New Wine

By Nina Medrano –

Life has a way of leading us to certain crossroads that turn out to be a significant turning point.

Our lives become transformed by that decision. And in our heart of hearts we lay a milestone to commemorate the day we resolve to follow a certain path.

For me, that milestone is tithing.

Like many, when I began my life with the Lord, I did not tithe. As I grew in the knowledge of God’s Word, I learned that the tithe belongs to God. I also learned that when I did not tithe I was robbing God. In the early years, I struggled to maintain a lifestyle of tithing.

However, my desire to please the Lord began to outweigh my fear of not having enough.

I can testify of the Lord’s faithfulness to supply all of my financial needs. I cannot tell you how He does it; but only that He does. Many times I have compared my expenses with my income and found myself short. Yet, by God’s faithfulness, all of my needs are met. Praise is to God.

Proverbs 3:9-10 reads, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the best part of everything you produce. Then he will fill your barns with grain, and your vats will overflow with good wine.”

As I meditate upon these verses I realize that this is true for me and my house. Our “barn” which represents our storage of goods is full! Our fuel tanks are full, our refrigerator is full, our freezers are full, and our wallets have extra.

Then, a new revelation dawned in my spirit when I read verse 10, “And your vats will overflow with new wine.”

Wine refers to the Holy Spirit and of anointing.  New wine speaks of new experiences and encounters with the Holy Spirit. Vats are containers of wine. We are the vessels that contain the Holy Spirit of God. We are “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 6:19 NIV). We are carriers of spiritual treasures (II Cor. 4:6 NIV).

So, if I honor the Lord with my wealth AND with the best part of everything I produce (including my writing), then God will fill my storage places AND I will overflow with new experiences and encounters with the Holy Spirit of God!

Don’t you just want to increase your tithe just to get more new wine? God knows that I need more of his anointing to flow through my life. As a mentor, I depend on the Holy Spirit to reveal the places that need healing. As a writer, I depend on the Holy Spirit to unfold the mysteries of God’s Word to share with the body of Christ.

Could you use more anointing?

As you read this spirit-inspired article I pray that the “eyes of your understanding be enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:18 NIV).

Nina Medrano writes for her church blog at http://www.cotrwomensministry.blogspot.com/

An Off Brand Life

By Heather Allen –

Can I tell you what I want from life? Do you have a minute to pull up a chair? I want a smallish house with beautiful plants surrounding it and a roof made of shakes. Smells wafting from the kitchen that welcome visitors and make them want to stay for the cookies in the oven; sounds of kids laughing, with me straining to hear all the ridiculously cute things they are saying. Permanence: same house, same garden, new friends are okay, same grocery store, same streets. But ah, it seems that it is not to be.

My heart feels a little tattered tonight, like a rag flappin’ out on the line.

At age 13 I told my mom I did not want an ordinary life. How I wish I could go back and muzzle that big-mouthed girl. There is enough adventure in books. Fictional characters do not lay awake at night worrying about their kids adjusting.

So here I am another house in another state, but thankfully a little closer to those I love best. Yet I feel my life is an itchy sweater with seams that keep twisting up my body. The tag at the neck is driving me to distraction: it’s fixating. I cannot breathe right, I do not feel right, but I just keep yanking at that tag. It is easier than learning to live with it, or around it.

If God put His hand on my head my whole body would probably still be squirming. There is only one conversation I am looking to have but He keeps bringing me back to where we started “Set your heart on pilgrimage”.

I do not like being a pilgrim, and it doesn’t strike me as a very family friendly lifestyle.   My mind spins and forms an extensive list of questions, so I read the book of Job. He had questions about his life. It started well, but not even halfway through the first chapter he starts a downhill spiral. I am a bit dramatic, but I can relate to his confusion and his longing for some answers.

At the heart of my conflicted life lies a deep desire to see the extraordinary, even if it means traveling to the ends of the earth. So I will endeavor to set my heart on pilgrimage. Believing a God whose knowledge spans beginning to end, I will learn to trust.  He left His home to save me; I can leave mine too.

“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” Job 42:5 (NIV)

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” Psalms 84:5 (NIV)

The Next Dictator

By Jane Thornton –

Rain slashed across the windshield, wipers frantically flapping to eke out a hint of visibility. Inside our cocoon of dryness, Meredith, my five-year-old daughter, sat in the passenger seat. (For those of you who just inhaled with mighty outrage, this preceded the current laws about car seats, weight, etc.) The downpour and our surprise over it inspired a conversation about weather and weathermen.

“I don’t want to be a weatherman when I grow up.” Merry’s conclusion was definite.

Peering through the storm, I hummed noncommittally and stopped at the intersection.

“They’re sometimes wrong.” Her hazel eyes reflected none of the conflict surrounding her.

Wow. I managed to hold back my hilarity as I pondered where to start sermonizing about how everyone is wrong occasionally. Before I could settle on a place to begin, she continued.

“I want to tell everyone…” Her gaze probed the car’s headliner for the exact phrase. “I just want to…”

I waited with bated breath.

“…you know…control all…” Lips pursed, she deliberated. “…the whole world.”

A daughter after my own heart.

On the job, I still cling to some psychology I learned years ago in my education classes, clutching at all the control I can get. I wear black on the first day of school. I learn my students’ names within three days (good for other reasons, but my speed is highly motivated by the need for a small degree of power).

At home, I try harder to control my urge to control. The stereotype of the nagging shrew who treats her husband like a child repels me, so I make a conscious effort to curb my tongue—usually. I do find myself falling into the habit of asking questions to which I already know the answers, just to subtly get my way. My children are pretty much grown, nineteen and twenty-one. But as long as they are financially dependent on me… there I go again.

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15 NIV).

A hard verse for a veteran planner. And, of course, we can find many Scriptures that also encourage preparation. The primary goal here is to learn to recognize and acknowledge God’s sovereignty—and to find peace in it. His hands are so much better at the wheel than mine.

Battle of the Siblings

By Jane Thornton –

I stormed through the doorway of the church classroom, flounced into a plastic chair, crossed my arms, and exclaimed, “I hate Mark!” Thus ended the battle between my seventeen-year-old brother and me—and our privilege of sleeping a little later on Sunday mornings and driving in on our own instead of riding the church’s bus route with our parents.

The mêlée began as I preened in front of the mirror with a curling iron. Mark hollered that we needed to leave. I bawled back that I was almost (halfway, in teen-girlese) ready. We repeated the exchange at least once. Patience thoroughly tested and failed, Mark swaggered in and manhandled the styling utensil from my hand, both of us miraculously managing to escape a burn.

I shrieked. I dug in my heels.

To no avail—my athletic brother literally dragged me, hair half-styled, yowling threats of repercussions, to the car and stuffed me in. I’m sure the streaks of tears and angry scowl I wore were much more unflattering than the frizzy half of my hairdo.

Not the finest Christ-like moment for either of us.

Unfortunately, it does not stand alone in our high school history. On another morning, we were leaving for school. Mark blasted the horn of the El Camino. I scurried out of the house. (I believe he would say I meandered.) I plopped into the passenger seat. (He would describe my motion as easing into place.) Leaving my door open, I thrust my folder and books onto the floorboard. (His version, I fussily arranged my supplies.) Tolerance pushed to the breaking point, Mark threw the truck into reverse and gunned the engine.

This time it was metal that shrieked. The basketball goal caught my open door and twisted the protesting iron completely off the truck.

Poor Mark, his graduation present was a new door for Daddy’s vehicle. I still feel guilty about that consequence even though I swear to this day I was not intentionally testing him.

These days, the memory of those farcical skirmishes draws rueful laughter, but at the time, resentment and bitterness brewed inside the automatic love for a sibling. In college, after a couple of years of distance, we discovered that we enjoyed each other’s company. He wrote me a poem for my twentieth birthday about realizing he not only loved me but liked me, too. I treasure my friendship with my big brother, and our combat has long ended.

In a recent Christmas letter, I described our congregation as extended family. I’m sorry to say we’ve been having some sibling battles there, too, but these conflicts have challenged my faith unlike any run-in with my blood relatives. Perhaps an insecurity exists without the blood bond. Perhaps we all expect more from each other because we’re adults and Christians. Perhaps we should.

However, the memory of those early clashes reminds me that family life is not always smooth. Each person has achieved a different level of maturity. We do have the bond of Christ’s blood, and we can grow past the resentment into a deeper love and acceptance.

“For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command:  whoever loves God must also love his brother” (I John 4:20b-21).

The Lost Coin

By Nina Medrano-

I remember when my Aunt Sally ran away from home. My grandmother called my mother and asked us to please pray for Sally for she was only 13 years old and could not be found.

On the third day the Holy Spirit said to me, “Thank me for bringing Sally home.”  Immediately, I gave him thanks and greatly rejoiced with the Spirit. An hour later, we got a phone call from my grandmother letting us know that Sally had returned home unharmed. Today, my Aunt Sally is a grown woman with children and grandchildren of her own.

The Holy Spirit brought back this memory the morning. He (the Holy Spirit) awakened me at 4:00 A.M., prompting me to drive around our city and pray according to Luke 15 (NIV): The Parable of the Lost Coin.

“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

As I drove around our city, I began to pray and ask the Holy Spirit to sweep across our city, look for the lost coins, the lost sons, daughters, father, mothers, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, great grandchildren who have lost their way home.

I asked the Lord to light the demonic dark and hidden places in this city; turn on the search lights in the drug-users homes, in the houses of prostitution, under the bridges, in the night clubs, in the pornographic theaters. Drive back the demonic strongholds! Break off the chains of addiction, shame, poverty, and financial ill-gains!

By this time I was weeping uncontrollably as I asked the Spirit to search and find every loved one that is lost in this city and restore them to Abba Father’s House and to their families—restore them to Kingdom usefulness, restore them to divine purpose, restore them to their God-given destinies. Restore. Restore. Restore!

As a declaration of faith, I give God thanks and praise for hearing and honoring this prayer for my city and for yours.

Nina Medrano, a lover of God’s Word, lives in Lubbock, Texas, and writes for her church blog: http://www.cotrwomensministry.blogspot.com/

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