ENDLESS NEW

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. EZEKIEL 36:26, ESV.

His words came to me saying "I will make wine out of you, even new wine will I make". I didn't understand, the concept was too grand. What is wine? What is new wine? How long does it take to make wine? Who am I that I would be made new and not just new, new wine? How long till the newness fades? Am I not wine already? Does He mean He wants to change my wineskin? I really don't understand. It's just two words but it's shaking my world and I can feel displacement inside of me.

"You will fast through the first quarter of 2018 from food, internet and everything that doesn't have my signature on it. I want to work on your heart. You're on a journey to spiritual evolution. I am taking you to a place where all and everything about you will be orchestrated solely by my Spirit. You are at the end of you, the death to flesh. I will make you and remake you till all you see is me. I will teach you focus. Throughout 2018 you will learn focus and Hebrews 12:1-3 will be your guide. For the rest of your days you will live focused. I will begin by decluttering your heart. That is why you will fast for so long, that is why I am always asking you to fast and that is why you won't stop fasting. I am teaching you consecration. Your life is that of consecration. High consecration I say. So, let's start with New Wine. Let me show you what new is, let me make you new wine. Let go of your past understanding of new. I'm taking you through new experiences. You're in the season of new wine. Your life is new wine".

"Wow Lord, wow! This is grand. This is too grand. This is beyond grand. Who am I? Just what could I have I done to deserve this? I'm undeserving. To think that my now is as broken as broken can be and my being filled with bitterness but there is hope for a future of new. Wow. How can you be so mindful of me that your plan for me is beyond grand and your words to me are filled with kindness. Wow. I'm scared Lord, I'm scared. The journey ahead is really grand. It's far above me". 

So we started the journey. I was excited, hopeful, scared, very scared in fact. I would be made new wine, that's what He said. But I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready for opening. I wasn't ready for a new "new". I would be coming into the realization of too many things. I will be shedding a lot of weight. Weights I have always wanted to shed but haven't succeeded in shedding because a part of me clings desperately to them. These weights are walls and boundaries. Consecrations aren't guides anymore they have become walls. Friendships are not two-sided because I lock up. I'm scared, I'm always scared. Most times I can't define my fear. I am just so scared. This fear, this strong fear was causing me to shut everything out. If it's not surface errrm I'm not in. I can't even handle my depth how much more others? But He was asking me to open up and let go of my fears, my hurts, my insecurities, everything other than Him. How could I? I didn't know what that meant. I haven't lived like that before. He was asking me to just be, to rest. It felt so impossible because I don't know how to. I want to, I have tried to, I try to but I can't. I end up closing up more. So I was really scared at the beginning when we started the journey.

As we treaded the path I have never been, that road called unknown, I began to loose it. My heart felt like stone and my senses seemed as if they were dead. I couldn't express myself. I have never been so good at expressing myself but it was never this bad. Verbal expressions are hard for me but I have learnt to give life to my thoughts by penning them or simply letting my eyes overflow. So, when everything I thought was starting to smooth out was chaos in disguise and my means of expression to the only person I could get real with taken away, it was more than stuffy inside. God was out of reach. I was at an unknown place in life, experiencing strange things with a mysterious God whose voice I couldn't recognize and face I couldn't place.  I wasn't going to take it. One day I'm having panic attacks, the next migraine. If it's not that it's sleeplessness night after night right in the middle of a school session with deadlines to meet up with and duties to carry out at home. Let's not mention the people I am supposed to be responsible for. It was too much. I rebelled and refused to pray in the Spirit for more than a week. What was the essence of praying for so long intensely in an Heavenly language when I can't feel His presence and make out His thoughts and intents?

It was in this place I started relearning sensitivity. He was actually speaking. He always speaks. When I inquired to know the reason behind the wilderness. He told me how I wasn't allowing myself to feel. In His words, I was normalizing pain and breezing through tough times like they are nothing. I was becoming self-sufficient by fighting the very things I should cast on Him and then negating the essence of the new life which is dependence- absolute reliance on Him. He further said I wasn't only shutting people out I was closing up on myself. I was running and hiding from everything especially myself. All these things had birth fruits that stiffened my heart and caused me to miss His cues. He said it still goes back to me releasing myself and opening my heart to His love. That's what it was about anyways. His heart and mine syncing. My heart mirroring His, housing His wonders and encapsulating His being. Slowly, I am opening up. It's a long process but I have been learning deeper love and expression. He has been helping me not to only practice but to be true love. A love that is pure and without blemish. So, time and time again he reveals the state of my heart to me that I may know my shortcoming(s) and understand the rationale behind His action when he pulls down the stronghold of whatever iniquity He finds there. I like the forewarning because when the pruning takes place I don't grumble like I used to. I now endure the cutting down and I do so with gratitude, thanks to the Holy Spirit.

Right now, I'm in a place where my walls are not entirely broken, my legs are still struggling to walk into the deep and drown in His oceans. Expression isn't as smooth as it should be and I sometimes forget that I can't run from His love. Even at that, there has been a transition, an extension of New wine. He has called it New Faith. At the point of transition, He said I was never wine. He asked me to erase the mindset of being old wine in old wineskin. There is no old in Him, all things in Him are new.  All the while, I have been a vine in His vineyard that He is tending for the purpose of making wine. A type of wine that has never been made. A wine that never ages. New wine. That's exactly why this new season is called New Faith because He will be teaching me how to express new confidence in the possibility of who He says I am, what He has called me into, the promises He has made and a redefined knowledge of the reality that He is. The season of New wine didn't start in January, it started the very first time I said "yes Lord". It hasn't ended it has only been extended to be made new. It's a journey of endless new in endless love.

Endless new.