Breakthrough of Change

What does new wine, new wineskins, Prince  and change, prayer blockage, and God waiting have in common? Maybe more than you think. Take a listen.

Transcript

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Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in to Unfiltered, and this is yours truly, Jesse B. A quick shout out to new listeners in Yellville, Arkansas, Columbus, Ohio, Lanexa, Kansas, and Hawk Point, Missouri. As always, if you enjoy the content and know of others who might get something out of it, share an episode or two with them, and don't forget to hit that subscribe button on whatever platform you choose to listen to. Mark 222 from the New Living Translation reads as follows, and no one puts new wine into old wineskins, for the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins. In the Old Testament, new wine, and the Hebrew word for that is terosh, and I may be mispronouncing that, but it's spelled T-I-R-O-S-H, and it's often associated with prosperity of the promised land and as a symbol of God's physical provision. Bountiful harvests and overflowing vats of new wine were seen as rewards for faithfulness and signs of God's favor. In fact, Proverbs three, nine through ten out of the ESV reads, Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all your harvest, then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine. Now I've never made wine, nor am I familiar with the wine making process, but upon research, wineskin was typically made of goat skin in the ancient times to store, transport, and pour new wine. Because new wine is effervescent during the fermentation process, the bubbles will cause the wineskin to expand. And since leather will expand, it makes sense to put new wine in new wineskins. The problem with putting new wine into old wineskins is that the old or used leather naturally loses elasticity, so if new wine was poured into old wineskins, the wineskins would burst instead of stretch, and then of course it's useless. In Mark 222, Jesus used this analogy to illustrate the incompatibility of new teachings with rigid teachings of traditional religious leaders. The new wine represented the fresh, dynamic, and expansive message of Jesus' gospel, grace, and the Holy Spirit. The old wineskins represented the rigid legalistic systems, man-made rituals and rules and closed minded mindsets. Now I believe that God gifts us with talents, interests, goals, and abilities early on in our formative years. In fact, Psalms 139 13 tells us for you were you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. This verse highlights God's closeness and involvement with each and every individual because not only did he watch us, he took great precision and care to build our life before anyone even knew we existed. The use of the words knit or knitting requires intentional attention to detail, intentional patience and intentional precision. Even though the enemy may try to get it into your thoughts that you are a mistake, or maybe the enemy has used the mouth of your own mother and father to spew those very words and then some. But you, my friend, are not a mistake to God. Don't ever forget that. It's not wrong to dream and turn those dreams into goals. There is nothing wrong with achieving those goals. Faith is not the problem. Success is not the problem, wanting, needing things is not the problem, but identity is. Over and over again we say and we hear, stay grounded in the faith. And that's all fine and good, but to me it's kind of like getting the cart before the horse. In order to stay, quote unquote, grounded in the faith, we need to have a clear understanding of who God is and therefore who we are in relation to him through Jesus. And this is one of the functions of the Holy Spirit, which is to teach us, to guide us in these truths as we study Scripture, pray, and listen to teaching. As adults, we are no different from children in the fact that we still dream and have goals. We want to have careers that will afford us the lifestyle that we want to have. We want to be around like-minded individuals, and if you have children, you also have hopes and dreams for them, which may or may not be what God has for them. We also need to be reminded that just like the Lord knit you together, he is also knit your children together. Where I am going with this can be summed up in everybody's favorite word, and that is change. Now track with me for a moment here. If I were to be face in face to face in person with each and every one of you, there might be some who would say or ask, Does God just want me to live a mundane life with no other purpose than the nine to five working for pennies just settling for what coming or what comes down the pike just because I might get into heaven someday? My answer to you is of course not, yet somehow that answer just doesn't satisfy on its own. As I've stated before, that we don't have a problem with God of the past, we don't have a problem with the God of the future. But believing God is still God in the present is where we face the biggest challenges. As we have seen from Psalm 139.13, the verse that I read not even a minute ago, that God has invested interest in you, and He has invested interest to keep you. Now look at Psalm 139.13 as one of many verses showing God's thoughts toward you, and by all means, don't forget that Jesus paid the ultimate price for you. So yes, God has invested interest in your life, your soul, and your spirit. God does care about your goals and ambitions and desires and interests in life. There's nothing wrong, like I said before, with wanting to be successful. There's nothing wrong with wanting to get out of debt and stay out of debt. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have nice things and nothing wrong with wanting to live your best life. But what happens when we pray and nothing happens? A day turns into a week, a week to a month, a month to a year, and maybe several years. And what happens when those wants actually turn into needs? I would suffice to say that the problem is not in the wanting or needing things, and it's not in asking God for them. The problem is not a lack of faith. It's not the problem of unconfessed sin, as some nosy nellies probably would say. Unconfessed sin is really not a problem if you're open and honest with the Lord and want to do right by him. Now the problem could be asking amiss, but again, that goes with being open and honest with the Lord. It's something that can be remedied. So the problem isn't an answered prayer. God is still God and he is not intimidated by what we decide or what somebody else decides is impossible. The problem isn't with him at all. What if God wants to answer your prayer, but he's waiting on something? He's waiting on you to change. Just like the illustration used of pouring new wine into old wineskins, if we are wanting God to do something new in our lives, we first need to humble ourselves, draw near to the Lord, and ask him what it is about ourselves that needs to change. I recently heard a podcast that if God would just give you everything you wanted when you wanted, it would you would probably die, or just lose everything as fast as you got it because you didn't know how to handle it. The thing is we always need to remember that God is in the life-changing business. Just because we make the decision to live for Christ doesn't mean that that's the only experience that we will ever have with the Lord, and that is not the only experience that He wants you to have with Him. He continues to change us through the power of the Holy Spirit to make us more Christ like. This is a daily process, and it should be reflected in our daily lives, even though our lives are far from perfect. Living for Christ means the shedding of our old ways, our old habits, our old thoughts, our old selves to embrace the new. Oftentimes the things we pray for means that we have to change bequ before those things come into fruition. For example, take a senior in high school, better yet, graduation day. They have waited thirteen long years to them, probably thirteen short years to their parents, but they've been waiting for the day of graduation. And afterwards, it's always a strange period of transition. The friends that they spent thirteen years of their life with are now going their separate ways. Some are going off to college, some straight into the workforce, some may be going into the military, some may be getting married, and so on. When the realization hits that things will never be the same, there's a period of grieving where they may go wild, they may withdraw, they may start making choices that are less than desirable in their lifestyle. Even though graduation is important and something to be celebrated, most often it comes with a grief process because the person they were when they were growing up is not the same person that they are and will be in the future. Missing the past is something that we all grieve in some form or another. Now there's been things in my life that I have had to choose to close the door on. But in order to live out the life God wants me to have requires letting go of things that served me in the past and embrace what will serve me in the future. And it's been hard. I've had to let go of a home I've grown up in, the church I grew up in, and now God is chiseling away at some of the relationships that I cannot maintain in this next season of life. And that's really been a hard one to come to terms with because it's not been pretty. I'm not saying that I have chosen to close the door on those relationships, but I have let the distractions of those relationships, because it was a distraction, interfering with God's work in my life. And truth be known, if he's working on one person, he's working on another person too, even though we may not see it. But sometimes that will come with a period of separation. In 2014, Prince wrote one of the saddest and most reflective songs that I have ever heard, and I think probably one of the most reflective songs that he's ever written, and it's called The Breakdown. The first verse says, Listen to me closely as the story unfolds. This could be the saddest story ever been told. I used to want the house with the biggest pool. Reminiscing now, I just feel like a fool. And the second verse with the most haunting lyric that I've ever heard says, I used to throw the party every New Year's Eve, first one intoxicated, last one to leave. Waking up in places that you would never believe, and now listen to this part. Give me back the time, you can keep the memories. Wow. Give me back the time, you can keep the memories. Now whether Prince was talking about himself or someone close to him, we probably will never know. But considering that he passed away in 2016, just two years after the song was released, it has all the ingredients of and a stark reminder that life is short, and having everything we want doesn't necessarily mean that we have everything we need. Another part of that is while God responds to obedience and honesty, keep in mind that Satan will always offer a counterfeit. In other words, and I'm just using this as an example, ladies, you might be praying for that perfect man, and then a few weeks later one comes along, but he's the furthest away from God that you can imagine. Well, I'll just change him. I can pray for him, and I can be Jesus to him. Let me tell you something, out of experience, that never works, and I am begging you to listen to your mama Jessie. Because I know what I'm talking about. This has happened to me not once, not twice, but three times in my life, and yes, all with different men. So I've decided that when the Lord wants me to have a husband, he will issue me one until then I am happy and content being single. But I say that to say this. We can pray and pray and pray for something we know in our heart of hearts what we want. But what I'm saying, wait on the Lord, do not take a counterfeit. And how you're gonna know it's a counterfeit is if it's contradictory to the scriptures. That's the way you're gonna know. So my challenge to everyone, including myself, is think about things in your life that you want to change. Things that you want to see happen, things that you need, things that you uh desire. Maybe there's a goal that you've set for yourself way back when and you gave up on it, but if it's still in the back of your mind and still in your heart, there's pretty good indication that God hasn't given up on that. Ask yourself, just to be sure, if it's in alignment with God's plan for you, and then ask him to reveal his plan as you draw closer to him, and by no means don't be afraid to ask what it is in your life that needs to change for his plan to be fulfilled in you. Because neglecting to change or not seeing that there may be things that you need to change could very well be what's blocking you. He is not just God, he is your heavenly father. Talk to him. Love you guys. Good night.