Conia [00:00:07]:
Okay, it’s my turn again. Yay. And I am excited, really, about this. I’m always excited. I don’t even know why I say that, because you can just assume that if I’m here, I’m excited. So I’m excited is redundant, really, at this point, but I am excited and thrilled about sharing what I’m going to share today. If you have, if you follow me on social media or if you follow Merge, you’ll see that I am in this season of rereading the Bible again, really slowing down. And anytime I come upon a thought, anytime I come upon a quote question, I’m slowing down and I’m asking the question and I’m doing the research because I want to know deeply what the writer intends.
Conia [00:01:07]:
One of them was about donkeys, white donkeys. And did you know? And we’ll talk about this at some other point. White donkeys symbolize peace. Kings rode mules and donkeys. They did not ride horses. Horses. Horses were symbols of war. So when Jesus comes in on a donkey, on a mule, that is actually what the kings rode on because it was a symbol of peace.
Conia [00:01:36]:
So the more, you know, one of the things that I was really interested in as I’m reading about the whiny Israelites, and the whiny Israelites are really a recurring theme my life, I was reading through several years ago, and back in the Old Testament, and the Israelites come out of Egypt and the Red Sea is parted, and they come out of Egypt and they have all the spoils that the Egyptians have given them, and the Red Sea parts for them, and it’s a beautiful thing. And then all of a sudden they’re whining again. And then God gives them manna and he gives them all sorts of things, and they’re whining again, and their shoes don’t wear out, and they make it through all the things that they need to make through. And then they’re whining again, and I’m like, oh, my gosh, these people are whiny. And at that point, God had challenged me to look back at my own journaling. And what I discovered to my chagrin, is that I was a whiny Israelite. And oh my gosh. And I think we all are whiny Israelites in many cases of our lives, but we always come back around.
Conia [00:02:48]:
God is always there, and he is always providing for us. So that was a few years back. This time I was thinking about the idea of coming out of Egypt, spending time in the wilderness, and then entering Into Canaan. And I was curious about, are there multiple Exoduses? Exit I. Do we exit? I. I don’t know. Or exoduses in our lifetime? Do we really come out of more than one thing and enter into this promised land? And what I’ve discovered is that, yes, we have different types of exodus in our lives, in the different areas of our life. There might be an exodus when it comes to relationships.
Conia [00:03:37]:
There might be an exodus when it comes to your professional life. There might be an exodus when it comes to your family life or your friends. So there’s many kinds of exodus depending on the type of, or the part of your life that you’re talking about. And we do, and we enter into this wilderness and then we go into a Canaan. And what I really want to talk about today is kind of how that applies. What is our. What are our Egypts? What are they biblically, in this case, the actual Egyptian and then the symbolic Egypt. Everything that every writer in the, in the Bible as directed by the Holy Spirit.
Conia [00:04:20]:
Because everything, all these writers, the writers, the Holy Spirit, right. God uses us in many ways. He used these writers, the Holy Spirit writing through them. God uses us. Us speaking with the Holy Spirit, speaking through, through us. But he uses everything that they say in a very practical sense, but also in a very symbolic sense. And so nothing in the Bible is meant for just one thing. And it’s wild the number of things that I’m coming across that have multiple, multiple symbolic, biblical theological meanings to them.
Conia [00:05:03]:
And the Bible is just so rich. And I’m sure that when I read it again, I’ll come across something different that I missed the last time. It’s kind of like when you watch that favorite movie that you’ve watched a hundred times and then you see, you know, the cameo or you see the Easter egg in that movie that you didn’t see the first 50 times that you watched it. The Bible is deep. And when we keep going over and over the scripture, God keeps giving us brand new, lovely things to discover. So the scripture is never old news. It is always good news. And it’s always new every time you read it.
Conia [00:05:44]:
Because you are different every time you read the scripture. So I’ve digressed a little bit. So let’s get back into From Egypt to Canaan. And I really did want to know if there were multiple times in our lives when we move from Egypt to Canaan. The Exodus story isn’t just Israel’s story. Nothing in the Bible is just about those people at that place at that time. It’s all about you. Everything in the Old Testament points to Christ and points to the New Testament.
Conia [00:06:24]:
Everything in the New Testament points back to the Old Testament. But all of it, all of it is what God wants to convey to you. It’s all about you. God is all about you. And that is so exciting. So. But in our own lives, it’s an ongoing story of transformation. We are constantly being transformed, be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Conia [00:06:53]:
We are constantly learning new things. We’re constantly growing. And we’ve talked about this before in that we never stop growing. The minute you stop learning, you start dying. And even when we get past this life, there’s more for us to learn. I was prompted the other day to ask somebody, do you control galaxies yet? And they looked at me like I’d grown a third head. And they were like, well, no, I don’t control galaxies. I’m like, you will.
Conia [00:07:26]:
You will. There’s more. God is ever expanding. And when we look at it that way, we are ever expanding, we are ever growing, we are ever learning. Pastor David at one point told God that he wanted to know everything that God knows. And God challenged him on it and said, david, you’ll know. Never know everything I know because I am ever expanding. God’s not complete.
Conia [00:07:51]:
He’s ever expanding. We’re not complete. Somebody said the other day that when we were younger, the scientists kind of thought that there were probably billions of galaxies. Now they think that there’s trillions of galaxies. And it may not be. I don’t know this for sure. It may not be that there were trillions of galaxies. When they said it was billions, it might have been billions, but God’s ever expanding.
Conia [00:08:24]:
So maybe it’s trillions. Now we won’t know the sign of eternity. Transformation. We’re constantly being transformed. God is constantly moving from one thing to another. You’re constantly moving from one thing to another because you are created in his image. Image. So let’s move on.
Conia [00:08:47]:
Let’s get back to this idea. From Egypt to Canaan. And you know, it’s entirely possible that I may not get through this in all in one session here. So, you know, bear with me. You ready? All right. Egypt, in this case, the symbol of Egypt. It symbolizes the core idea that any life season that you’re in, that’s ruled by human effort, fear, or self reliance rather than divine trust, is an Egypt season. When you’re trying to do it on your own, when you’re in toil, when you’re trying to make it happen.
Conia [00:09:29]:
That’s kind of your Egypt season of life. And we all go through them, right? So spiritually, Egypt is going to represent living by your own effort rather than trusting in God, divinity, being bound by systems of control and fear and self reliance. I do myself, I do myself. I’m going to make it work. I’m going to make it happen. Even this morning as I am going about my day and getting ready and doing things and something just kind of felt a little off. And God’s like, you haven’t come to see me yet. Oh yeah, yeah, I’ll do that.
Conia [00:10:13]:
But this other thing over here, this feels off too. So I think maybe I’ll go, you know, fix that first and then I’ll feel a little better. God’s like, but you haven’t come to see me yet. Oh, okay, I got you, Lord. Because I hadn’t come to see him yet. And he has those answers. And, and even though this other thing over here was still off, when I was done coming to see him, I was at peace. It’s going after what God says is off instead of what I can perceive as being off.
Conia [00:10:46]:
Being bound by systems of control, fear, self reliance. The place where provision depends on toil. We are not meant to toil. If you find yourself toiling, you have found your little hind parts. In Egypt, Deuteronomy 11:10 talks about they had to irrigate by foot. That’s some toil. Lugging water is toil. And if you are lugging water, literally or figuratively in your life, you are in a place of toil.
Conia [00:11:26]:
So any season where you’re sustaining yourself instead of resting in God, I was going to go sustain myself. I was going to go fix my, my angst because this thing over here was out of place instead of coming right back to God. Any place that you’re doing that, any place that you’re chained to old habits, old relationships, things that are supposed to pass, we can talk about that for just a minute. Old relationships. I struggled with this for many, many moons. And there’s still times when I struggle with it. There’s some relationships that we are not meant to maintain for a human lifetime. There are people that God brings into our lives for a season and we are to enjoy them for that season and then joyfully let them go and let them move on.
Conia [00:12:25]:
There’s things that we learn in this season. It’s kind of like, well, my favorite biology teacher in High School, Mr. Henry. Love Mr. Henry. He’s wonderful. But he was for that season in AP Biology. And we don’t hold on to the Mr.
Conia [00:12:44]:
Hembries in our life for a lifetime. He has other students that he is supposed to speak into, and he has other things that he was supposed to do, and I had other things that I was supposed to learn. So if I had held on to Mr. Hembry for longer than I should have, it would have been detrimental to me and detrimental to him. So it’s not a bad thing necessarily, when we move on. But our lines of demarcation aren’t as clear about people in our regular lives as they are about coaches or teachers in our life, where we reach a conclusion that has already been laid out beforehand. We don’t lay out our conclusions for our relationships at the beginning of a relationship, normally. So just using that as an example, there are people and there are relationships that do come to a conclusion here in the earth, and that’s okay.
Conia [00:13:40]:
And being okay with that and walking into your next thing rather than holding on to the current thing is a good thing in many cases. So it drains the life out of you. And so those relationships, familiar bondage, it always kind of feels familiar, wonderful and familiar, but it’s not necessarily good for you. It keeps your mindset small. And your mindset needs to be ever expanding. When we feed on what we’re given, it’s familiar, but it’s limited. They talk in Egypt about the leeks and the onions that they had in Egypt, and that’s limited. And getting comfortable with being small limits what God can do in your life.
Conia [00:14:33]:
And it actually limits your heavenly reward because you’ve got more to do. So there you go. In Exodus 1:11. I’m sorry, in Exodus 1:11, 14, it says they made their lives bitter with hard labor. And then in Deuteronomy 11:10 is what I was talking about, they irrigated by foot, these big, huge crops. But John 8:36, if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed. God sets you free. Remember, Old Testament points to the New Testament.
Conia [00:15:08]:
So John 8:36 is relevant here. Egypt looks productive. They’re doing things. They’re making it happen. They’re building roads, they’re building buildings. They’re building irrigation. They’re. They’re making stuff happen.
Conia [00:15:23]:
And it looks productive, but it’s still draining on their life. And you can be busy and yet not be doing what God’s called you to do. And therefore your life feels barren. That captivity can be comfortable. We talk about the devil, you know, we talk about being able to count on what somebody is going to do or somebody is going to say, even if it’s negative. When we do relationship coaching, often if one person has been saying for 20 years, you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong. And then that person turns the other one turns around and does it right. They don’t know what to do with it.
Conia [00:16:06]:
They know how to behave in a time of conflict. They know how to behave when they can predict what that person’s going to say or what that person’s going to do, even if it’s negative. And then if that person makes a change now, they don’t know how to respond. And so it puts you a little off kilter. So sometimes that comfort, that place of comfort, even though it’s not great, you know what to do. And so you stay there because you know how to function. And even if you’re brought into something wonderful, sometimes you just don’t know how to function. But you just turn to God.
Conia [00:16:44]:
He’ll tell you deliverance is going to begin with recognition. Coming out of Egypt means you need to recognize the bondage that you’re in. Recognize the toil, recognize the angst, recognize that feeling of tightness that’s limiting you. Recognize the bondage. You got to start there. It’s kind of like they say in addiction. The first thing. The first thing you have to know is you have to admit that you have a problem.
Conia [00:17:23]:
And that’s what we’re doing here. So God first opens our eyes before he parts the Red Sea. You have to be able to see it first. And it’s your spiritual eyes that he’s opening here. Your spiritual eyes have to be able to see it before God will manifest what needs to be done. You have to see it. You have to see your freedom. You have to see that thing that God has placed in your heart, in your hands.
Conia [00:17:58]:
You’ve got to visualize it. It’s right here. I have it. You have to see it first. So you want to look in your life and see, where am I toiling to irrigate, in this case in Deuteronomy, by foot. If you move towards the water and Jesus is the water, you don’t have to irrigate by foot anymore. Get closer to where the water is and what leeks or onions are keeping you tied to the familiar things that you think are good, and they may be, but what are they keeping you from? Questions to ask today. So your freedom is going to start when you stop striving for your own provision and allow the Creator of the universe and your divine influence to actually provide for you.
Conia [00:18:58]:
Okay, so the Egyptians, they’re like they’re in bondage. This is bad, this is not good. And God says, I’m going to deliver you. And they say okay, how? And then okay. And then they accept it. And all of a sudden now they’re in the wilderness. Why couldn’t they just go from Egypt to Canaan? And it was an 11 day journey. But God initially he took them out for longer than the 11 days.
Conia [00:19:28]:
It wasn’t supposed to take 40 years, but it was supposed to take longer than the 11 days because he needed to prepare them. So it did take that initial before they get up to the borders, before they get to the Jordan, before they send the spies in was a longer period of time and there was conflict that they had to engage in. But God needed to show them that he could be trusted. So it was an 11 day journey that that is true. He did not plan for it to take 11 days, but he certainly did not initially want them to take 40 years to get there. So keep that in mind. So the wilderness is a place of testing and it’s the place where you are transformed. This idea of going from Egypt to Canaan is enduring a transition, a transformation.
Conia [00:20:17]:
And the wilderness is where the transformation within you takes place. We talk about our lovely friend Bob Bodine in his book Two Chairs and he talks about wilderness time. We all need wilderness time. We talk about wilderness time with your planning and your reflection for every part of your life. And that you need wilderness time on a weekly, on a monthly, on a quarterly and on a yearly basis. You need that wilderness time to pull back and to reflect. Mark Batterson talks about a change of place. A change of pace equals a change in perspective.
Conia [00:20:59]:
God takes us out into the wilderness to change our perspective and our outlook. It is very difficult to gain a 40,000 foot view when you are down on the ground. If God is urging you into the wilderness, accept that wilderness time. Because that is often the time when it is a catalyst. It’s a shot put from here to get you way over to where he wants you to go in a quick amount of time. If he’s encouraging you to go for some wilderness time, he’s also telling you I’m about to advance you rapidly. Keep that in mind. The wilderness is the in between where God shifts us from self sufficiency and you’re not going to like this part to daily dependence.
Conia [00:21:56]:
You know, there’s times in our lives where we’re pre funded. There’s times in our lives when God has already given us all the provision that we need and it looks like it’s just up from here. And there’s times in our lives where we’re like toiling to scrape by and make $5 to, you know, get the next meal. But there’s times when we are supposed to be looking to God for daily provision. Give us this day our daily bread. So between Egypt and Canaan lies the wilderness. That long in between space where your faith matures. It is who you become in the wilderness.
Conia [00:22:51]:
Now remember I said it could have been an 11 day journey. God needed them to become more because they’d been slaves for 400 years. He needed them to become more in the process of getting into the promised land so that they could be more when they got there. You can’t short circuit that journey. And I shared this with some people this past week. Corrie 10. Boom. And if you haven’t read the Hiding Place, you need to read the Hiding Place.
Conia [00:23:27]:
That book when I was 10, changed my outlook on everything that God does for us. And. And it talks about. She was a watchmaker. She was a spinster. That’s what they called him then. She was a single lady in middle age and she and her sister were both single ladies in middle age. And Corey was a watchmaker.
Conia [00:23:51]:
Her father was a watchmaker. They lived in a lovely little home and they had their watch shop in the front of their home. And then she went through the horrific experience concentration camp, of losing the vast majority of her family and enduring horror. Absolute horror. But during that time, God used it and he used her sister to speak into her life and talking about that there’s joy no matter what the circumstances that we’re in. He used both of them to talk about Jesus to these Jews in this concentration camp and to share the good news of Jesus even though they were in the worst imaginable possible conditions and being tortured. He used all of that and she got out. She was released quite by accident.
Conia [00:24:48]:
Ha ha ha. There’s no accidents when it comes to God and what he’s working on. And she tries to go back to the watch shop. She wants to resume her life. What she knows, the things that she knows and she can’t. There’s too much now within her that God has done in her life through the horror of the concentration camp. And she can no longer function as a mirror in her mind. Watchmaker.
Conia [00:25:27]:
She is now compelled to go and tell the good news to everyone because of what she went through in that concentration camp. And there are millions of people who owe their salvation to Corrie Ten Boom and her story. Because she could no longer be a watchmaker after everything that God had changed and transformed in her. It’s a beautiful story, and if you haven’t read it, you need to go read it. If you’ve read it before, read it again so you’re no longer the same person. When God’s done with you in the wilderness, it is the time of transformation. God’s going to strip away your old dependencies. He’s going to say, listen, that might have worked for then, but what.
Conia [00:26:22]:
And we tell this in business a lot. What got you here won’t get you there. It’s not going to take you where I need you to go. And there’s been times in my own life where, whether it’s been businesses or friendships or relationships, and God said, I could not take you where I needed you to go had you remained where you were. I have more that I need for you to do. And you could not remain in that place. And so I’m taking you somewhere new. And there’s challenge in the taking you somewhere new.
Conia [00:27:04]:
It sounds great when you first start. It sounds great when you’re escaping Egyptian persecution to go. And it sounds great when you’ve just crossed the Red Sea and you’re cheering for joy. But then you find yourself in the wilderness and you don’t know anybody and you don’t know how to do this, and you haven’t had to fend for yourself in this way before. Now they’re. They’re pitching tents all the time now. They’re. They’re tending after these animals and doing all these things.
Conia [00:27:43]:
Before, they were slaves and they, you know, they. They ate whatever they were, happened to be fed that day, and they. They took care of making bricks, a lot of them. And now they had to change what they knew. There were no bricks to be made out in the wilderness. There was no I know what I’m doing here very much pig on roller skates kind of experiences. And we’ve all had those. But God.
Conia [00:28:09]:
But God, he’s there with us in all those moments. So we’re going to explore. I promised you that I would not get through this whole thing. So we’re going to explore a little more the next time I am with you about what that wilderness looks like, what we learn in the wilderness. And maybe we get to Egypt in our next talk, and maybe we don’t. But for now, whether you’re in Egypt, whether you’re in the wilderness, or whether you’re walking into the promised land. Look around to see where you’re depending on you and where you’re depending on God. He wants you to depend on him.
Conia [00:28:54]:
He has everything for you, and he is going to walk through everything with you. Father, thank you that you transition us always on a regular basis. You are taking us from Egypt to the wilderness and into the promised land. Lord, thank you that you hold our hands everywhere that we go. And you are with us in every moment and with every footstep. We love you, Lord. We praise you and we thank you in Jesus name. Amen.
Conia [00:29:34]:
Pastor David’s gonna come close us out.
