The God who listens and responds...

So I met with my friend today to discuss Scripture. It's great for accountability as well as fellowship and discussion. She brought up the passage in Genesis 19, where Lot and his family escape from Sodom.

vs. 15-16 (ESV, boldness added):

As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, "Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city." But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.

Lot lingered. He didn't leave right away. He and his family were seized by the mercy of God. Probably I'm often unaware to God seizing me by His mercy and steering me toward the way in which I should walk. It's nice to know that His mercy doesn't hinge upon our efforts. While we should strive to bring God glory through our actions and thoughts, it is refreshing to know that God is greater than us and by His power we can be picked up and carried or 'seized' when we 'linger'...

And prayer can work wonders. Yes, God is sovereign, but somehow our prayers are not in vain. In Gen. 18, Abraham conversed with God. He asks God if he would destroy the city even if there are 50 righteous...45 righteous...40 righteous...30 righteous...20 righteous...then down to TEN. Seems Abraham tried to negotiate (from a human perspective) with God. Back and forth the conversation went. But maybe His prayer was used in the plan to save Lot and his daughters.

Gen. 19:29a:

So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow [...]

Even if prayer wasn't part of the deliverance plan there, elsewhere in Genesis the power of prayer is obvious.

Gen. 20:17a says: "Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech". In Gen. 24, with the "Rebekah Retrieval", even before the servant finished praying for a woman for Isaac, sure enough, Rebekah popped up in the very way he requested. In Gen. 25, Isaac prayed for his wife because she was unable to get pregnant. "And the LORD granted his prayer" (vs. 21). God listens. Gen. 30:22: "Then God remembered Rachel, and God listened to her and opened her womb." Not sure if Rachel prayed about it, but somehow, He listened. In Gen. 21, He listened to Hagar's son Ishamael's voice (not sure if it was a technical 'prayer'...), and the angel of God asks Hagar what troubles her and says God heard the boy. Hagar is told her son will be made "into a great nation" (vs. 18). God remembered. Truly, as Hagar once said, God is "a God of seeing" (16:13).

God listens, sees, remembers, and mercifully seizes.

Awesome!