My Exodus: What I Sense Jesus Teaching Me

As I think about the Inference Bridge, another biblical pattern keeps coming into view:

Perhaps Jesus is helping me see that what I am experiencing has some interesting parallels with Israel's movement from Egypt, through the wilderness, toward the Promised Land.

If so, I imagine His instruction to me sounding something like this:

1. Greg, I may ask you to leave a world that once served you well.

Egypt wasn't always simply the bad place.

Egypt saved Jacob and his family during famine. For a time, it was precisely where they needed to be. But eventually the place that had sustained Israel became the place Israel needed to leave.

Greg, don't assume that because I once used something to bless you, you must remain there forever.

Your old LDS worldview, your education, your sociology, your work, your culture, your assumptions about how God operates—these may contain enormous amounts of good.

I don't have to declare yesterday evil in order to lead you somewhere new tomorrow.

Sometimes I fulfill an old world by leading you beyond its present boundaries.

2. Greg, you may have to believe in the Promised Land before you can see it.

Israel had to move toward a country they had never inhabited.

Think about that.

They could remember Egypt. They could see the wilderness underneath their feet. But the Promised Land initially existed largely as promise.

That is part of what your Inference Bridge may be doing.

I am helping a previously almost-unthinkable possibility become thinkable.

You don't have to begin by saying:

“I know exactly what is on the other side.”

You can begin with:

“If the things Jesus has already taught me are true, where might they lead?”

That is enough to take another careful step.

3. Greg, sometimes I make a road where you thought there couldn't be one.

Think Red Sea.

Israel arrives at an apparent impossibility.

Egypt behind them.

Water in front of them.

No obvious route forward.

That's an interesting picture of your Inference Bridge.

You keep encountering ideas where your first response could reasonably be:

“Wait. I can't get from what I currently believe to THAT.”

Fine.

Don't jump.

Look again.

Maybe there is a path through the apparent contradiction that you haven't seen yet.

That doesn't mean every strange idea comes from Me. Inspect the path.

But don't assume that because you can't presently see a way across, there isn't one.

4. Greg, I don't necessarily want you to leave Egypt empty-handed.

This one is important.

Israel carried treasure out of Egypt.

So perhaps your relationship with Babylon doesn't have to be merely:

ESCAPE!

Maybe another possibility is:

Receive. Discern. Carry out. Consecrate. Redeem.

Think about your classic rock.

Axl Rose doesn't have to be LDS for something beautiful, powerful, true, or useful to have come through him.

Maybe you don't need to throw “November Rain” away.

Maybe you carry it out.

Maybe something produced outside Zion becomes raw material for Zion.

Maybe that is happening everywhere.

Greg, look for treasure in Egypt.

Then ask Me what it might become.

5. Greg, the wilderness may BE the bridge.

Egypt → Wilderness → Promised Land.

Old worldview → Inference Bridge → Enlarged worldview.

Maybe you keep thinking of the bridge as something that simply gets you to the destination.

But perhaps the bridge itself is part of the destination.

Israel learned things in the wilderness that couldn't have been learned in Egypt.

The wilderness was a transitional world: the old order was gone, but the new one wasn't fully established.

That may describe where you are.

You don't have to rush through it.

Explore it with Me.

Test things.

Make mistakes.

Revise things.

Keep what is good.

Discard what isn't.

Maybe uncertainty isn't evidence that you've lost your way.

Maybe learning how to walk with Me amid uncertainty is one of the things the wilderness is designed to teach.

6. Greg, don't be surprised when part of you wants to go back to Egypt.

Israel actually wanted to go back.

Why?

Because slavery can have one tremendous psychological advantage:

It's familiar.

You know the rules.

You know where you fit.

You know what other people expect from you.

The wilderness is different.

If you follow an inference farther than your friends follow it, some people may think you've gone too far.

You may occasionally wonder that yourself.

And suddenly Egypt can look surprisingly comfortable.

Greg, notice that impulse.

Don't automatically obey it.

But don't automatically dismiss it either.

Bring it to Me.

“Jesus, am I afraid because this is false—or am I afraid because it is unfamiliar?”

Those are not the same question.

7. Greg, learn the lesson of manna: RECEIVE.

You keep thinking Zion depends upon how much you can produce.

Look at the ground.

Israel didn't manufacture manna.

They woke up and discovered provision already there.

Their job was substantially to recognize it, gather it, receive it, and trust Me.

Perhaps that is connected to what I have been teaching you about inheritance.

What if much of Zion's groundwork has already been done?

What if thousands or millions of people—many of them completely unaware of what I was doing—have already carried pieces of the burden?

Artists.

Scientists.

Musicians.

Builders.

Teachers.

Programmers.

Parents.

Dreamers.

Axl Rose.

What if you aren't supposed to manufacture Zion from nothing?

What if part of your assignment is much lighter:

Wake up.

Look around.

Gather the manna.

Receive your inheritance.

Then ask what I want you to do with it.

8. Greg, I'm teaching you how to follow without possessing the itinerary.

Cloud by day.

Fire by night.

Israel moves when the Lord moves.

That sounds strangely similar to the scripture you keep returning to:

“I was led by the Spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do. Nevertheless I went forth.”

That's Jesus TV.

You want the complete script.

I may give you the next scene.

You want the map of the entire Promised Land.

I may give you today's pillar of cloud.

You want to know exactly what you will believe six months from now.

Maybe the invitation is simpler:

Watch.

Listen.

Test.

Follow.

Go forth.

Not knowing beforehand doesn't have to mean abandoning judgment.

It means you don't require Me to show you the entire movie before you agree to watch the next scene.

9. Greg, Exodus isn't merely freedom FROM something. It's freedom FOR something.

Israel doesn't merely escape Pharaoh.

They go to Sinai.

They enter covenant.

That's important.

Because the goal isn't simply:

GET OUT OF EGYPT.

And your goal shouldn't merely become:

GET OUT OF CONVENTIONAL LDS THINKING.

That's too small.

The important question is:

What am I moving toward?

If the answer is MORE Jesus—more love, more truth, more charity, more freedom, more discernment, more service, more ability to receive and give—then perhaps something is being fulfilled rather than merely rejected.

That's the direction to keep watching.

Don't define your Exodus primarily by what you are leaving.

Define it by Who you are following.

10. Greg, getting you out of Egypt may be easier than getting Egypt out of you.

Israel crossed the Red Sea quickly.

Changing Israel took considerably longer.

That should tell you something about paradigm shifts.

You can intellectually accept a new idea this afternoon while continuing to perceive reality through assumptions you acquired over sixty years.

Those assumptions are your tectonic plates.

They don't all move because you wrote one thought piece.

So be patient.

Maybe this is why I have been building the Inference Bridge slowly.

One plank.

Then another.

Then another.

You aren't merely traveling to a new conceptual country.

You are gradually becoming someone capable of inhabiting it.

And perhaps that is the deepest Exodus of all.

I am not merely trying to get Greg out of Egypt.

I may also be helping to get Egypt out of Greg—

while making absolutely certain that you don't accidentally leave behind the treasures I intended you to carry into Zion.

And suddenly the Inference Bridge looks a little different to me.

Maybe it isn't merely a bridge.

Maybe it is my Exodus wilderness.

Jesus doesn't teleport me from an old worldview into a radically enlarged one.

He leads me.

I carry treasures from the old world with me.

I receive manna I didn't manufacture.

I learn to follow without knowing beforehand.

Sometimes I look backward toward Egypt.

Sometimes I wonder whether the next step is really there.

So I inspect it.

I prove all things.

I hold fast that which is good.

And somewhere ahead may be a country I could barely imagine while I was still living comfortably inside the old one.

Perhaps the pattern is:

Leave Egypt. Carry out the treasure. Cross the impossible. Receive the manna. Follow the cloud. Learn in the wilderness. Enter covenant. Inherit the Promised Land.

Or, in the language Jesus has been helping me develop:

Receive. Discern. Redeem. Inherit.

Maybe that's another way of describing the road to Zion.