It’s easy to get comfortable in your daily routine. You sleep until the last minute you can, get up, and rush to work. Before you know it, it’s lunch time. You grab an unhealthy lunch at your favorite fast food joint and rush back to work. Then you scroll through your Facebook feed on your 15-minute work break, oblivious to your colleagues sitting next to you. At about 2:30 p.m. you miss your wife’s phone call and don’t call her back. You rush home for dinner, give your family an hour or two of your time, and then head to your basement for an Old Fashioned and your favorite video game.
Would this routine satisfy you 365 days a year? I don’t think so. We are made for more.
We make choices about what our days look like. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like we have control over our days. We are just trying to survive and make it to the weekend. We are made for more than “just surviving.”
We were created to live joyful, fruitful lives! We can choose each day to live more intentionally. To form our days to be, well, much more satisfying and enjoyable for you and those you love. Men like you all over the country are seeking to do just this, and they’ve chosen the new program Exodus 90 to be their guide.
Pursuing a Life of Purpose with Exodus 90
Exodus 90 is a ninety-day spiritual exercise for the renewal of the church. According to James Baxter, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Exodus 90, “During Exodus 90 men commit to daily contemplative prayer with Jesus, acts of self-denial, and to meeting with a small group of other men. You journey through the Book of Exodus and take on the story of the Israelites, traveling from slavery in Egypt through a long hard journey that culminates in the freedom of the Promised Land.”
Why was this new program developed? Baxter explains, “Men are not free today; men are enslaved to porn, social media, sports, video games, and many other distractions. Our bad habits, especially the addiction to pornography, keep us from laying down our lives in love for our wives, children and communities.”
Men want more meaning in their days. For you, this means you need to overcome demons, including internet-based struggles like pornography.
What Covenant Eyes knows to be true, and what Exodus 90 teaches, is that you can’t overcome a struggle with pornography alone. Baxter says:
“Freedom is impossible to find by yourself. You need others, specifically dependence upon God for his grace and the support and encouragement of other men.
Our fraternities meet each week to be honest with the other brothers about their lives. It’s not a place to look good, but to tell the honest truth. It is a place of vulnerability and accountability. It is a place to confess your sins, and to ask for prayer and encouragement.
In addition to meeting with your fraternity, each man has an accountability partner for daily check-ins.”
Many men who join Exodus 90 are looking to overcome pornography–a daily burden that keeps them from giving themselves more intentionally and completely to God, their family, and their work. To help the men with this battle, Exodus 90 encourages their men to secure their devices with Covenant Eye Screen Accountability™. Baxter says, “It’s a natural fit. Our men already have accountability partners (which we call anchors) and they are already talking about their struggles. Adding the Covenant Eyes platform helps to supplement the already powerful accountability dynamic within Exodus 90 fraternities.”
After Baxter presented at a conference in Minnesota recently, two men came up to him in the span of ten minutes with the same story. They explained how their marriages were on the brink before they started Exodus 90. But the freedom they had found through the spiritual exercise brought new grace and love into their marriages. They were more focused on their wives and children. This is what Exodus 90 strives to do. It helps men get bring back purpose to their days and to their relationships.
What Makes Exodus 90 Unique
While there are several excellent programs to helping Catholic men grow and heal, Exodus 90 is unique. Baxter explains,
“It helps men by combining elements of recovery in a captivating way–prayer, self-denial, and accountability. But it’s the acts of self-denial that separates Exodus 90.
Among other things, you take cold showers, you cut out sweets and eating between meals, and you do not use technology for anything other than school or work.
All of this adds up to saying ‘no’ to many things throughout the day. But by saying ‘no’ to our comforts, our men become newly available to Jesus and his plan for their lives.”
It can be challenging to focus this intentionally on yourself, marriage, relationship with God, or your professional career. It takes discipline and a real desire to change. Thankfully Exodus 90 helps you with all aspects at once.
While it’s a challenging program, Baxter reminds those considering to join: “It’s only ninety days. Give it a shot. Our research shows that you will be closer to Jesus in prayer, more deeply satisfied with your marriage, and that your friendships will greatly improve through your fraternity. Even if the road is hard to get there, who does not want greater intimacy in all aspects of life?!”
In fact,
If 90 days seems like a long time to you, the program lasts this amount of time for good reason.
“The number 90 is significant because it takes about three months time to begin to rewire the brain, to begin to form new neurological pathways,” Baxter explains. “There is no magic here, but our program effectiveness research has shown that men do empirically lessen their dependencies upon porn through the journey, regardless of their level of struggle before-hand. And that benefit is experienced for years after completion.”
Exodus 90 is easy to get started! If you have questions, you can learn more at exodus90.com. Or you can go straight to your phone’s app store to download the Exodus 90 app for iOS or Android. Once you create a group, you simply invite a few friends into your fraternity by entering their email address.
We wish you the best in this new season ahead. Be sure to comment below if you’ve already taken the challenge or plan to take the challenge in the future.