07/09/2026
WHEN FEAR MAKES YOU CREATE YOUR OWN FUTURE
Scripture reading: Genesis 19:30-38
After Lot escaped the destruction of S***m he and his two daughters ended up living in a cave in the mountains then something disturbing happened whereby the older daughter said, “our father is old and there is no man around here to give us children as is the custom all over the earth," that's in Genesis 19:31, she made a plan they would get their father drunk sleep with him and preserve their family line, the older daughter did it first then the younger daughter repeated it the following night and both became pregnant, leading to the older daughter giving birth to Moab and the younger gave birth to Ben-Ammi then from them came the Moabites and Ammonites but finally here is where we need to slow down.
STEP 1: The bible is recording this but not approving it and this is one of the most important principles when interpreting difficult passages whereby the Bible contains many accounts of people doing terrible things without presenting those actions as God's will and Genesis doesn't say God instructed Lot's daughters to do this, it doesn't praise them but it simply tells us what happened therefore description is not approval and there is something very revealing about their reasoning, they believed: "there is no man, no future and no other way,” and their fear convinced them that God had left no possibility for tomorrow and once they believed that they took control, they stopped asking, “What can God do?” they started asking, “What can we do to make sure our future survives?” and that is where fear becomes dangerous.
STEP 2: They were trying to preserve what God had already preserved whereby we need to think about what had just happened, God had rescued them from S***m for their city had been destroyed, mother was gone, possessions were gone and everything familiar had collapsed but they were alive for God had already demonstrated that He could preserve their lives yet after surviving the destruction they apparently became convinced that their future depended entirely upon them and fear can do the same thing to us, sometimes God saves us from one crisis but because we cannot see what comes next we begin making desperate decisions to secure our future we say: “If I don't do this nothing will happen, if I don't manipulate this situation, my future is finished," and suddenly we are trying to accomplish through human methods what we should have entrusted to God.
STEP 3: There's another lesson we should also learnt here that your environment can shape your thinking whereby these girls had grown up around S***m, they had lived in a culture where sexual corruption was normal, they had witnessed moral darkness and although they physically escaped S***m their thinking had been formed in that environment, and this should make every Christian examine something that you can leave a sinful environment physically while still carrying some of its patterns mentally for example in Exodus to the Israelites leaving Egypt was one thing but getting Egypt out of Israel was another and finally here leaving S***m was one thing and breaking S***m's influence was another, this is why Scripture doesn't only tell us to change our location but it tells us, "be transformed by the renewing of your mind that's Romans 12:2 whereby God doesn't merely want to bring His people out of places but He wants to transform what those places have put inside them.
STEP 4: Look at the consequences whereby their decisions produced two sons who are Moab and Ben-Ammi, these became the fathers of two nations that would later have complicated relationships with Israel so one desperate decision inside a cave eventually became part of a much larger biblical story and this is why we should never underestimate the consequences of decisions made during desperate seasons because a decision can feel temporary to you while its consequences travel much farther than you imagined.
STEP 5: And finally here we find the beauty of God's grace whereby Moab eventually produced Ruth a Moabite woman and Ruth became part of the family line of King David,, and even in Matthew 1:5 it places Ruth within the genealogy leading to Jesus Christ, think about that a story that began with moral failure but did not prevent God from writing a story of redemption later, therefore we should know that sin can create consequences but sin does not have the final word over God's redemptive purposes but listen carefully this shouldn't make sin acceptable it makes God's grace astonishing.
STEP 6: So what does Genesis 19 teaches us?
That we should never allow fear to convince us that God has run out of options because Lot's daughters thought they had to create their own future because they couldn't see one but not seeing a way forward does not mean God has no way forward,, for sometimes our greatest temptation is not simply committing a sinful act but it is believing that obedience will leave us without a future and that is when compromise begins to look reasonable, desperation begins to sound like wisdom and that is when we start saying, “I know this isn't right but what other choice do I have?” the answer is: trust God enough to believe that you don't have to sin to survive because if God preserved you through yesterday don't let fear make you believe He has abandoned you concerning tomorrow therefore Genesis 19 is not merely a disturbing story about two daughters but is a warning about what can happen when fear becomes stronger than faith and desperation begins making decisions that trust in God should have made 🙏🙏
