Happy Monday! We are reading the Bible chronologically this year, using the plan you can find here. Please feel free to jump in any time and share your favorite verses from the week in the comments!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… You can read the Bible a hundred times, and something new will jump out at you every time. God has that way about Him, bringing out what you need to see.
This past week, I got tired of the way we (that’s the universal we, meaning “in general”) act as Christians. I’ve been upset by our lack of willingness to stand up for Jesus, for the way we keep silent when we shouldn’t… for a whole lot of things. We forget that our voices might be small, but our God is huge, and He is the power behind our voices. Somewhere, we bought the lie that we can’t change things. I told my husband, “I’m tired of watching the world burn and doing nothing about it.”
Then, in yesterday’s Bible reading, I saw this…
Now 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 he bowed himself with his face toward the ground.
Genesis 19:1 (NKJV, italics mine)
Lot sat in the gate of the city of Sodom. This means he was an important man, someone looked up to as a leader…
So if that’s the case, why was Sodom in the state it was in? Why hadn’t Lot used his voice to change things? Why, when God promised just a chapter before to spare the city if there were even 10 righteous men found, was the city destroyed?
Because there weren’t ten righteous men.
Because Lot wasn’t doing his job.
He wasn’t speaking up. Lot had seen God at work in his own life and through Abraham. He knew who God was, had been blessed by Him, and yet… He sat in a city that was corrupt and horrible and apparently did nothing at all, even though he had the influence to do so. Want further evidence? It seems, from the narrative, he hadn’t even been a godly leader in his own family. His sons-in-law perished in Sodom. His daughters? Well, it’s pretty clear from their future actions that they were not untouched by Sodom.
I guess the question becomes, do we want to be Lot? Or do we want to be different? Are we too afraid to use our voices? Are we so wrapped up in the world around us that we fail to speak? Are we afraid we’ll be shouted down? I wonder… I wonder it a lot.
And I wonder what would happen if we stood up as Christians, opened our mouths, and trusted God to do the rest.
So, if you’re reading along, what verse spoke to you this week? How do you feel about Lot and his apparent silence? When is a time that you felt moved to speak up?
-JB
This week’s plan:
Monday–Genesis 22-24
Tuesday–Genesis 25-26
Wednesday–Genesis 27-29
Thursday–Genesis 30-31
Friday–Genesis 32-34
Saturday–Genesis 35-37
Sunday–Genesis 38-40
Amen Jodie. I totally agree. Sometimes I think we get too comfortable in our lives here on Earth. Myself included. But God… He is waking me from sleep, getting me out of my comfort zone, and looking at the current state of this world. Including the work we as Christians still need to do to sound the trumpet. I wonder if things would have different for Sodom if Lot would have stopped worrying about fitting in and sounded his trumpet. My opinion, and my opinion only, is yes. We too can make a difference if we allow God to work through us. Thanks for letting God speak through you, Jodie.
I think you put that well… “waking from sleep.” I believe that is happening to a lot of Christians today.