We need to prepare ourselves for God’s work.
And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. – Luke 5: 36-39
God never wastes anything. Jesus brought freedom in grace. His grace could not be held in the legalistic and inflexible rules that the Pharisees enforced over others. We cannot alter Jesus to fit our mold of religion; we have to remember that we are the jars, and He is the Potter. He will shape us to learn. “To try to fit Jesus' teachings of love and freedom into the Pharisaical legalism (or even its modern-day equivalences) would have resulted in a burst tradition and pieces of love and freedom spilled out all over the floor.”
We are the wineskins for the Holy Spirit. And there will be a new wineskin for each generation. We must be made new. There must be a death of our old self.
Jesus is our new wine. We can celebrate today that He gave His blood as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. He tore the veil. He removed our sins. He gives us grace upon grace. If we try to box the grace of the gospel into our legalized religious package, it will burst forth because grace cannot be hidden. Jesus breaks through all sin, all legalism, all old wineskins. Because of Jesus, He is freeing us from the same stumbling block of the Pharisees still today. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Flexibility
The older we grow, the harder it is to remain flexible. But our revelation of who God is in our daily lives constantly evolves.
If we allow them to, the challenges in our life will bring us more flexibility. We must strive to always be expanding.
Capacity
Is there room for God in your life?
What are you full of?
God will stop pouring into you and make room in you. God will empty you so you will turn to Him to fill you back up.
Integrity and Purity
What is the quality of what comes out of us?
God’s revival is in us; we control the amount that it flows.
We need the new versions of ourselves, not the old ones.
Mobility
We should be willing and ready to let Jesus into our lives where He is needed.
Let us be made to live like new wineskin, and know when to recognize an old wineskin. Deuteronomy 4:2 says, “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.” Be careful to not add or remove from what the Lord has commanded.
