New Wine, New Wineskins

Todd and I are liaisons for an upcoming training called Breakthrough from ACCD (http://accd.org) One of our closest friends and also a Trainer for ACCD and CultureROI wrote the following. This is why we are making the time. It's elevating our conversations as we go through a move into a new rental, and address some more of my health issues. God is meeting us. It's painful, but it has made us ready to be new wineskins.

New Wine, New Wineskins

22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined.
No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." NIV Mark 2:21-22

We are called to be new wine - to be shared and poured out for others. We are indeed new wine, as we are alive in Christ. So what is the wineskin, the vessel for our new life? Maybe it's the container we are, the context we are in the world. If our container, our context, how we see ourselves and others, remains the same after we receive this new life in Christ, they both will be ruined.

How often do we attempt to maintain our 'old' way of living after receiving the gift, the revelation of God's love and who we are in Him? It's like pouring new wine, new spirit, into old wineskins, old habits. At some point, something's got to give.

I remember when I first really engaged a relationship with Jesus - the revelation of who He is and the reality that He is the source in my life impacted my understanding of giving and tithing. I could never make the math work, trying to budget and figure out how to tithe, when and how to give. After months of playing with the numbers, I just decided to go forward in faith. To this day, I don't really understand how it worked out but it did. Somehow, there was something available in the act of faith that was not available otherwise. Something new.

What are you holding on to, trying to keep the same while living a new life? Where do you experience frustration or exasperation in your life? Is it the tension of new wine pressing against some old skin?

Perhaps it's time to allow yourself to be made new once again.

~Jean