How do you tell the difference between healthy remembering and the kind of dangerous backward longing Jesus is warning against here?
How might your unresolved attachment to the past affect the people closest to you — the ones who are trying to move forward with you?
What is one concrete thing you could do this week to genuinely release something from your past that you've been holding onto?
For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia.
2 Timothy 4:10
But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
Genesis 19:26
And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back , is fit for the kingdom of God.
Luke 9:62
Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.
Hebrews 10:38
But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
Hebrews 10:39