I am a human.

Before you click away because this post seems to have been written by Captain Obvious, hang on a minute. Please keep reading.

and because I’m human I’ve spent time in my life stuck. I’ve been stuck with old habits keeping me trapped in old ruts, while mulling over old feelings that left me feeling incapable of moving forward on my own power.

I’m guessing that you’ve felt similar because we are all human after all.  God has consistently reminded me of this, “stop putting new wine in old wineskins.” 

God has given us all so many blessings, He really has. Each day is filled with newness and opportunities to praise Him for every good and perfect gift He gives us. If He showers us with good gifts over and over again then why do we continually find ourselves stuck in the same places, making the same lousy choices and spinning our wheels?

“Stop putting new wine in old wineskins.”

In times past, I’ve found myself in a cycle where I take the amazing blessings that God gives me and I keep trying to cram them into this old, lousy, and failed wineskin. And each time I do this, what happens is so predictable it must be almost humorous. As I keep cramming my new blessing into an old wineskin, an old, lost reality; that old wineskin breaks open. As I watch my blessings spread out all over the place, I find myself, not being grateful for the blessings and picking up the pieces, but mourning again over that old wineskin that will never again hold my new wine.

Am I alone in this? 

In Luke 5:36-39, Jesus uses the wineskin illustration to prove this point.

“No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment.  “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”

Jesus’ point here is so clear here that it is like a 2×4 to my forehead.

Whoever told you that your old life was so much better than the new one I’ve given you to put your blessings in? 

That’s exactly what we do isn’t it? We’ve determined that our old life (people, habits, places, times) were so much better than anything we could ever have in the present and future, that we sabotage any chance that will ever happen because we keep trying to stuff our new wine into old, leaky, worn out wineskins.