7 Lessons From Exodus
For the first 3 months of 2024, I followed the Exodus 90 challenge to practice restraint, asceticism, and self-denial. Here's what I learnt.
What is Exodus 90?
Exodus 90 is a 90-day spiritual exercise for men walking with Christ towards freedom following the path of prayer, asceticism and brotherhood. During the 90 days that it lasts, you are called to practice self-restraint and self-denial across a bunch of disciplines, in an effort to strengthen your will, free yourself from addictions and bad habits, and place God at the center of your life.
The central hub for the challenge is the Exodus 90 app, where you’ll find daily reflections based on the book of Exodus, since the challenge draws a parallel between the freeing from the Israelites from Egypt, and their subsequent path across the desert. Exodus 90 seeks to help us “break free from our Pharaohs”, so we can be free to worship God.
The challenge also puts a big emphasis on fraternity and brotherhood, and it’s highly recommended that you undertake it with a group of 3-5 brothers who are committed to faith and growth under Christ, because it IS challenging and difficult, and it’s very unlikely you’ll manage it alone.
The disciplines you follow for 90 days are:
No alcohol
No soda or sweet drinks
Exercise 3x per week
Make a holy hour each day
Read daily exodus 90 reflection
No deserts or sweets
No videogames
No TV shows, movies, or televised sports
No snacking in between meals
Friday and Wednesday fasting
No meat on Friday and Wednesday
Cold showers
Weekly fraternity meeting
Honor the Lord’s day (Sunday)
Get a full night’s sleep (8 hours)
Avoid unnecessary purchases (includes eating out)
I also decided to close my personal social media accounts during the challenge
As you can see, there’s a lot of disciplines. And while some of them might come naturally or easily to you, I promise you, following all of them simultaneously for 3 months is no easy task.
If you want, you can read more about the challenge here. What I want to share in this article is my personal experience with it, and the most important things I learnt while following it.
Why I Did Exodus 90
I decided to do Exodus 90 at the end of December, 2023. I was beginning a period of change in my life, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and lost. I was to be moving to a new country, some relationships were going downhill, I was about to rebrand and relaunch Simple Men into Simple Men 2.0, and all in all, it was a period of uncertainty and doubt.
I have a tendency, when times are tough, to make them even tougher for myself (in a good way). What I mean is that whenever times are difficult, I find a lot of purpose, order, and motivation in voluntarily challenging myself even more. I have come to learn it brings me back to earth, toughens my mind and spirit, and makes me overall a much better man. Whenever life seems overwhelming, you can either let it drive you down, or you can rebelliously challenge your own weakness and prove how strong your mettle is. I’ve found the latter to be the option that gets me through tough times.
So in the midst of all this, with uncertain times on the horizon, stressed and anxious, I called up my closest friends in Christ and proposed we did the Exodus 90 app. All 5 of them agreed (2 of which quit after 3 days), and we started the challenge together. It was a very interesting journey of introspection and prayer, and at times it truly felt like an exile in the desert. But I can look back and happily say it was worth it, and that I’m a better man because of it.
7 Lessons I Learnt From Exodus
1. We are more enslaved than we think
As I said earlier, when you look at the list of disciplines, you may think some of them are easy. And surely, some will be easy for you. What’s challenging about all of this is that you’re called to restrain yourself from ALL of them, every day, for 3 months. It’s this consistency that’s the challenge. 3 months is a long time, and maintaining your discipline throughout them is no easy task, especially with such a long list of disciplines.
What I realized is that all of us, even those of us who consider ourselves disciplined, will have a difficult time breaking the chains from modern habits, and we are all enslaved by modern influences, social media, entertainment, and consumerism.
You might think yourself free, but a challenge like this one shows us how deeply enslaved we are by our different habits. And that just makes it more evident why we need to practice asceticism: when enslaved by so many things, it’s very difficult to give God our focus and make Him our priority. Like the Israelites in Egypt, when enslaved and ruled by pharaohs, we are not as free to worship God as we would be otherwise.
2. Most things do not matter
It’s amazing how much importance we assign to so many objectively meaningless things. For me, this was televised sports, for example. I realized during the challenge how much time I was spending watching games, how much I was letting it affect me emotionally, and how much I was arranging my schedule around specific games.
We are so caught up in the comings and goings of modern life that we end up making all sorts of false idols, letting ourselves be led by different influences, and forget that it’s God that should be at the very center of our lives.
But you will only realize this when you make a willing effort to see your chains. You have to be willing to remove from your life even those things you think are harmless, so you can notice how much you are overestimating their importance.
3. A man is nothing without brotherhood
The lone wolf mentality is not only a myth, but a very harmful one. A man is not supposed to be alone. No matter how tough you are, you WILL struggle. You WILL doubt yourself. Especially when you’re challenging yourself daily, which is something you should be doing, regardless of Exodus 90.
Whenever that happens, and it will, a lone wolf won’t have brothers to lean on. And that is a terrible thing. To go through life alone is not ideal. Far from it. It’s painful and heartbreaking.
A man needs brothers to give him strength when his own strength is lacking. He needs brothers to help to sharpen his wisdom. You are not meant to go through life alone.
The brotherhood aspect of Exodus 90 was a key component for me, and it made it way more valuable than it would’ve been had I done it on my own.
4. Sometimes waiting is the right answer
This is something that might seem obvious, but it took me a while to truly grasp. We suffer from a harmful need to control everything, and we often forget who’s truly in the driver’s seat (God, not you).
I remember, in one of the fraternity meetings, I shared a difficult situation I was going through, and how I didn’t know what else to do.
A friend reminded me of the way of the Israelites through Egypt, and how they were led by a pillar of smoke in the day and a pillar of fire in the night. He mentioned how, when the pillar was moving, it would’ve been easy for them to know where to go. If it goes left, go left. If it goes right, go right. And so on.
But he told me to think about how many times the pillar stood still. At those times, surely the Israelites were concerned. Maybe they thought the way was over. Maybe they thought the pillar wasn’t “working” any more.
But what was really happening was that God was showing them that at that specific time, the way was to simply sit tight and wait.
This happens to us often. We become anxious and feel like we need to control everything around us. We try so hard to make things happen on our own time, and ignore the messages from above, even when they’re clearly telling us to just wait.
This was one of the biggest lessons I learnt from Exodus. To trust God’s timing over my own, and just wait. To surrender the need to control everything, do my best, and be patient.
5. Do hard things simply because they are hard
There doesn’t need to be a reward for all challenges. Sometimes the reward is simply the person you become for succeeding at them.
And that’s an incredible valuable reward on its own. I look at my life before and after Exodus, and while some things have changed, visibly, most haven’t. My circumstances are pretty similar.
But it is I who changed. I strengthened my faith. I strengthened my mind and will. And that’s a reward worth the challenges it took.
Don’t always do hard things expecting some clear return, but simply do them because they’re hard. It’s in hardship that you’ll learn to follow God more faithfully, and that is a reward on its own.
6. Nothing changes, there is no finish line
I realized towards the end of the challenge that I was expecting some massive change upon its completion.
I hoped I would reach the finish line and all of a sudden feel fulfilled, happy, and a great sense of accomplishment.
None of those things happened. But that doesn’t mean the challenge was a failure. On the contrary, it was a resounding success.
I learnt there is never a finish line, and it’s in the daily, little wins where the great victory hides. The finish line is no finish line at all, but an exit into a new phase, a new road, a new desert, a new Exodus. You cannot allow yourself to become complacent once you’re “done”, and think you’ve made it.
The point of Exodus, and I’ve come to realize this now, is to use the 3-months as an excuse to instill in you a stronger faith that will walk with you forever. The real goal of it is not for you to complete the 3 months and then go back to who you were, but to help you forge a new you that will see the chains that bind you and never again forget to place God at the very center of it all.
7. Christianity is incredibly deep and complex and I know very little about it
I loved reading the daily passages from Exodus and the daily reflections. It helped me understand more deeply the parts of the Bible I got to read. But what it mostly did was show me how much more I have to learn about my faith.
It is something that excites me profoundly, knowing that I will never truly understand the depth and complexity of our God, and that I’ll spend my entire life looking to get closer and closer to sanctity, and never quite getting there.
I highly recommend you look into the challenge, get some friends together, and do it.
I can vouch for how much structure it gave my life during the past few months, and how much closer I got to God through it.
It’s true that through self-denial you’ll find freedom.
God bless,
Simple Man
I recently joined the great Will Knowland from Knowland Knows in his podcast on YouTube, where we talked about what real Christian Masculinity means. Give it a listen here: