I had a vision of a new piece of cloth torn by its stitching on an old garment.
This parable is found in Matthew 9: 16 “But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. 17 Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”
This is to be a year of new wine. Question, are you and I ready for it? What does that look like?
This vision was a picture of many of us in the body of Christ. We are old and used and stretched and hanging on to our old forms. If we are not renewed we will not be able to receive the new thing, the new wine. We desperately need a new wineskin but what does that look like in practical terms?
Just like the new tearing away at the old, the Lord is doing a new thing and our old structures will not be able to handle it, in fact might be destroyed.
The Lord has engendered within us a divine discontent with the status quo in church and a hunger for more life in the Spirit.
I believe the new wineskin is a divine revelation of what church can be
along with an impartation of the grace to carry out the vision.
I believe church will no longer be a thing we do, a ritual we perform or a club membership to which we belong but the way we live. God is calling on us for deeper commitment. We cannot carry the old habits and ways into the new. There is no more time to be lukewarm, it is a time to be ALL IN.
Our understanding of leadership needs to change. Each one of us will get the revelation what our piece of the puzzle is and know that we are needed. Instead of perceiving the church as an entity that does not live up to our expectations we will realize the church is us. We must take responsibility for both the needs and resources around us.
I will give you an example. I was in the hospital when someone pointed out to me that no one from ‘the church’ had visited me. No one ‘official’ from the ‘office’ had, but a few caring women came. I did not need an official visit from a pastor for me to recognize that the church had indeed visited me. The church is not the pastor, the people that work in the office or the elders. The church is us.
A wineskin that can hold new wine is flexible. Things don’t have to be done a certain way because that is the way it has always been done before.
The Lord is working organically completely ignoring the superficial boundaries of denominational lines. He is gathering people in new ways other than our meeting times in a church building.
If there was ever a time we need to be renewed it is now.
Don’t be satisfied with the status quo.
We need each and every person consecrated and prepared for the new wine; so spend time seeking God’s Presence in earnest. Spend more time praying in tongues. Ask Him to take us all into the New.
have a listen: ” New wine” from Hillsong
writethroughme.com 