ExodusLA: Into the Wilderness

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“Embrace the Wilderness, knowing the wealth of who

you are to become will only be found in the Desert Places.”

— Alisa Hope Wagner

Unsettling NewsDeuteronomy 1:1 These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan—that is, in the Arabah—opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab. 2 (It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)

3 In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him concerning them.

It’s time to keep journeying into the Purposes and Plans of the Lord. To strike your tents and leave the mountain that has become too predictable and too comfortable.

Deuteronomy 1:6 The Lord our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Break camp and advance into the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighboring peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains, in the western foothills, in the Negev and along the coast, to the land of the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the Euphrates. 8 See, I have given you this land. Go in and take possession of the land the Lord swore he would give to your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—and to their descendants after them.”

“The Hero’s Journeyalways begins with the call. One way or another, a guide must come to say, ‘Look, you’re in Sleepy

Land. Wake. Come on a trip. There is a whole aspect of your consciousness, your being, that’s not been touched. So you’re at home here? Well,

there’s not enough of you there.’ And so it starts.”

—Joseph Campbell—

Time for Israel to apply all their preparation to a new way of

being together in a place they’d never been to before.

Learning (Moses)

Building (tabernacle)

Training (Levites)

Organizing (life together)

“You still aren’t There yet.”

“A Picture and a Preview of what God is doing in and for all of God’s creation.”

A FAITH VILLAGE

Learning to Thrive, Not Just Survive

Prayerful Reconciled Compassionate

Merciful Just CommittedM

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Needless WanderingHebrews 3:15 As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” 16 Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?

Testing & StretchingHebrews 3:17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

And so it starts.

“Embrace the Wilderness, knowing the wealth of who you are to become will only be found in the Desert Places.”