NEW WINE SKINS

There are issues in our lives that we ‘think’ we have dealt with, forgiven, and moved past.

This was me, so I thought. If you have ever found or discovered yourself in that position, you will understand what I’m about to put on paper.

As we read things from time to time, the purposes for doing so vary. The subject arouses our curiosity, we need some specific information, someone suggests a ‘good book’, or someone is needing advice on something they have written, or a myriad of other reasons.

Regardless of the reason, we proceed to read. THEN it happens-the subject of the reading material exhumes an issue we thought we had buried. The coffin is opened and once again we are faced with the pain that we thought we had sufficiently dealt with and thought was long gone.

I found myself in this position VERY recently. The first thoughts that came to my mind were ‘raw flesh’. The next thought was what do you do with raw flesh and how can you make it into something useable - no longer bleeding, needing attention.
My next thought was that raw flesh is like the raw hide of an animal. This progressed to how do you tan raw hide and make it usable.

It was then that the LORD showed me this is how new wineskins start out. “Nor do men put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out, and the wineskins are ruined but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matt 9:17

My choice is to truly allow myself to be healed so I can be a new wineskin and GOD can fill me with HIS new wine. From that point on I can be of use to others with their ‘raw flesh’ - their wounds.