Ditch that old wineskin, NOW!

Our beautiful white star magnolia is in full bloom at the moment. As I was enjoying watching it burst into blossom, I noticed one of the flowers was having something of a malfunction. Instead of opening from the middle as usual, the furry bud cover had remained stuck, trapping the petal tips inside (as in the photo). Because my attention was drawn so strongly to this, I asked God what He wanted to tell me about it.

“The old wineskin is about to fall and the pure Bride will be released in spotless glory!”

These were the words that immediately popped into my mind. I know it is mixing metaphors, but my sense was that it is time for the constraints of the past to go, it is time for us - the people of God, both as individuals and corporately - to be fully released into all the potential within us.

Watching this bud over the course of a week, although the petals kept pushing out from the bottom, the furry cap stayed stuck fast. And then, one day I went out and the whole flower was gone! Looking around, I found it on the ground, still stuck in the cap. I was quite dismayed, wondering what it meant, as I was so looking forward to the “bursting forth” and the “breaking free”. I asked the Lord about it again and His response hit me hard.

It was a warning.

If you don’t let go of the old wineskin, not only will you fail to reach your potential, fail to bloom, but you will no longer even be attached to the tree. You will be separated.

Since this, I have been asking the Lord what the old wineskin represents. What am I still holding on to? What to I need to let go of?

As I continued to ponder on the old wineskin, and what it signifies, suddenly I saw a connection with some aspects of identity we have been sitting with over the last few months.

My husband has been a journey through this and we are digging deep into how we walk it. He felt the Lord telling him that he (and we all) need to lay down – even resign from – every identity that we have save one. Every identity except our identity as a child of God. We need to lay every other identity down at the feet of Jesus: parent, spouse, boss, worker, teacher, pastor, sister, brother, friend, whatever roles we play in life in our relationships with others and what we do; whether we are “the funny one”, “the grumpy one”, “the helpless one”, “the wealthy one”, “the accident prone one”, “the perfectionist”, “the spiritual one” or whatever other label we have attached to ourselves, we must let go of all of them. We need to strip ourselves bare of every identity we own or hold on to, everything about us. It is from this place we learn to stand on who we are in Jesus alone*.

To explain further, it reminds me of a season I went through some years back where God asked me to stop doing pretty much everything I was involved in. It was a year of learning to simply be – to find my identity, my value in being in Him rather than in what I did.

It is a tough place.

We live in a society where pretty much the first question we ask a new acquaintance is “What do you do?”. So much of our perceived value (in the eyes of the world particularly) comes from what we do, what we produce – our work(s), what we have to offer. Early on in my journey as a parent, when people asked me what I did, I had to catch myself as I would reply, “I’m just a mum”. Even though I chose to focus on parenting, it reflected back to me that I didn’t really value that role either. I believed what the world told me about it.

The truth is, most of us look to others around us for our validation, to reflect back to us that we are worth something, that what we do has value. It is why our fragile egos flip from feeling great when we get positive reinforcement to feeling despair, hopelessness or worthlessness when the feedback is not so flattering or even absent. This has become much more obvious in this era of social media, where everything we put out into the cyber world is measured through this lens.

However, if we have confidence about our identity in Christ, if we firmly plant our feet on Him as our Rock, everything we do, every role and “identity” that we take up becomes an offering to Him, and is for the building of His Kingdom. It ceases to be about getting our own needs for affirmation and validation met, but is rather an outworking of our assurance in who we are in Him. The mess of our deceitful hearts looking to their own agenda is replaced with a pure heart, pure motives, simply to serve God. And oh, there is such freedom in this place. Our master ceases to be public opinion and becomes the One who loves us unconditionally – not because of what we can do for Him, but because we belong to Him, we are His creation.

At the end of the podcast, there is an opportunity to spend some time with Jesus reflecting on those aspects of our identity that are not grounded in Him. You can do this on your own as well. Ask Him what aspects of your identity you need to lay down at His feet, to give up to Him. He may give them back to you, or may transform them into a new way of being. You can also ask Him what He wants to tell you about your identity in Him – what He loves about you, what He has placed in you – and ask Him what He wants to do through these. He may also ask you to wait until you have walked a while without any identity but as His child.

*If you are having difficulty with understanding what it means to be a child of God, a really helpful book is “Who I am in Christ”, by Neil T Anderson, or you can just look up images with the same information and there are many showing the key verses from Scripture.

Backing track CALM - Deep Instrumental worship (No copyright music) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzO5oe8hAaI

THE STAGE IS SET

I took this photo from our deck a few mornings back and I have found myself continually coming back to it, with the sense that there was more God wanted to tell me.

The first words that came to mind were “THE STAGE IS SET”.

I see a curtain, ready to be lifted, and with it is a sense of a kids’ concert. I can almost hear them giggling and shuffling behind the curtain, ready and waiting to enact the performance of their lives that they have practiced so hard to be ready for. Added to this is the sound of angels singing, again, excited for what is to come. They are like those in the orchestra pit, tuning their instruments, warming up for a big performance. Perhaps most importantly, I see the glory bursting out around the edges of the curtain – the curtain cannot contain it. The glory is getting so brilliant that the curtain can no longer cover or hide it.

Glory is about to burst out everywhere! Glory is about to BREAKTHROUGH!

Reflecting on what is meant by “the stage is set”, this definition made sense, that the stage is set “to make it possible for something else to happen” (Cambridge Dictionary online). What I am sensing is that everything is ready for the next act, that all the people and pieces are in place for a shift, for something new and it feels like a wedding feast. The joy, anticipation and excitement I am feeling are so palpable that I almost can’t sit still. I believe that in this act, God is going to reveal His glory in amazing ways. There are a number of aspects to this.

The first is that it is God’s act. Just as the curtain or veil was torn in two from top to bottom when Jesus died on the cross, if you look carefully at the photo, it seems that there is a tear starting at the top in the centre. He is the Director and Producer and we all need to be waiting attentively, with our eyes on Him to hear His call to “Action”.

The actors on the stage are His people, His pure and spotless Bride. Jesus said that we must be as little children to enter the Kingdom: dependent on Him; filled with joy; without guile; pure of heart. There is a sense that these are people God has hidden away for such a time as this – they have been in waiting, been in training behind the scenes but He is about to elevate them to centre stage.

Last year I had another picture that links in. The scene was a wedding. The vows had been said, the declaration had been made and the Groom was about to lift the Bride’s veil to seal the covenant with His kiss. In this moment, everyone gets to see the beauty and glory of the Bride as she reflects His glory, and that it is with great pride that Jesus reveals Her to the world. I sensed His very great love for His Bride, His people. His desire is to lift her up, to elevate her to be all He created her to be.

THE STAGE IS SET! Can you feel it? Keep your eyes on Him as you won’t want to miss what comes next! I’m excited!!

"Yours, Adonai, is the greatness, the power, the victory and the majesty; for everything in heaven and on earth is Yours. The kingdom is Yours, Adonai; and You are exalted as head over all." (1Ch 29:11, CJB)

It's not the issue you think!

Late last year, I had one of those moments when I suddenly saw something it was then impossible to “unsee”. While you’ll be relieved to know it wasn’t something visually untoward, it was an insight that completely changed my perspective and understanding. The obvious nature of it left me feeling both a little gobsmacked that I hadn’t seen it earlier, but also thinking it must be obvious to everyone and I was the last to see it. I still think it is pretty obvious, but perhaps people put it into the too hard basket, or for other reasons don’t want to engage.

My moment was around what I see as the major issue of our times. It has probably always been a major player, but in this season of great polarisation, it must become front and centre for all, no matter which side of the great divide you live on.

While so many are engaging with issues of masks, vaccines, virus, globalisation, climate change, radical laws, or whatever other polarising issue you’d like to pick, I suddenly realised that our enemy’s actual plan is to create as much division and strife as possible in our communities, societies and culture, and many of us are jumping on board and doing all the heavy lifting. It has happened far too quickly and easily.

As I have reflected on what God has been saying and showing me around this, I found myself confronted again and again with the numbers 222. I woke up at 2:22am, I looked at the clock later in the day: 2:22pm. 222 on the odometer, and then it was the turn of 111, even to the improbably cheap price of fuel: $1.11!

In the last few years, I have become more aware of the way numbers, letters and even pictures are all wrapped up in each character of the Hebrew alphabet. Each letter contains a wealth of information, not immediately obvious to those of us only familiar with the Roman (English) alphabet and how it works. There are no separate symbols for numerals – they simply use the letters to double up as numbers. So, seeing all these 2’s and 1’s, I went to one of my sources looking at the meanings associated with the letters that represent these numbers.

It was here I had another revelation. Both 1 and 2 are to do with unity. In my research there are some interesting links between 1 and 2. It is quite obvious that 1 is about unity - the concept of being in “oneness”. The number 111 is further reflective of the unity of the trinity. However, when I read through some information about 2, the information went back to the Garden of Eden. Here, we find that God took the “one” man, and through the division of taking a rib from his side, created a second person. Through the process of division, one became two. (Beautifully, in the creation of every new human being now, we see another take on this process: first two cells come together to become one, and then, through division and multiplication, they form one new being!)

In this place of differentiation, however, the risk of disunity came into being. There were now two who had the opportunity to have different opinions, to allow offence and hurt and all other types of dissension or discord. In the middle of all this possibility for division and break down, God also illustrated the way to a bond of unity through the marriage relationship – a precursor if you will, of the pathway to unity Jesus would bring. At the end of Genesis 2, we are told in verse 24 (CJB) “…a man…will stick with his wife and they are to be one flesh”.

I found this astounding. First God divided, then He brings back unity, a unity ultimately made possible through the death and resurrection of Jesus. One became two, given the choice to become one again, the choice to be in unity or to separate.

Even more beautifully, the picture of physical unity in marriage overlays onto the Church, the Body of Christ, His Bride! Alongside my ruminations of unity, the journey has included the concept of “unveiling”. One of my favourite passages of Scripture is from 2 Cor 3:18, where Paul reflects on the difference between Moses, who hid the fading glory of his encounters with God behind a veil, and our calling to have our faces unveiled, as God transforms us into His image, reflecting His glory to the world.

During a prayer time, I had a really overwhelmingly lovely picture of us as Jesus’ Bride. It was at the point in the wedding service where the groom lifts the veil and kisses the Bride. There were so many layers to this. The kiss is about sealing His commitment to us, His people. It’s about a covenant with Him, and it is about the fact that He already laid down His life for us. Then, as He lifts the veil, everyone (the whole world) gets to see the beauty and glory of the Bride. As a female, this is an easy vision to sit with. I suspect it may be a little more challenging for men. The question in the midst of the vision is whether we are willing to allow Him to truly husband us – to be our Protector, our Guide. Are we willing to submit all our desires to Him? And even more challenging, is the Bride, the Church, ready to be revealed, and in turn, to reveal God’s glory to the world? If we sit in the mess of disunity, perhaps not so much!

The starting point to having unity with each other is first to walk in unity with God. John 17:20-26 has been another scripture I have been sitting with for a number of years. As one of the longest recorded prayers of Jesus, it is obviously important. It is where Jesus prays for the unity of all believers; that our unity would be like the unity between Father God and Jesus – that we would be inseparable. I think it is one of the key areas the enemy likes to attack us in: divide and conquer!

The antidote to our disunity is all wrapped up in the two commandments Jesus gave us. Love God and love each other as ourselves.

Hmmm, how good are we at loving ourselves? 1 John (chapter 4 particularly), gives us a very clear insight into the Source of love. We must first receive God’s love, allow His love to impact and transform us, to lift us up, which requires us to see our own value and identity through His eyes, before we will be able to adequately love others. We must stop getting our identity, value and love primarily through the imperfect reflections we get from others. It must come from our ever deepening relationship with God.

Unity is all wrapped up in love.

We don’t have a hope in any relationship, in being the Church, or in impacting the world around us with the Kingdom of God until we can love unconditionally – not just when we’ve been “good”; not just when we agree with each other; not just when we have the same views about the “important” issues, but when we are (again!), willing to lay down our need to be “right” to preserve relationship. We can’t do it without God’s help though.

As a third wheel to all this, my word for this year is peace. I rejected it the first time round, and when it came up again, I groaned. I saw it as the cousin of patience: you only get it by experiencing the opposite!

However, as I took time to reflect on it and ask God about it, the Hebrew word “shalom” came to mind, so I went on a deep dive into its meaning. Some of the associated implications are: wholeness; integrity; harmony; completeness; unbrokenness; full; undividedness. Further, the post on Abarim Publications suggests that “peace-making” is about “Achieving such a level of understanding of irreconcilable elements that these can be understood and joined in…” Such promise! So much joy contained in these ideas!

Unity!

We can’t have unity without shalom-peace and unconditional love.

I suspect most of us have a significant journey of experience before we come anywhere near to doing unity well. I know I do. I know how much of a journey it has been to come to any place of unity and unconditional love within myself and I don’t claim to be at the end of that one. However, I do know that it is not something God expects us to do alone, to do in our own strength. He has given us His Holy Spirit for precisely that purpose – to help and guide us through, to show us the way to love well and to live in unity. All we need to do is decide whether we partner with Holy Spirit, or with the enemy of our souls. Every moment of every day is a new opportunity to choose!

(These photos were taken on our walk on Valentine’s Day in lockdown - someone had placed them at various places along the path. Such a lovely treasure hunt!)

The roadmap to freedom in the middle of lockdown.

Getting the news a week or so back that we would continue in intense lockdown for at least another two weeks sent me into something of a tailspin. Perhaps, like many, I’d been holding on to the belief that we would be able to at least lift some of the restrictions. But no. The hopelessness, powerlessness and despair I was feeling about our circumstances was threatening to overwhelm me.

Seeking the Lord for a way out of this emotional space, one that I could engage with, I found Him challenging me anew from an unexpected direction.

The answer was in forgiveness.

Forgiving someone I have no relationship with, no personal ability to impact (at least humanly speaking) but who had a great deal of power over me and my life was a whole new level for me, but I knew it was the answer for my true freedom. And even as I was struggling with this challenge and my lack of desire to forgive, I had a vision.

Jesus, face filled with joy and perhaps some amusement, pointed to something I was clutching in my hand, holding tight to myself. It was like He was giving me a playful poke: “what’s that you’re holding?” Looking at what He was showing me, I saw a black sticky ball of muck. Straight away, I knew what it was. Bitterness. Anger. Resentment. Frustration. The question was obvious. “Do you want to hold on to all that muck?”

No!

I am well aware that forgiveness is often not easy. However,

If we refuse to release our anger, our bitterness, our hatred, our resentment, I would suggest forgiveness is impossible.

In fact, the picture I had would suggest lots of things are pretty difficult to do when we are clutching a bundle of blackness to ourselves, not to mention the way it contaminates everything we touch.

As I observe many interactions on social media filled with vitriol, anger, belittling and other negative output toward people who have different opinions on either side of what has become the “great divide” of beliefs about pretty much everything these days, I see that

forgiveness is vital to the way ahead.

But it is not easy.

In my own involvement in a reasonably low-level disagreement, I realised the exceptional power of the drive to justify and defend ourselves. To step back and not respond, and especially to choose not to escalate, is tough, especially when others respond with emotive and irrational accusations.

In my own reflections about how to forgive someone I believe to be in the wrong, I heard Jesus’ words echo down through the ages:

“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.

Jesus underwent arguably the most unjustified conviction, punishment and painful death, and yet, in the midst of it, He could forgive the perpetrators. How?

Lately, I have found myself reflecting on the idea of Creator God being the Righteous Judge. Too often, it seems we use this to claim His favour toward us, that He will back “me”, because I am in the right. We take our own beliefs, (generally well justified, even if only by ourselves and our support crew), about who or what is good or evil, right or wrong, and overlay them on “God the Judge” to prove that “I am right and you are wrong”.

A major problem with this is that I don’t see the line between good and evil are so much of God’s focus. I think the view He takes in His judgement, the main trajectory of His desire, is much more regarding whether our actions and beliefs lead to life, or lead us to death.

It reminds me of the situation of Joshua at Jericho (Joshua 5:13), where Joshua encounters the angel of the Lord and asks whose side the angel is on. The angel’s response: “No”. In other words, he was not on one side or the other. An article I read recently as I was looking deeper into the concept of “Yahweh Sabaoth” as the Lord of Hosts, suggested similarly to this:

God is not about being on my side or your side, but about fulfilling His plans.

Perhaps it is we who are either on His side or not and perhaps it is time we took ourselves off centre stage and put Him back on! (But that is for another discussion…)

Coming back to forgiveness, I am realising our difficulty with forgiving lies in our judgement. “But Lord, they are wrong and I have been wronged! I won’t let them get away with it! Can’t I at least justify myself, prove to them that I am right and they are wrong?” I see Him with His finger on the big red buzzer. BZZZZTT! Wrong answer!

Forgiveness means I have to lay down my right and desire for personal justice, for personal vindication and exoneration. Sometimes God may grant these to us. Often (in my experience), He doesn’t, at least not in the overt way we might like. In the end, we have to lay all this desire down and allow God to be Judge. Only He knows all the details, all the heart motivations, not to mention the future and how it all ties into His plans, so only He can judge perfectly.

While we hold on to our own judgements about situations and people, we effectively “throw a spanner in the works”, at the very least in our personal journey and connection into His plans. If we want to see His perfect judgement at work, we need to lay down our own judgement (remembering that it will be by the same standards we will be judged – see Matt 7:1,2), which means forgiving:

“Not mine to punish, Lord, not mine to convict, not mine to determine the outcome and direction. I TRUST YOU to be the Righteous Judge and bring about Your judgements and outcomes in Your timing to maximise LIFE and because it will bring about Your purposes, just at the right time.”

The real kicker is, though, this is not something we can simply give intellectual assent to and move on. Unless we do the actual work of forgiveness, speaking it out, we will remain stuck. It can be tough, it can take time, and it can be a very real battle with our emotions - often it is an act of our will well before our emotions come along with us. To be the true Body of Christ, to be His pure Bride, though, we must shift out of the mentality of division and breaking unity, of holding on to our need or desire to be right over relationship, or we will not be able to partake in all that He has for us. But more on that soon!

(And if this is something that you struggle with in how to process it all, or just want someone to walk the journey of forgiveness with, please don’t hesitate to contact me. It would be my privilege to walk with you on this.)

It might feel like we're locked in the tomb, but SUDDENLY is coming!

Early this week, as I asked the Lord what He wanted to show me, there were two plants in my garden that particularly caught my attention. The first were some of my azaleas. Although at first glance, they didn’t appear to have any blooms on them, on closer inspection I realised they were covered in tiny buds that will SUDDENLY burst forth. I felt the Lord saying that in the place where we see nothing happening there will be a SUDDEN shift.

The second plants were the daffodils, and the word trumpet. The centre part of the daffodil is known as the “trumpet”. It felt to me that the TRUMPET is being sounded. As I reflected on what that was like, I found the following reasons for the trumpet to be blown on the “One for Israel” website:

· Time to pack up camp and move on, when the Israelites were traveling in the desert

· Time to gather the people and call an assembly

· To mark a sacrifice on a feast day

· A warning of war or danger

· To praise

· To declare a procession or feast

· Proclaiming a king

· Assembling the troops for battle

· To be used in battle

· To declare victory

It doesn’t take much to see how this relates to the season we are in. It is time to move into a new place; time to gather in unity (even if it is only virtual!); we are in a battle, but we can still praise and proclaim Jesus as King. He has already won the victory!

A number of people have suggested that right now we are in a “selah” moment, a time to pause, to stop. This morning I read of a picture Kaylie Singh had “…of a dark room and a person trying to force the door behind him to stay open…because he wouldn’t be able to see anything…there was a time of waiting…in the dark before the new door would be opened to him.”.

As I pondered this, I was reminded of how the disciples must have felt when Jesus was crucified and laid in the grave. The despair and hopelessness, the sense of loss of all the dreams and desires they had for the past three years with Him. There was no going back, but equally there seemed no way forward. And in that, I had a sense of us, joining Jesus in that tomb. Many of us have been seeking a way out of this "dark room" we find ourselves in. We are looking for any crack or crevice where light might enter, that might indicate an escape route. The door we came in - the desire to go back the way we came, back to "normal" - is enormously attractive, but even that is firmly shut to us.

Reflecting on the tomb, it is the place of laying down all our striving, all our desires and even our fears, and there is a sense we have no other choice but to wait on Him, to wait for Him to show us the way forward. However, at the same time, it fills me with excitement, because when the tomb opens, I see that the darkness will SUDDENLY be flooded with glorious light; there will be a SUDDEN bursting forth and the TRUMPET blast calling us into victory and the new season with our King!

You have been granted immunity!

A couple of nights back, I woke up about four times. Each time it was like someone was rousing me, and the word “immunity” was rattling around in my mind.

In the morning, I had a proper conversation with Jesus as to what this was about. Knowing He doesn’t do fear, nothing I had come up with in the night had been landing comfortably. A couple of things then came to mind.

The first was the idea from television game shows where a person is “granted immunity”. The second was a question:

“If you knew you had immunity, what would it be like?”

Immediately I felt His joy and I knew the answer:

FREEDOM!

As I looked further into the understanding of what immunity can mean, three things came to the fore.

In law, to be granted immunity means not being punished.

In health, having immunity means not getting sick.

In the tv shows, being granted immunity means you get to stay in the game.

While many of us would probably like to know we had immunity to a certain virus-that-shall-not-be-named, I don’t think God gave me this word as that sort of promise. I sense that it is actually about having immunity to the WORLD and all the dis-ease that it carries.

So what does this mean for us as followers of Yeshua?

It means those same three things:

We are freed from condemnation and punishment.

We are freed from the sickness of fear, worry, despair and hopelessness.

We get to stay in the game so we can help others to walk in the same way.

This Easter, when so much is different and for many, so much is so difficult, our freedom is so much more important to understand. But it is not freedom as the world sees freedom. It is not about freedom to do as we please or to break out of our “stay at home” regulations. It is freedom in our relationship with God to come before Him, to have true and ever deepening relationship with Him, to experience the depths of His love, His grace, His mercy, His joy, His hope for the future in spite of all we see going on around us.

At Easter, we remember what Jesus won for us on the cross, that through His death and resurrection, we are set free from the effects of the virus of sin and brokenness. No matter what our past, what our struggles, we can find freedom from them as we can now come before the throne of grace and mercy with complete confidence of our acceptance there. The blood of Jesus is more than enough to set us free from all the world would like to throw at us.

So I take this word, “IMMUNITY” and I throw it out to you to claim as your own, as a special Easter gift from King Yeshua.

Feel free to take hold of it, ask God what it will look like for you to live in immunity and pass it on to someone else who needs it! You can’t lose.

Blessings to you and yours this Easter,

Ruth.

“This is why we do not lose courage. Though our outer self is heading for decay, our inner self is being renewed daily. For our light and transient troubles are achieving for us an everlasting glory whose weight is beyond description. We concentrate not on what is seen but on what is not seen, since things seen are temporary, but things not seen are eternal.” 2 Cor 4:16-18 (CJB)

(If you are struggling to experience this freedom, I would like to encourage you this Easter to seek God, to set aside time and ask Him to show you the next step, or even to take away those things that hold you back, that keep you stuck in the fear and despair cycle. And if you are really getting nowhere, please message me. I have some tools that can help, and if needed we can still meet over the internet. Don’t stay stuck – there is so much more coming in the days ahead, so much that God is wanting us to partner with Him in as we see His Kingdom come on this planet. Don’t miss out!)