Finished Exodus

Wow, Exodus is an awesome book. I am not gonna lie, the end was a bit boring with all the tabernacle furnishings, but the book was pretty sweet overall. Obviously there are many famous stories in this book. There are two big things I got out of this book.

One: The Sabbath is very important. It is mentioned over and over again. You can tell God is reminding the people they are no longer slaves and they have the privilege to rest. This lead me to question whether or not I am a slave. I know that having a Sabbath is important, but I am often too busy to really take a day and enter into turbo chill mode. I now understand that this pattern will remove my humanity and make me a slave, even if it is church work that I am a slave too. I am reminded that God made this amazing earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th day. I am sure the earth could have been cooler if God took the extra day to continue creating, but he didn't. For that reason I need to realize that Church things could always be better with more time, but not at the expense of taking a day to chill.

Two: Delegation. I know it sounds weird to read through Exodus and come out with a story about delegation hitting you when the book is loaded with so much more. In Chapter 18 Jethro visits Moses and tells him that what he is doing is not good and that he will wear himself out if he doesn't start to delegate. The scripture says, "The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone." So Moses chose capable men and made them leaders and judges. The easier cases were brought to the new judges and the more complex brought to Moses. This is a Biblical foundation for the need to delegate. I think this principal goes hand in hand with having a Sabbath. We cannot take things on by ourselves and neglect the gifting of the people around us and expect to have time for a Sabbath. We must use the resources God has given us. Often times I want things done a certain way, so I do them. This scripture has shown me that I must identify what is important and needs to be done a certain way (difficult cases in Moses story) and take care of those tasks. I must be willing to delegate the rest of the tasks to my leaders and let them do it. It is important that I don't feel the need to be involved every step of the way. If I follow them every step of the way then is it really delegation?

There were many other things about this book that hit me, but those were the main two things I got out of the book.