You Cannot Hold New Life in an Old Container

Called to Follow | Monday Reflection | Week 5

"Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved." — Matthew 9:17

Sunday you heard about wineskins. Old ones that have already stretched as far as they will go. New wine that is still fermenting, still expanding, still alive with a process that has not finished yet. And the problem is not the wine. The problem is putting something living into a container that stopped being flexible a long time ago.

Jesus was not talking about wineskins. He was talking about us.
Most of us have areas of our life where we are trying to hold new things in old containers. A new commitment to marriage poured into old patterns of communication. A new desire for God poured into a schedule that has no room for Him. A new sense of calling poured into a life organized entirely around something else. The new thing keeps pressing against the old structure and something keeps leaking and we cannot figure out why it is not working.

The wine is not the problem. The container is the problem.

This week, identify one area where you are trying to hold something new in something old. One place where the structure of your life is not keeping up with what God is doing in you. You do not have to redesign everything. Just one container.

What needs to change so the new thing does not get lost?

He is putting new wine in you. Make sure you are becoming the kind of container that can hold it.