Created 3/3/2009
Why do we settle for second best, when we can have God’s best in our lives? In Genesis we see a vivid picture of this age old phenomenon played out.
Genesis 19:17 records God’s wishes for Lot and his family: “neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed”. But like many of us Lot wanted something different, and he asks for it. In verses 19 and 20 we see Lot requesting to go elsewhere: “I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die: Behold now, this city is near to flee unto, and it is a little one: Oh. let me escape thither, (is it not a little one?)”. Notice Lot was fearful to go to the mountain and his justification that the city is just a “little one”. How often we justify things as a little lie, a little piece of chocolate, and the like.
Now comes the exciting part in the first part of verse 30 that reads “And Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwel in the mountain, and his two daughters with him; for he feared to dwell in Zoar.” Did you catch what happened? Lot left the “little” city he went to because he was fearful, only to go where God had told him to go in the first place…the mountain (the place that Lot originally feared to go). Why do we settle for God’s second best when God tells us something only to learn later how much better it would have been to just obeyed in the first place? Lot would have saved himself much fear, had he only followed God instead of settling for second best (which Lot originally thought was the best).
