Remember Lot’s Wife

I can say I have been through quite a rough emotion mixture of doubts and insecure feelings for the past week. I accidentally found out that the earlier challenges which been through still haunting in our life… dishonesty and unkept promise…

I know that today is a Sabbath and is the day I should think of Jesus and Heavenly Father, and should not think of my own feelings upon this day. I just can’t help…

Eternal Family is my dream. There was once I felt that I have actually make it, in the grace and the mercies of the Lord. The love and the covenants that made in the temple is so precious to me.

Deep down I do really hope for may be an equally love which I have give and devoted all these years, but love does not work in this way…

The topic surrounded today during the Sacrament Meeting were Temple, Family History Works and Faith. Especially I like the talk by Sister Saffron son, Brother Kelvin.

He talked about his testimony of the gospel, his service as missionary, his studies in BYU Hawaii and his lovely wife and marriage challenges.

I could feel Sister Saffron happiness and the joy she have, and everyone spirit had been lifted up because of Brother Kelvin’s talk.

Suddenly I felt that there are bigger works for me to do, instead of dwelling in my own challenges: It is my responsibility to rear this two little precious that I have – Issac and Annabelle in love and righteousness, teach them to love and serve one another, observe the commandments of God, and be law-abiding citizen and contributing to the society. This is the work that the Lord entrusted me to do.

Some how in my heart, I still feel the pain inside… Tonight only 3 of us are in the house. It was a last minute decision that He left this evening to outstation due to work.

Still…need to thank to the Lord as he arrived at his destination safely after 3.5 hour drive from here. We had our family night prayer together through the phone during night time before we went to bed.

I can’t remember how I came to this talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland during January 2009 BYU Devotional, “Remember Lot’s Wife”: Faith Is for the Future. It is a talk address to the young adults in the church.

“… I do want to talk to you about the past and the future, not so much in terms of New Year’s commitments per se, but more with an eye toward any time of transition and change in your lives—and those moments come virtually every day of our lives.”

“As a scriptural theme for this discussion... It is Luke 17:32, where the Savior cautions, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

“In the time we have this morning, I am not going to talk to you about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor of the comparison the Lord Himself has made to those days and our own time. I am not even going to talk about obedience and disobedience. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about looking back and looking ahead.”

“One of the purposes of history is to teach us the lessons of life… So, if history is this important—and it surely is—what did Lot’s wife do that was so wrong?… Apparently what was wrong with Lot’s wife was that she wasn’t just looking back; in her heart she wanted to go back. It would appear that even before they were past the city limits, she was already missing what Sodom and Gomorrah had offered her.”

“It is possible that Lot’s wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord for what He was asking her to leave behind... So it isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future. That, apparently, was at least part of her sin.”

“So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind.”

“To yearn to go back to a world that cannot be lived in now; to be perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal views of the future; to miss the here-and-now-and-tomorrow because we are so trapped in the there-and-then-and-yesterday—these are some of the sins”

“One of my favorite books of the New Testament is Paul’s too-seldom-read letter to the Philippians. After reviewing the very privileged and rewarding life of his early years—his birthright, his education, his standing in the Jewish community—Paul says that all of that was nothing (“dung” he calls it) compared to his conversion to Christianity. He says, and I paraphrase: “I have stopped rhapsodizing about ‘the good old days’ and now eagerly look toward the future ‘that I may apprehend that for which Christ apprehended me.’” Then comes this verse:

This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,

I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. [Philippians 3:13–14]

No Lot’s wife here. No looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah here. Paul knows it is out there in the future, up ahead wherever heaven is taking us where we will win “the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

“At this point, let me pause and add a lesson that applies both in your own life and also in the lives of others. There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life—either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ. To be tied to earlier mistakes—our own or other people’s—is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist.”

“That happens in marriages, too, and in other relationships we have. I can’t tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.”

“Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, “Hey! Do you remember this?” Splat!”

“Well, guess what? That is probably going to result in some ugly morsel being dug up out of your landfill with the reply, “Yeah, I remember it. Do you remember this?” Splat.”

“And soon enough everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy and hurt, when what God, our Father in Heaven, pleads for is cleanliness and kindness and happiness and healing.”

“Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is worse than Miniver Cheevy, and in some ways worse than Lot’s wife, because at least there he and she were only destroying themselves. In these cases of marriage and family and wards and apartments and neighborhoods, we can end up destroying so many, many others.”

“Perhaps at this beginning of a new year there is no greater requirement for us than to do as the Lord Himself said He does: “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42).”

“The proviso, of course, is that repentance has to be sincere, but when it is and when honest effort is being made to progress, we are guilty of the greater sin if we keep remembering and recalling and rebashing someone with their earlier mistakes—and that “someone” might be ourselves. We can be so hard on ourselves, often much more so than with others!”

“Now, like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies of the Book of Mormon, bury your weapons of war, and leave them buried. Forgive, and do that which is harder than to forgive: Forget. And when it comes to mind again, forget it again.”

“You can remember just enough to avoid repeating the mistake, but then put the rest of it all on the dung heap Paul spoke of to those Philippians. Dismiss the destructive and keep dismissing it until the beauty of the Atonement of Christ has revealed to you your bright future and the bright future of your family and your friends and your neighbors. God doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. That is the thing Lot’s wife didn’t get—and neither did Laman and Lemuel and a host of others in the scriptures.”

“This is an important matter to consider at the start of a new year—and every day ought to be the start of a new year and a new life. Such is the wonder of faith and repentance and the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

“…I knew something of what you were feeling. Some of you were having thoughts such as these: Is there any future for me? What does a new year or a new semester or a new major or a new romance hold for me? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?”

“To all such of every generation, I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come.”

“…Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever…”

“Remember Lot’s Wife”: Faith Is for the Future

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

BYU Devotional January 2009

I was so overwhelmed with the messages in this talk.

May be I should not hurting myself and others over and over again. Have faith in Jesus Christ and know that He has great things install for me and my family, which ever the outcome is going to be.

How little faith I have and I have to work hard on it… I especially love the encouragement which Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said in his closing:

“Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there.”

“Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever…”

Let’s live my life to see it!