Prayer
“Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”
Matthew 9:17

Click here to read all of Matthew 9:14-26

Prayer

O Lord, I confess that I am a lover of old wineskins. I prefer the familiar, the comfortable, the safe. Yes, I want the new wine of Your kingdom in my life. Yet the thought of leaving behind my old wineskins is scary. So I want new wine in old skins. I admit it.

Help me, dear Lord, to discern the presence of Your new wine in my life. And help me to know how best to contain this new wine, so that I might use it well in the work of Your kingdom. Take away my fear of the new wineskins. Help me to trust You more, so that I might live more boldly and freely for You, a willing vessel of Your new wine, a person of new wine and new skins.
Postscript
In Jesus’s days, wine was often stored in carefully prepared skins of animals. As grape juice fermented and became wine, it expanded. The new skins had the ability to stretch, thus containing the wine and storing it for us. Old skins would split because they had lost the ability to expand. (The picture to the right is a modern wineskin. The old ones didn’t have plastic valves, I’m afraid.)
Pray the Gospels
Pray the Gospels is one of my devotional websites. The other is Pray the Psalms.