Last week in church we talked about the importance of becoming new wineskins. Then I heard a conference session from Marcos Witt on how to prevent staleness in our lives as we create situations and circumstances (wineskins) to grow and change.
Now I’ve heard the wineskin parable a million times but never really applied it to my life in this way. So, honestly what does that mean? What is a wineskin? I’ve been wine tasting enough to see wine in barrells but never in a skin of anysort. So the idea of not putting new wine in an old wineskin doesn’t really resonate with me.
As I grapple with this I’d i’ve realize that the idea of a wineskin is about constructs, skemas, ideas, traditions, religion, perhaps even a location, church, friends, or other relationship. We get new wine as we begin to change. It is a fresh understanding, healing, wholeness that comes as we grow and learn. This new information doesn’t fit into the existing structures we’ve created in our minds and hearts.
For me living in California was a wineskin. It was familiar, safe, comfortable and to some extent easy. There was a routine and rhythm to my life that was good, it worked. Yet I could float through life a bit. I wasn’t really challenged. I was only pushed when I allowed it. I was well-defined there. I had a job, a role to play, friends, and history.
Now here I have no context for anything, including me. Everything here is so different – how they talk, the foods they eat, even how they drive. Aaahh, so our wineskins are part of our identity, they define our worlds. It’s the structure on which we hang other information.
Yet in our comfort we can become legalistic, ritualistic and too tied to tradition. I had a very well defined way that I lived and related to others. I met everyone with a filter sarcasm and cynicism including God. To stay fresh in our lives we need to let ourselves be stretched, pulled out of our comfort zones to force us to engage in a new way, with a new perspective. Ooh I’d say that is where I am living these days.
To become new wineskins is to stay close to the heart of God, Witt says, because He changes his methods to capture our hearts. While his nature is unchanging Christ shed his divinity to be human so we could be restored (Phil 2). So how he relates to us changes on how he needs to get our attention. Being in a rut and tied to our existing way of doing things will render us ineffective in reaching out to others in service, in being flexible to learn and I would think in applying grace to ourselves and others.
In the end, the freshness of our wineskins is tied to our sense of wonder. Are we able to worship God with wonder and innocence of a child. Are we intrigued by the small things or are we bitter and cynical? I can confess am cynical. I grew stale. I doubted everything and could see the negative in everything. I constantly waited for the other shoe. Some of this was for survival. Some of this is from experience. Some of this is out of fear. I have to learn to trust God enough to let the wonder back into my life. I have to learn how to let go and let things be unplanned and out of my control. That is the biggest fallacy. We are never in control of anything and its our desperate grasp to try and control it that ends up in frustration and resentment because its impossible.
So life is really all about how we deal with change. Do we become stale in our existance, floating through life letting it go by as we stay safe in our same ole, same ole? Or do we let ourselves become agents of change as we become more authentic, transparents and pliable for whatever it is that God wants to do through us.
That is where I am? I still have parts of my heart that need to be broken. I still need to be molded, changed. There are still parts of me that are unconverted. I am saved, which happens in an instant but conversion take a life time. I struggle with unbelief sometimes. There are aspects of becoming Christlike that I rebel against and just don’t like. I was talking with a friend a while back and we were talking about discipleship and how hard it was to let go of some of our “flesh.” Discipleship is painful.
Anyway, I digress. I am just thinking outloud here. I am still struggling with life here. I know for a fact that I needed to move. But I thought that once I did some magical, mystical path would open before and I would suggently realize what I wanted to be when I grew up. Instead I’m in Ohio, still lost, completely outside of my comfort zone and freaked out.
I wonder what’s wrong with me? Why haven’t I found this yellow, brick road? It doesn’t stick with me that all God cares about is the relationship. He just wants me to be close. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to trust him. I have trouble reckoning in my brain that freaked out and still lost is exactly where he wants me right now. That’s when I lean into him.
This seems to be a lesson I’m not getting because everytime I take a step I wait for the a-ha moment where it all makes sense. Maybe my a-ha moment won’t come for a while or ever. Not sure. But the goal has to be the same – an intimate relationship with God. I don’t do vulnerable very well. I have touble letting people in, even an omniscient, all-powerful God. I guess that’s the wineskin that needs most updating.
