Ditch that old wineskin, NOW!
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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.
