Daily Journal: 31 December

New Wine and A New Wine Skin

On the final day of this year doing Daily Journal for Let’s Do Launch, what is there to take into the New Year?

It’s been a year of opening and moving into a deeper seat of trust. Seeing trends in my life. Seeing my failings and God’s handiwork. Seeing my incapacity and God’s capacity. A journey of hope, moving forward, then pausing, stillness, acknowledging, rest and repentance, and handing over.

I asked God to bring me understanding. What has been productive? What has brought pleasure to you from what I’ve done? What’s next? Where should I plant this coming year?

“I am doing a new thing, but you can’t mix any of the old with the new. It will become polluted, diluted. It needs to remain clean for it to remain new, binding, and transformative. You need to be committed to change your thoughts forever, your self-gratifying affections, not just rely on me to change your spirit. You are to be made new. You are to carry that.”

Luke 5:36-39 (TLB)

Then Jesus used this illustration: “No one tears off a piece of a new garment to make a patch for an old one. Not only will the new garment be ruined, but the old garment will look worse with a new patch on it! And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the new wine bursts the old skins, ruining the skins and spilling the wine. New wine must be put into new wineskins. But no one after drinking the old wine seems to want the fresh and the new. ‘The old ways are best,’ they say.”

God doesn’t want to patch us up. He doesn’t talk about repairing us. He doesn’t pour His power into us when we are too inexperienced to receive it. We slowly grow to accommodate His work, through the toughest of times and the quiet resting places. He uses our life circumstances to slowly reproduce us. He is a God who understands, who watches over, who fully redeems and fully restores. Time isn’t of the essence; it is the essence of the process.

I suggest the miracle of time-lapse is just as impressive as an instantaneous miracle. It is still a great miracle when someone walks through years of duress, sinking deeper into truth; patiently allowing faith to expand and take shape even when life doesn’t; hearts straightening with assurance even as life keeps curling around adversity; minds grappling with, and finally grasping, the miracle of who God is; at last being transformed, not yet in our circumstances, perhaps, but in our understanding and outward expression of joy because of who God has shown Himself to be; not measured through what He’s done or hasn’t done.

Transformation happens when we learn not to measure God; when we are sealed in the wine barrel, in the secret place, over time where it’s just me and God; where finally the wine of our life becomes cultured in our heritage with God.

Old wine needs time to mellow for it to be rich and full and yes, nourishing. Not to be sloshed out and slung back, in foolish ignorance and unappreciation of the culturing and maturing process.

Take every single day of this coming year to remember you carry new wine and a new wine skin. Let the new wine mellow and the new wine skin become supple. If you allow God to produce further culturing you will receive superior wine and others will be able to drink from its fullness. Receive what God wants to do and diligently observe and watch for it, being able to move with Him in every nuance.