I know without doubt that many times over the last several years God spoke to my heart to step out in faith on a number of occasions to believe Him for healing and provision, and even though I was obedient and acted in faith, I rarely saw the desired result. This put a hardness in my heart toward God that I didn’t even know was there. I just couldn’t figure out why, if I was obedient and acted in faith, I wasn’t seeing the expected results. God is faithful though, and through my pursuit of Him, He showed me why I wasn’t seeing His promises manifest in my life. Over the course of the last several months, in my desire to know the truth and in my search for the truth, God has been working to remove the hardness from my heart by guiding me into a deeper understanding of His Word. Months ago, when I asked God what my problem was (because I knew God wasn’t the problem, He does not lie and does not change, therefore I knew I needed to take a closer look at myself), I clearly heard Him tell me that it was because I was pouring old wine into new wineskins. In other words, I have not been able to fully enjoy the abundant life that Jesus tells us He came to provide because I continued to mix Old Covenant practices with my New Covenant freedom, which has limited the effectiveness of the New Covenant in my everyday life.
In Luke 5:37-38 Jesus talks about old and new wineskins. Here Jesus says, “And not one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” I have learned in the last few months that understanding this parable and applying the lesson taught to our lives is the solution for anyone who is struggling to experience the freedom we have through the New Covenant.
In this parable the old wine and the new wine represent the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. We represent the wineskins. When we accepted Jesus as our Savior we became a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17); we are the new wineskins. However, we cannot put the old wine (the practices of the Old Covenant) into the new wineskins or the wineskins will be ruined. Jesus is telling us that we cannot mix Old Covenant practices with the New Covenant because the result will be failure instead of victory. Sadly, many Christians, including myself, haven’t been fully experiencing the abundant life that we have been given through Jesus because we continue to mix the Old and the New Covenants.
The only way we can truly live the abundant life that Jesus died for us to have is by fully understanding the New Covenant and by walking in it day to day. John 19:30 gives us the most important principle to live by in the New Covenant. On the cross, in His last moments, Jesus cried out, “it is finished.” Jesus bore all of our sins, all of the curses, all of our pains and sicknesses on that cross. It is finished! We are new creations in Christ and through the finished work of the cross God has already provided to us all that we could ever need. Like me, you might be asking yourself how we take hold of what God provided to us. The answer is so simple even children can understand it; we believe that it is finished and appropriate all God has given us by faith. Appropriating faith is not asking God to give us something that He has already provided, or praying in hope that God will bless us. It is simply declaring what we have through the finished work of the cross (biblical declaration), thanking God for it, and acting in accordance to what we have declared.
God showed me that although I was stepping out in faith, I wasn’t doing it in full assurance of faith, meaning I didn’t fully believe that I already had what God had promised. Instead, I was stepping out hoping that through my acts of faith God would bless me. This is Old Covenant living, and I was trying to mix old wine into a new wineskin. You see, in the Old Covenant God responded to our faith, but now our faith has to be a response to the finished work of the cross. Looking back I realized that even through my prayers I was sometimes just praying in hope that God would change a circumstance, not fully believing that He already had. This kind of living will only lead to our frustration and to a mischaracterization of our good, generous, and loving Father.
Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit my eyes have finally been opened to my Old Covenant practices (and looking back through my journals I realized God had been telling me this for several years now, I just wasn’t getting it) and I know now how to fully embrace the New Covenant in my daily life to live in the fullness of God.
It is my desire to help all who are frustrated in their walk with God because they are doing exactly what I had been doing. I am going to document the everyday practicality of living only in the New Covenant here on this blog in hope that others will benefit from my experiences. I am delivered, healed, prosperous, loved, and so much more. It was finished on the cross 2000 years ago. I have the victory, we have the victory! God asks only that we believe it and receive it through Christ.
The Truth in Action: If you truly want to live a life of victory in your Christian walk it is paramount that you understand the New Covenant fully and apply it to your life. This isn’t necessarily easy because we often have to first undo a lot of religious doctrine that we have been taught over the years. Jesus said in Luke 5:39 that those who have drunk the old wine do not immediately desire the new. We have to desire to live only in the New Covenant, otherwise we are not fully appreciating Jesus’ sacrifice for us. A good place to start is understanding how much God truly loves us and how much He wants us to live in His fullness. We should approach life from a place of rest, like Adam and Eve first did, not from a place of work. Toil came after the fall of Adam, but we have been restored to our rightful place through Jesus and we need to learn to live from this place. Learn the truth by studying God’s Word under the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit who will lead you into all the truth (John 16:13). Read the Bible from the perspective of “it is finished,” and your eyes will be opened just as mine were.
Here are a few resources that truly opened my eyes to the reality of the New Covenant.
Books:
The New Covenant by Reinhard Hirtler
Live Without Limits by Reinhard Hirtler
Love: The Way to Victory by Kenneth Hagin
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
Podcasts:
Reinhard Hirtler – New Covenant Living Part 1 and Part 2
New Covenant Living Part 1
New Covenant Living Part 2https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-reinhard-hirtler-podcast-30959668/episode/new-covenant-living-part-two-42164185/