[Devotional] IN HIS PRESENCE: Change your wineskin

Read: Mathew 9:16-17

Meditation verse:

“Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Mathew 9:17)

In today’s reading, Jesus told His disciples that new wine cannot be poured into old wine skin, else the wine skin will break and the wine will be spilled. He said new wine must be poured into new wine skin. . New one is fresh and strong. Old wine skin is worn out, weak and outdated. It cannot contain the strength of the new wine. If new wine is poured into old wine skins, the old wine skin will stretch and burst, resulting in a monumental loss of both the wine and the wine skin

We can gain natural insights from this spiritual and scriptural insight. Old wine skins can be likened to old mindsets, thought patterns, perspectives, habits, relationships, associations, methods and ways of doing things. New wine on the other hand can be said to represent promotion, enlargement, increase and new levels in various dimensions of the physical and spiritual realms. It is impossible to attain a new level or height in life with old ways of doing things. Someone said “insanity is doing the same things and expecting a different result. To get a different or new result, you must do something new or different.

In Isaiah 43:18-19, before God promised the childen of Israel a new thing, He instructed them to forget the old. ““Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert”. In Isaiah 54: 1-3, God’s instruction to the barren was “enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited”. Before the promised expansion, they were to do away with the old measurements of their tent.

God is always ready to bless, increase and enlarge the coast of His children. But we limit Him by clinging to the old. Is there an area of your life that you desire new wine? What old wineskin do you need to discard? Do not be like the children of Israel who spent forty years in the wilderness on their way to the promised land because they refused to let go of their old mindsets.

IN HIS PRESENCE is written by Pst (Mrs) Oke Chinye

Founder: The Rock Teaching Ministry (TRTM)

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