Divine Restoration // Step Into Your Divine RoleSample

Scrap the Old Way of Living

What is it you search for, if it isn’t for Me? Why do you say you search for Me when you look for what is evil everywhere you turn? You think about how to get ahead, how to please, how to be successful, how to get more things done in a day. You think about how to get people to think well of you, how to twist truth so it serves your interests. You find it expedient to do things so the outcome is fitting for you, for your terms. You are self-focused, and your perspective of life is limited by your lack of faith, your self-focused heart.

I have come that you might know what is true and what is good. I have come that you will see that there is more to life than trying to figure out the puzzle of success. That there is more to this life than working for yourself. That there is more to this life than pretending you are doing good for others when you haven’t yet satisfied the desires of your hungry heart.

I have come to bring rescue for your heart. To fill the empty places that you have ignored for so long. You can’t fill them yourself, you see. You can’t fill a well with water that is poison and expect it to be nourishing when you are thirsty. You can’t expect to fill your days with striving and working and pretending to do good when you are filled with fear and self-loathing and worry about how you will get ahead. 

Your heart is hollow, empty of remorse for your sins when you swallow them up, keep going and committing the sins over and over again without repentance. You are made to turn away from what is evil and instead turn to what is alive and joy-filled and good. But you can’t even recognize the good I have for you when it is right in front of you. For you are blind to goodness, deaf to song, immune to true Life when your desire for success in this world is more important than love for Me. 

Your spirit is thirsty. Your soul is hungry. But what do you give it to drink? What do you give it to eat? Turn away from the old ways of living and seeing and doing. Turn away from what is not giving you Life. Stop doing the same thing day after day when it is not good for your heart. There is no other chance you will have than this one life I give you. And it is enough. It is more than enough. It is all the time you need. 

This day. This day. I am enough for you. This day.

So come, my child, to where the ground is solid. Come, sister, brother, to where the air is sweet. It is not good to focus on the world as it is and expect that that is all there is. It is not good to look to this unrestored earth and think there is not more that is available to you. There is more. There is more. And I am it. I am the more. I am all you need. 

Tear down the old ways—give them to Me, and I will destroy them within you. I will help you to shed the old wineskins and give you new ones. I will replace the old wine with what is new. And you will be filled with Me. You will be restored in Me. You will begin new habits, have new perspective—a new outlook on living that sustains you and emboldens you and refreshes you. For you are made to love with a heart that is glad in Me. And loving Me means throwing aside the old ways. There  is not room for them anymore. So don’t wait. Don’t second-guess. Don’t try to work around these simple words I say. I have come for you. Right here. Right now. Drop the old things you carry so I can give you new things to believe in, love, and do.

Exercise:

We like to have things our way, don’t we? We like what Jesus offers. But we try to layer His teaching onto our existing lives. We try to patch Jesus’ new, good ideas onto lives that we, if we’re honest, are not really willing to change. 

But it doesn’t work. Saying yes to Jesus is something different. It is more than saying yes to some good ideas—because grace is involved; because His resurrection power is involved. Jesus offers an all-encompassing, all-consuming new and different kind of life—a life, while not immune to problems and trials and suffering—far from it—that gives us the hope and joy and peace we’ve always been looking for, and which we cannot find any place else. Following Him means embracing these new lives and letting go of our old ones. It means throwing out our old ways so that new life can flourish.

Do you remember Jesus’ teaching, in the book of Luke, about what happens if we try to use a patch, made of new fabric, on a garment that is old? He said the new fabric wouldn’t match. It would want to shrink in a way the old fabric would not—and it would tear off . . . probably making the original tear even worse.

And, similarly, He taught about what happens if we put new wine into an old wineskin: the new wine will expand when it ferments and the old wineskin, which is worn out and unable to flex anymore, would burst and the new wine would be lost.

Both of these parables are in Luke chapter 5, and they are meant to impress upon us how trying to grab hold of a few good ideas from Jesus and to add them on to what we already believe—it just won’t work. Jesus is something completely new; His truth, His Way, His grace—they change everything. He offers healed hearts, renewed minds, and restored lives. He can’t simply be merged and mixed with our old ways of living and thinking.

But we live in a culture that tries to do that, don’t we? We treat life like a buffet. We try to grab maybe a bit of pop psychology, a tiny bit of Eastern religious practice maybe, big scoops of works-based theology and stubborn idolatry, and some street smart cynicism too. And then we squeeze the truth of Jesus over there, onto one corner of our plate—a side portion on an overflowing platter that we can barely manage to hold.

To follow Jesus means surrendering the old lives we’ve been living—with all our old belief systems and all our flawed thinking. Because Jesus wants our whole hearts, not just a small part of them. He wants His healing and goodness and love to penetrate and saturate our entire beings and every part of our lives—not just those portions we think we’re comfortable with.

Taking us a level deeper, Graham Cooke narrowed in on the Greek word Jesus used to describe the old wineskin in the parable. Cooke wrote: “You can’t tell in the English, but Jesus is making a point with a play on words. He doesn’t use the traditional word for old, which is palai. Palai means ‘antique.’ Sort of like ‘vintage.’ It’s a good kind of old. Instead, he uses the word palaios, which implies that something is useless and worn out.”

Jesus is offering you new wine. He is offering you new life, much better than your existing life. But you can’t accept it with old wineskin. If we try to hold onto old sins, old idols, old habits, old, worn out ways of thinking, while trying to add in the teaching of Jesus—the stuff that feels comfortable and convenient to us; the stuff that we think might work into our existing lives—something is going to break. The truth and grace of Jesus are just too powerful. And our old ways are useless and worn out. They simply cannot contain the glory and power of Jesus. Our old wineskins are going to burst.

So, says Cooke, the “only question is, how long are you going to keep trying to hold onto the old?”

Consider the ways in which you’ve been trying to keep hold of your old sin, your old idols, your old habits, your old ways of thinking—while, at the same time, trying to say yes to new life from Jesus.

You might ask yourself this question: How do you feel stuck? What’s obviously old and worn out in your life, but hard to let go of, too?

What are your old wineskins? Try to name them. And then offer them to Jesus—and ask for His help in letting them go.

Now come up with one change you can make, starting today, to begin the process of getting rid of the old wineskins in your life. What’s one thing you can do, now, to partner with Holy Spirit to overcome the sin and idols and bad habits and wrong thinking in your life?

Jesus, help me get rid of my old ways. They’ve become useless to me; worn out. So, I’m done delaying and negotiating. I’m done second-guessing. I’m done trying to work You and Your teaching into my old life. You offer me an entirely new life, and I want to have it. I want to embrace it. I want all of it. So, help me. I will do whatever I need to do to walk in the new.

In Your name, Jesus, Amen.