New Wine is for New Wineskins

God is about to do a very intense reworking of wineskins, both individual and corporate. I had the Lord tell me one time, “You are in danger of becoming a wise old wineskin.” That terrified me, but it also fascinated me theologically. I was interested in why he would use a phrase like “old wineskin” and combine it with “wise”.  He showed me that one can be wise on yesterday’s revelation. Wisdom is yesterday’s revelation that has been transformed into understanding. You must always be adding today’s revelation to yesterday’s revelation in order to function in “wisdom and revelation”. So many people are defined by what God did yesterday, and what God said yesterday. In this season, you cannot be defined by what God did or said yesterday. You can be influenced by it. You have to apply the understanding that He gave you in the past to what He’s doing today. But, you cannot get stuck in what He said yesterday or did yesterday. If you do, you are now an old wineskin.

A wineskin hardens through yesterday’s process of the wine fermenting. As the new wine ferments, a wineskin takes on various shapes from the gases in the fermenting process, and ultimately hardens in a particular shape. So, literally the wineskin is shaped by yesterday’s revelation, wine, outpouring. That was a good thing yesterday! However, if it hardens into that, now it can’t receive new wine. The new wine will break the old skin and you will lose the wine and the wineskin. 

To reuse an old wineskin, it has to go through a new process of soaking in water and oil until it is flexible again. Then, it is called a fresh wineskin. It held yesterday’s wine and can now hold today’s wine. There is about to be an outpouring of fresh, new wine. You must allow the Holy Spirit to refresh your wineskin or you won’t be able to hold the new wine. He won’t even bother pouring it in you, because He is merciful and it will break the skin, and both the wine and the skin will be lost. He doesn’t want that to happen, so he will just let that individual or congregation just be old.   

“No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.” (Mark 2:21-22; ESV)

Give Him 15 minutes in prayer:

• Talk to the Lord about this new wine being poured out, and the need for new and refreshed wineskins to pour it into.
• Examine yourself. Are you in danger of becoming a wise old wineskin? Are you stuck in old ways of thinking or patterns of worship? 
•  Is your church or congregation or denomination holding onto a theology that has been debunked, but it’s what that organization adheres to no matter what? You might want to let God renew you.
• Call in the new! Call for the water and the oil and the wine of renewal! Get ready to be reshaped and re-formed for the new outpouring of God!

A prayer you can pray:

God You want to renew old wineskins, because You are coming with fresh, new wine. You’re coming with suddenlies and acceleration, refreshing and revelation. You are coming with a new release of power. New gifts are going to be handed out, and gifts are going to be intensified. You are going to be doing new things and You need fresh, flexible wineskins to hold the new wine. You need people that can hear what Your Holy Spirit is saying today, not just yesterday. We need to move on what You are saying today, not just what You said yesterday. You want us to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church now, not just 10 or 20 or 40 years ago. We’ll hold onto the wisdom from that, but we don’t want to get stuck back there. 

Our individual wineskins must be made flexible, but You are also going to do some miraculous things with our corporate ones. You are about to take some whole congregations and even whole organizations and put us through a renewing process. We’ll see those that we think are old and dried up, but they are going to come into a fresh Word for today. It’s going to prepare the group for what You are doing. Some are going to break out of old traditions and old methods. Even some old theology that wasn’t quite right that we have held onto in some streams is going to be adjusted by Your Spirit. We have thought that some of our movements could never be used again. We are going to see those old, seemingly dead, movements change in ways that are even more dramatic than what took place in the Charismatic movement. If we don’t think we need any of that, then draw us to repentance, Jesus. Holy Spirit break us out of our boxes, reshape us, re-form us, and set us free to be filled anew with You. Amen. 

Today’s decree:

God is reworking the Church’s wineskins to prepare us for His fresh, new wine!