The God of My Choices

By Cinda Adams Gaskin
After reading about Lot’s wife in Genesis 19, it was clear to me that the reason she turned into a pillar of salt was simple—she disobeyed God. And, since it’s always easier to see someone else’s shortcomings, reading about her this time was pretty much like all the other times—except for one new twist. God seemed to be highlighting, underscoring, and putting a bull’s eye on top of my own relationship to the word obedience.

In the past I had been completely capable of letting those pricks and twinges that this word evoked in my heart pass, like a mild case of indigestion. This time, though, the Lord wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily. I couldn’t get the picture of Lot’s wife frozen as a pillar of salt out of my head. For about a week after reading the account, Lot’s wife stood before me as a timeless cautionary tale of what I was not to do when God speaks clearly to me concerning obedience.

What had made the word obedience so unsettling to me was its inherent air of dominance. I mean, really, a 21st century woman does not willingly take orders that come packaged as “musts” too easily. It’s too much like a threat, which we highly personally-developed, professional, and well-read women don’t stand for. Not one bit. Perhaps that was how Lot’s wife felt. No, she wasn’t a 21st century woman, but even in her day, would she allow herself to be told what she could or couldn’t do? Not likely. And even though I saw the similarities between my own stiff-necked disobedience and Lot’s wife, I still felt that she was somehow more disobedient than I had been—as if disobedience comes in degrees.

And, since I was keenly aware that a public admission to my Christian friends that I choked hard on the word obedience would hurt my alpha woman status, I simply kept it to myself. But, God knew my heart. And, of course, He knew that I was in desperate need of a triple bypass regarding my secret aversion to obedience.

First Bypass

The first step God led me through toward transforming this blockage in my heart was to show me how smug I had become about judging Lot’s wife. I mean, for goodness sake, why couldn’t she have simply listened to the angels and not looked back? That seemed like an easy enough request. Her choice to look back or not didn’t come close to half the things I had struggled with in obeying God over the years. Something like tithing, and I’m talking cheerful, full-on 10 percent tithing, had to be much harder than not looking back at two burning cities! And refraining from willful sins and not forgiving others were the biggies, right? All Lot’s wife had to do was to not look back. How could she have messed that one up? But, while I arrogantly measured my really “tough” struggles with obedience against what seemed like the easiest choice in the world for Lot’s wife, the Holy Spirit brought me face-to-face with His truth.

I suddenly became profoundly aware of how much God has to say about obedience in His Word. Scriptures on obedience began chiming in my mind. Specifically, the Scripture in I Samuel 15:22, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry” began repeatedly ringing, clanging, and eventually gonging within my heart.

Second Bypass

Next, the Lord led me to move beyond the painful acknowledgement of my distance from the word obedience, towards action. I considered what it would be like to actually turn the reins of my life over to Him. Could I fully obey God to the point of giving every area of my life over to Him? Well, by now my heart was tenderized enough to begin slowly yielding some of my most difficult issues to Him. And, one-by-one, I relinquished all the previous justifications and rationalizations I had used for my disobedience.

I used to believe that obedience was an Old Testament model that only radically legalistic Christians fully adhered to. But, Lot’s wife—Old Testament figure that she is—was the tool God used to bring my free-willed New Testament heart into alignment with God’s desires.

I wondered, ‘What made her look back? What was so important to her that she willfully chose that thing over doing what God said to do?’ Was she looking back at the loss of her possessions, her status, her recreational activities, and her friends? As I pondered these questions, I realized that my own concerns about losing these things were the same reasons I disobeyed God. My heart began to break as I remembered all the times I chose disobedience over honoring God because obedience would have meant giving up a prized possession, jeopardizing what I perceived as an important status, changing my recreational habits, or having my friends ridicule me about my new choice.

Ultimately, I made the choice to obey God and much to my stunning surprise I didn’t lose a thing! In fact, I gained so much from obedience that the choice to disobey Him—with all the pain, fear, and distance from God those choices had cost me—seemed utterly ridiculous.

Third Bypass

In the final analysis, what I learned was that obedience is not some Old Testament, do or die, ego-assaulting, gloom and doom concept that I previously thought it to be. Allowing God to become the God of my choices has given me peace—freedom from fear because I know that I can trust God’s choices for my life so much more than I can trust my own. Handing the reins of my life over to the Lord has given me joy—that inner ‘Hallelujah!’ that expresses my unbridled happiness of knowing that my life pleases Him. Finally, giving God full rights and the title deed to my choices has caused my journey with Him to become a wonderful adventure of sonship—actually, “daughter-ship” in my case— that has beautifully crystallized His Lordship over my life. And for that I can rejoice without even one grain of salt.