Refrigerators and Wineskins
My fridge door doesn’t close well. I discovered this one day after pouring some funny smelling milk onto my cereal. The bottom seal on the door doesn’t stick. Well, it does. You just have to give it a little nudge with your foot. We had to get used to doing this for the first week or so, but now it’s a reflex. When people come over to my house and help themselves to something in my fridge, they close the door, and I nonchalantly walk by after them and give it that little nudge it needs to keep my food serious… you know, not going funny.
This little reflex is just there now. I go over to my in-laws and I nudge their fridge door too. I treat all fridges equally – no favoritism here. Every refrigerator door I come in contact with gets a little kick from me. Sorry if I’ve kicked your fridge. It’s hard to change something like that. We get used to doing certain things that started for a good reason, but become unnecessary. I used to have a car with a door that needed a little tough love to close it. But my father-in-law doesn’t appreciate when I exhibit that love on his new Honda.
Jesus said, “New wine must be poured into new wineskins.” New situations call for new approaches. I can’t keep kicking the fridge if the door works. That would actually produce the opposite effect eventually. Counter-productive. But it’s more than that. Humanly speaking, some habits are necessary. Spiritually though, we need to think “new”. Growth is the idea here. When new wine went into a new wineskin, the wine fermented and grew. The wineskin had to keep up with this and got stretched. It was made of leather and had some give. I need to have some give. There is a new life inside of me – a life no less than the life of Jesus himself – and it’s growing. It’s occupying more room all the time, and it’s pushing the envelope.
I’m being stretched. It’s something I have to keep in the forefront of my mind because if I don’t, the experiences I am having will seem more like chastisement, or that I just haven’t gotten it right yet. Jesus is growing my spirit, and it’s not always a very comfortable thing. I love the way Psalm 119 puts it, “I will run the course of your commandments, for you will enlarge my heart.” There is purpose in it! There is something to be done. We are not just saved FROM things, but we are saved TO things also. True, we are saved from hell, death, sin, fear, the world, the devil, self – but also to life, good works God foreordained for us to walk in, heavenly citizenship, conformity to the image of the Son of God, and more.
I don’t want to dig myself into a rut. I don’t want to strap myself to the old contraption of tradition. Jesus was always stupefying people by doing things like picking grain on the Sabbath. That actually infuriated the Jews! Such a small thing, but they had sold themselves to something that was actually a gift to them from God. Jesus said, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.” I don’t want to get it backward like they did. I want the life inside me to dictate the form I take, and not vice versa. I need to listen to mature and wise believers, but wisdom doesn’t always come with age. Jesus was the wisest man alive when he was just a boy. Didn’t he say, “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?”
The Father’s business is life, and more specifically resurrection life. I am taking shape according to HIS life in me. I long to be changed, but He has to do it. I don’t want to go around kicking fridges for the rest of my life.
BJ
This little reflex is just there now. I go over to my in-laws and I nudge their fridge door too. I treat all fridges equally – no favoritism here. Every refrigerator door I come in contact with gets a little kick from me. Sorry if I’ve kicked your fridge. It’s hard to change something like that. We get used to doing certain things that started for a good reason, but become unnecessary. I used to have a car with a door that needed a little tough love to close it. But my father-in-law doesn’t appreciate when I exhibit that love on his new Honda.
Jesus said, “New wine must be poured into new wineskins.” New situations call for new approaches. I can’t keep kicking the fridge if the door works. That would actually produce the opposite effect eventually. Counter-productive. But it’s more than that. Humanly speaking, some habits are necessary. Spiritually though, we need to think “new”. Growth is the idea here. When new wine went into a new wineskin, the wine fermented and grew. The wineskin had to keep up with this and got stretched. It was made of leather and had some give. I need to have some give. There is a new life inside of me – a life no less than the life of Jesus himself – and it’s growing. It’s occupying more room all the time, and it’s pushing the envelope.
I’m being stretched. It’s something I have to keep in the forefront of my mind because if I don’t, the experiences I am having will seem more like chastisement, or that I just haven’t gotten it right yet. Jesus is growing my spirit, and it’s not always a very comfortable thing. I love the way Psalm 119 puts it, “I will run the course of your commandments, for you will enlarge my heart.” There is purpose in it! There is something to be done. We are not just saved FROM things, but we are saved TO things also. True, we are saved from hell, death, sin, fear, the world, the devil, self – but also to life, good works God foreordained for us to walk in, heavenly citizenship, conformity to the image of the Son of God, and more.
I don’t want to dig myself into a rut. I don’t want to strap myself to the old contraption of tradition. Jesus was always stupefying people by doing things like picking grain on the Sabbath. That actually infuriated the Jews! Such a small thing, but they had sold themselves to something that was actually a gift to them from God. Jesus said, “Man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man.” I don’t want to get it backward like they did. I want the life inside me to dictate the form I take, and not vice versa. I need to listen to mature and wise believers, but wisdom doesn’t always come with age. Jesus was the wisest man alive when he was just a boy. Didn’t he say, “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?”
The Father’s business is life, and more specifically resurrection life. I am taking shape according to HIS life in me. I long to be changed, but He has to do it. I don’t want to go around kicking fridges for the rest of my life.
BJ
posted by BJ at 8:34 a.m.
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