When Jesus started His ministry, one of the first things he did was to encourage his followers to “change your hearts, for the Kingdom of Heaven has arrived” Matt. 4:17. He started talking to them about this new Kingdom he brought with Him, what it looks like and the principles upon which this Kingdom is based. Things like humility, love, kindness, hope, joy, peace. This was not what they expected! They had thought their long-awaited Messiah was going to come in as a warrior king and overthrow the Roman rulers!
Instead He described the importance of having a new heart that could contain this “new wine” because their old way of relating to God through rituals, performance and tradition wasn’t going to work. In Matthew 9:17 He asks the question, “And who would pour fresh, new wine into an old wineskin? Eventually the wine will ferment and make the wineskin burst, losing everything—the wine is spilled and the wineskin ruined. Instead, new wine is always poured into a new wineskin so that both are preserved.” This new wine, this supernatural river full of life and transforming power, was something so different they had no way to comprehend it with their old mindsets.
That “new wineskin” is ours, the instant we say yes to Jesus. We no longer belong to the Kingdom of this world and in some wonderful, supernatural way we become part of the Kingdom of Heaven. When we engage in whole-hearted worship, when we lay our hands on the sick to heal, when we prophesy or speak a word of encouragement or a extend a simple act of kindness we are accessing this Kingdom and bringing heaven to earth. We can’t always see what is happening with our eyes, but with hearts of faith we can believe transformation is happening and light is overtaking the darkness.
Often this transformation comes in seed form, but it is transformation nonetheless. The more we focus on what is eternal and what is “true, right, noble, pure and kind” (Phil 4:8), the more our thought life will align with God’s heart, and the more we will see His Kingdom manifest in and through our lives. It’s a reality beyond our understanding, and not limited by how we might be feeling on any given day.
May your heart be blessed to know that you: “can soar with joyful gratitude when you think of how God made you worthy to receive the glorious inheritance freely given to us by living in the light. He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom realm of his beloved Son.” Col. 1:12,13 TPT
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