Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Remember Lot’s Wife
Five minutes can change the way you face the day. We start with a surprising command—“remember Lot’s wife”—and uncover why the pull to look back can quietly derail growth, trust, and courage. Instead of chasing “back to normal,” we open Scripture and real life to show how faith looks forward: trusting God’s better future, even when the past feels safer and more familiar.
We get practical with four steps that help you move from a what if mindset to an even if faith. You’ll hear why even if dismantles fear, how to walk as a new creation with confidence, and what it looks like to choose forward habits that match a forward hope. Along the way, you’ll find language you can use tomorrow morning, when the pull of yesterday shows up again. This short, focused episode offers clarity, courage, and a path to move ahead without flinching.
Originally Broadcast July 21, 2021
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right. I am Danny Mack, and I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back and relax for the next five minutes as I help you start your day by starting right. I'm going to start today by giving you a very quick Bible quiz, okay? Now, most of you know what the shortest verse of the Bible is. It's found in John 11, 35, and it simply says Jesus wept. But do you know what the second shortest verse in the Bible is? It's found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17, and verse 32. And it simply says this remember Lot's wife. That's an interesting verse. You know, there's over 147 different women named in the Bible. And yet there is only one that Jesus said to remember. And that one was Lot's wife. Now she didn't do anything great. In fact, she did a couple things wrong. But Jesus still said that we need to remember her. So let's take a quick look and find out what it was she actually did. We find the story of Lot's wife back in Genesis chapter 19. But before we get there, let me just set the scene for you. God was really upset with Sodom and Gomorrah. They were well known for their unrighteousness and their rebellion against God. And when Lot failed to find even one person who was righteous, God had no choice but to carry out his judgment on them. We pick up the story in verse fifteen, where the angels came to tell Lot it was time to get going. At dawn the next morning the angels became insistent. Hurry, they said to Lot, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, get out right now, or you will be swept away in the destruction of the city. So Lot gathered up his family and they left, with specific instructions that the angel gave them in verse seventeen. The angel said, Run for your lives, and don't look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Down in verse twenty three, Lot reached the village just as the sun was rising over the horizon. Then the Lord rained down fire and burning sulfur from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. He utterly destroyed them both along with other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every bit of vegetation. But Lot's wife looked back as she was following behind him, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Lot's wife looked back even though she was warned not to, because there were things back in Sodom and Gomorrah that she longed for, that she was afraid of leaving, that she didn't want to leave behind. She wanted to stay and have those things that were hers, her home, her garden, everything that was there that was hers. She wasn't ready to leave it. And when she looked back, it meant that she was not willing to believe that God's best for her was what was ahead. The very best was for her to believe him and to follow him and to leave behind those things which needed to be left behind. We've often heard the phrase over the last while, I can't wait to get back to normal. We keep thinking about the way things were and wanting to go back there. But we need to understand that we need to keep moving forward, that what God has ahead for us is much better than what was behind. We don't need our lives to be like they were before the pandemic or before anything else. If we are following what God has for us, he will always lead us to something greater and something better. And the warning that Jesus gave to the people was remember Lot's wife. Don't let yourself keep looking back, but begin to embrace what I have for you in the future. Isaiah 43, verses 18 and 19. Forget all of that. It is nothing compared to what I am going to do, for I am about to do something new. God keeps placing new in front of us. There's new experiences with him, there's new growth with him. There are new things that he wants to do in our lives and through our lives. So let me give you a few things this morning that will help you to experience the new that God has for you. First of all, make what Jesus has done for you bigger than what anyone did to you. Know that Christ has worked in your life to make you a brand new creation. You are not what you were, you are brand new. Don't let that work of Christ be conflicted with what someone did to you in the past, because that is behind you. Make sure that you're walking in faith with who you are, that you are comfortable in who you are as this new creation in Christ. You are who God says you are, not what anyone else says that you are. And here's an important one. We need to move from a what if faith to a even if faith. You see, when you get to the even if faith, the enemy and all the things he has done to you loses all of its power. You can move on when you know that even if things go wrong, God is still there with you. The whole message of the gospel really is even if, even if we die, we are still alive, only better. And lastly, always look ahead for the things that God has for you and wants to do in you and through your life. God has given to you so much more than what you are experiencing right now. I promise you, God has good things ahead for you, exciting things, things where you will see his power working in you, and you will be able to bless people as God blesses you. So move ahead, my friends, look ahead, and remember Lot's wife. Don't look back. Have a great day, my friends. We'll talk again tomorrow. Thank you for listening today. And I invite you to join me Monday to Friday right here on Starting Right with Danny Mack.
