Luke 17:28–33:

“Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot, people were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building. But on the day Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be the same on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, anyone who is on the roof with his goods in the house must not come down to take them away, and likewise the person in the field must not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.”

My focus is on the phrase, “Remember Lot’s wife,” and we know what happened with Lot’s wife.

After angels brought them out of Sodom and Gomorrah, and they were told, “Do not look back” (Genesis 19:17), it was a general instruction to everyone. But among them, one person decided that looking back was what she was going to do, for whatever reason, and she became a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). She was frozen in the past.

We are not told ahead of time, “This will be the repercussion if you look back,” but she looked back and was frozen in the past. I also want to draw attention to the words of Jesus that follow “Remember Lot’s wife”: “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.”

Before I go on in my explanation, I want to draw a parallel between this passage and the words of Paul when he said, “This one thing I do: forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, I press on toward the goal” (Philippians 3:13–14).

The warning is that the past has shining objects that want to attract us. There are so many things that happened in the past, but the challenge is actually to forget the past and press forward. The challenge is not to do a constant review of the past. The challenge is not to have our mind tied up with the past.

Remember Lot’s wife, for whom the past was behind her and she was moving forward, but she could not see anything more interesting or exciting in front of her than what was behind her.

And Jesus—“for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, disregarding its shame” (Hebrews 12:2). We need a vision of the future that is more powerful than anything that has happened in the past.

Maybe that is what happened with Lot’s wife. God wanted her to have a break from her past. There is a portion of your life that is in the past, but you need to have a break from it, according to this passage, and be willing to suffer loss in the past.

Not to try to rescue the past, not to try to revamp the past, not to constantly refocus on the past, not to constantly review the past, not to constantly have the past roaming around in our mind. Again, the past has shiny objects. The past has things that are attractive—the highs, and also the lows. Those can become what you identify yourself with and what you are attached to.

But God wants you to have your attachment to Him. That is why He says, “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it.”

So to have Christ as our life (Colossians 3:4), to have Christ as our identity, to have Christ as our rock and foundation, and not the past—not the constant reviewing of the past, not the constant itemizing of the past, not the constant elevation of the past in our mind that blocks our vision from seeing what God is doing.

Look at the angelic help, the powerful assistance that she had to leave a place marked for destruction. But she could not set that before her mind. She was not preoccupied with what God was doing and what God wanted to do. Even if you are not sure of what is going to happen, you know you are supposed to fix your mind on God. As it is written, “The righteous will live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17).

Our constant refocusing on the past is often a way of seeking the familiar. We are seeking what we are used to. God is calling us to something more. God is calling us to something deeper in Him.

Just as Abraham was called to leave his father’s house and go to a land God would show him (Genesis 12:1), with nothing clear about the future, but he did so—and, as they say, the rest is history.

So do not look back. Remember Lot’s wife.

Let that be a lesson to us. God found it important enough to send Jesus to the earth to tell us, “Remember Lot’s wife,” because we might look at that incident and not see much in it. But it is about the heart of Lot’s wife. It is about a heart consumed by the past—by things behind her. Some things are behind you that should be put behind you. Some things should be left behind. That is the call today.

Because, of what benefit is it to you to keep holding on to them? God has called you to something more in your future.

God bless you.