Still Clinging After All These Years

It's the first week of  new year and already I'm wondering where I got the crazy idea that by making a New Year's resolution everything would change. Bad Habits honed over long years do not disappear overnight. You would think the message would finally sink in...after all He said it 3 times, the same way, in 3 different places of of His Word.

Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.
                         ~Matthew 9:17

And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be       ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.
                           ~Mark 2:22

And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined.

                          ~Luke 5:37

Image in mirror does not look like a new wine skin..it bears more of a resemblance to over-ripe pear...
A few old habits may have changed..but truth be known; new ones just crop up in their place. Vices persist like patches, covering up the wear and tear on this old wineskin...and it's not working anymore...
 
 
I am an old wineskin leaking holiness....

Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son.
                        ~Romans 8:29

 God's plan has always been for us to become holy.

God has one destined end for mankind – holiness! His one aim is the production of saints. God is not an eternal blessing-machine for men. He did not come to save men out of pity. He came to save men because He had created them to be holy.

                                        ~Oswald Chambers

And we travail, longing with the earth for God's promise of glory.

Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
                                ~Romans 8:21-23

We're not groaning for the recreation of our souls--that's been done already--but for that of our bodies, which is where our fleshly nature resides. This new life we have in Christ is a taste of future glory when the whole universe will be recreated. What a marvelous privilege is ours!

                                    ~John MacArthur

I believe the holier a man becomes, the more he mourns over the unholiness which remains in him.
                                 ~C.H. Spurgeon

 So I will continue to be willing to say no to the flesh and yes to God, day in and day out. Because the world desperately needs to see what God is like. Because it is my created purpose and ultimate destiny...

               Because of the price Jesus paid to make me holy.


Ever so slowly, sanctifying love and grace from wood carved with blood,  continues to reshape and transform making me whiter than snow...

and this impossibly crazy idea of a new me this year will be nothing short of....


                                walking on water


             
But if He did it then.....He can do it  now.

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
                               ~2 Corinthians 3:18

Always Seeking Higher Ground,

Nora