Are there areas in your life that hinder your growth in the things of God? Has the Word of God instructed you to remedy a specific aspect of your life, yet you sit idle, making no progress in spiritual things? If so, be prepared, for if you are a true child of God who is unmoved even though you have heard His word, He will use other means to get you to advance.

Have you ever found yourself stuck in Sodom? If you are anything like me, you have probably had the following experience—you have studied Scripture, you believe it, and you know precisely how it speaks to a situation in your life that needs to change. But when the moment arrives, when it is time for you to move, your feet remain planted. Why is our obedience not automatic? What holds us back, and how does God set us free? Lot was once in a similar situation.

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.” But he lingered. So the men [angels] 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 (Genesis 19:15-16).

The verses above are instructive. We see Lot in the final moments before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The warnings had been clear, and Lot had not doubted the truthfulness of the threats. Yet in the final moments before the destruction, as Lot is told to escape with his life, he lingers, unable to move. John Calvin says this regarding Lot’s lingering, “His tardiness is truly wonderful, since, though he was certainly persuaded that the angels did not threaten in vain, he could yet be moved by no force of words until he is dragged by their hands out of the city.”

What caused him to linger? Matthew Poole estimates that “He lingered, either through an aversion to part with all his estate, or to lose his sons-in-law; or through astonishment and distraction of mind, which made him both listless and impotent.” Whatever it was, Lot was powerless to move on his own, and this seems to be the experience of us all from time to time when the Lord, through his word, has told us to move.

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