New Wine!

Season of Crushing

Today I will be sharing with you guys my personal season of CRUSHING.

So about a month ago I prayed

“ a dangerous prayer”

If you never heard that term before, basically what it means is you think you know what you are asking but you actually don’t fully comprehend.

Like you don’t think about the process that something like that would take.

So......

I said God I want more of you but like really really more of you, new depths to you and your love for me. (This one saved me)

Rid me of myself (oooof this one wasn't fun at all!)

Show me every area that needs more of you.(Lets just say God went for the main vein on this one)

Should off stopped there but no! Overachiever here....

The grand finale was.

Reveal every hidden place in my life, where you are not fully in.

And well let’s just say God didn’t wait long at all, in fact he didn’t waste a second.

You see making New Wine has a process.

You need be connected to The Vine to bear any fruit

You must go through Pruning to bear more fruit and become a new wineskin

Grapes must be crushed to make wine Crushing must happen.

It all began with pruning

So for me it started what might sound silly to you and it sounded silly to me in fact I didn't even think it was pruning until it came time to doing it.

He asked me to remove my hair extensions.

You're probably thinking are you serious but if you know me, you know that I love all the things beauty, fashion, and designer.

That one wasn’t hard at all.

Then he said and now remove your eyelash extensions

Y’all now I am like are you serious God?! I’ve had these bad boys for 3 years, I can’t live without my lashes and what am I going to look like without them.

Ok! Fine....

And then what sounded petty and silly wasn’t silly.

I remember coming home and he said look at yourself in the mirror and I looked and my first though was

I look hideous! Hair gone, lashes gone

All Holy Spirit said was.....

“Remember what you prayed.”

He said lets work on your self image.

You see. He started with the outward that then led to my heart and my belief about myself.

As I was ready to walk away (Cause I was done staring at myself)

Holy Spirit said no I want you to keep looking at yourself until you can look past your flaws and find the beauty.

I remember standing there and five minute in something shifted I stoped knit picking every flaw and actually saw the beauty in myself.

Some of you might need to do that. You need to stare yourself in the mirror long enough to see the beauty in yourself and your worth.

In that moment I knew God gave me new eyes through which I was seeing myself.

BUT

What I didn’t know is that he was preparing me for the crushing.

You see what I also didn’t know was that in just a day or two, I will need to be able to see myself the way God sees me and not the world.

And my confidence can’t come from my hair or lashes but it has to come from within.

Let’s read......

John 15:1-5 ““I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” ““I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.”

So we must go through pruning to bear more fruit.

God had to remove a couple of things out of my life to produce more fruit.

I got to see that my value was placed in all that vs in who I really am.

The branches that produces zero fruit in my life had to go.

And I hope you are hearing me,

This has nothing to do with hair extensions or lashes. I am not saying you can’t have hair extensions or lash extensions.

We are not being religious here

But if there is something in your life that gives you more value than God he will remove it.

Here is what pruning also does

It prepares the wineskin for the New Wine

Before God makes new wine he has to prepare the wineskin

In Luke 5:37-38 ““And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins.

Story about wineskins:

A little bit about wineskins....

The reason that new wine needs to be poured into new wineskins is because new wineskins are flexible by nature so as the wine keeps fermenting and building up gas the wineskins are stretching

VS

Old wineskins are dried up and hard and they will simply crack and leak out the new wine.

So you see God had to first make sure that he dealt with the dead, dried up things in my lives because I could off gone through the crushing only to be a leaky vessel.

Also if I ignored Gods “Silly” instructions I can promise you I would off ended up bitter, broken women when the crushing came

We have to deal with the dead, dried up things in our life

So now....

That he changed my perspective it was time to work on my belief.

A. We must learn to hear the voice of God for ourselves

B. Having a trusted voice in your life is so important and if you need help

Jana is an incredible spiritual life coach.

C. Understanding that our identity doesn’t come from the world but form God.

He gave me two Identity names for this season of my life which was “Beautiful” and “Perfect”

When he gave me those two names I was in a coaching group session and I remember feeling so cliche as my time came to share in the group. I didn’t even feel like uttering those words.

Because you know what I heard right away?! Accusations

Things like.......

She thinks she is “perfect”

I thought no one is perfect but God.

And I heard the Holy Spirit say google the word perfect

So I did.....

Perfect: having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics;

Verb: make (something) completely free from faults or defects, or as close to such a condition as possible.

The Holy Spirit said “ Isn’t that what Jesus did for you?”

That’s why your Father calls you perfect.

I remember tears started streaming down my face because it hit me to my core.

You guys the reason I am sharing this with you is because I know some of you are sitting here today just getting beat down and annihilated by the lies from the enemy and I am so sick of it.

ENOUGH!!!!

You need to know that you get to say when enough is enough.

The enemy tries to feed you garbage and you get to choose if you want to consume it.

Know this.....

The voice of the enemy is always louder, he shouts condemnations, accusations and lies.

While Holy Spirit whispers the TRUTH.

So what is it going to require to hear TRUTH? It’s going to require some quiet time.

(Do a demostration)

See noise requires almost no attention while the soft voice requires an attentive ear.

And of course the biggest thing is you have to want change.

Remember I asked for all those things in the beginning.

God won’t twist your arm for change.

If we keep reading in Luke it says....

Luke 5:39 “But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”

When we become comfortable and complacent with where we are at.

We choose to keep consuming the old wine.

While God is saying let’s make new fresh wine.

This applies to every single person, it doesn’t matter if you are a pastor, visitor, worship leader, mother, father, young or old.

It doesn’t matter! We all can get comfortable at times and say “The Old is Fine”

But God is saying today there is so much new wine he can make only if you allow him.

Here is the the thing you can choose to either hang on vine and look pretty.

OR

You can be harvested and be a sweet fruit without potency.

But neither one of those will give you potency.

Why do we want to be potent?

The word potent means:

-Having great power

-Influence

-Effect

I don’t know about you but I want to carry more power of God

I do want to expand my territory of Influence in the world. The world is not afraid to Influence but the church is.

I want to make sure that what I do is effective. I want to be an effective mother, wife. I want what comes out of my mouth to be effective in someones life. The work that I do for the kingdom to be effective.

But all of that requires the CRUSHING.

I believe there an invitation for you.

To say yes God make my life potent, I want more of you.

But I have to say there is one thing that is absolutely required and that one thing is

HONESTY

I am about to get really Honest with you and I hope that this will give you courage to be honest yourself, with God and maybe you will have to get honest and vulnerable your spouse.

I do want to address fear really quick.

Because I know that fear is real and it’s crippling if not dealt with.

FEAR ALSO IS A LIAR.

Know that fear starts in our minds, so I pray against fear in this place and I silence you in Jesus name.

Fear will cause you to stay silent.

It will rob intimacy with God and or people

It can make you believe your alone.

But just remember fear is a liar.

Here are the lies I had to fight against. And you might hear these exact same things.

Are you sure you want to unravel EVERYTHING?

What if you wont be able to handle the weight off it?

Fear made me to question who I was and if I was enough in my marriage.

This is when I knew why pruning had to happen first.

If I was enough for my husband.

Again I could kick the fear in the face because I knew my true Identity and I saw myself with a different set of eyes.

But I will be honest some days it was easier to fight against the fears than other days.

As soon as I found myself giving into fear I felt the weight of the world on me.

SO this is very important that you can acknowledge what is a fear to release it.

So for me the crushing came in my marriage.

Remember I said I was going to be honest.

At one moment it felt like the rug was ripped off of every area in our marriage?!

Every area that you can possibly think of was exposed.

We both wanted potency in the area of family and marriage.

More power of God in our marriage

Expansion of territory to influence other marriages and families

Effective marriage

You guys I came to the point in my life where I could no longer rely on myself

Remember me praying “Rid me of myself”

He did.

I remember days when I would wake up and I would feel the tangible presence of God

Remember the Prayer “I want more of you”

I got more of Him

And today I can stand and testify that God is working and restoring my marriage in a miraculous way. He made us look at every single area in our marriage.

One day we both will stand here and share our whole story.

But I am telling you that

And its also going to require to be connected to the Vine the source of life to know when its time to update the wine skin and produce new wine. You see wine is the result of the fruit

Fruit is the result of vine

One without the other cant happen

Listen to what Jesus says in.....

John 15:4-17 “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.

When we are in him he is in us.

For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit.

For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father. “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved y…”

I want you to look beyond what people see or what you are willing people to see look at what is in the secret.

God might be unraveling some things today and shedding light on areas in your life that he wants to crush.