Excerpt from Ch. 1 of New: Wineskins and the Simple Words of Christ

When a controlling personality desires to enter into a relationship with the Lord of heaven and earth while remaining in control and reaping all of His benefits, what results is a big mess. And because I approached Jesus in this way for so long, I experienced mess after mess.

In Matthew 9, disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus and ask why His disciples don’t regularly fast like they and the Pharisees do. Setting aside two days a week to fast was a common practice of the Pharisees at that time.3 Jesus responds by basically telling them that groomsmen preparing for a wedding don’t fast while they still have the prospective groom in their company. But once the groom is married and taken away from them, they will get back to fasting.

There are several points our Lord is making here, but I believe the main thrust is that in the lives of His followers, who Jesus is, what He teaches, and what He has come to do takes precedence over everything else. He states, “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” (verse 17).

New wine expands as it ferments. New wineskins can handle new wine because new wineskins will expand with the fermenting new wine. However, old wineskins have already reached their capacity for expansion. So when new wine is poured into old wineskins, the new wine will literally cause the skins to burst, thus causing a huge mess and wasting both the new wine and old wineskins. My seven-year-old-self thought I could keep the old wineskins of being both self-righteous and self-governing while following Jesus. That’s just not going to work.

It’s kind of like the time my dad and I put together the basketball goal that’s currently sitting in my driveway. Two grown men who’ve put many things together in the past don’t need to completely depend on the instructions, right? Those instructions are just suggestions, aren’t they? The instructions said the entire assembly would take around two hours. It took us two days. The reason? We did not get first things first and fully submit ourselves to the instructions.

Maybe you feel like you’ve tried the whole “Christian thing” and it didn’t work for you. Let me ask you a question: Did you truly get first things first and submit yourself fully to the instructions? The instructions say Jesus must become your Lord. If you don’t submit your entire self to Him as Lord, the whole “Christian thing” isn’t going to work. God has only designed it to work according to the instructions. True Christianity isn’t designed for Jesus to only have access to a piece of your heart; it is made for Him to own it all.

Jesus is more gracious, merciful, and patient than you can comprehend. He gave His entire life for you. When you repent of your sins and give your life to Him, He gives His life back into you through the Holy Spirit. As you walk with Him each day, He begins to transform you into a new person and make you more like Him.

This is what happened in my life. Jesus not only burst my early old wineskins but also several more as well, so that His new wine could take over fresh wineskins that would let Him be Himself in me. So much has changed since Jesus started helping me approach Him with new wineskins.

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