Wineskins of revival

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Matthew 9:14-26

TO CHEW ON: " 'Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins and both are preserved.' " Matthew 9:16,17

Do you ever hear people pining for the revivals of the old days as they recall a meeting where God met them? Perhaps it was in a Billy Graham Crusade, or in my case a Janz Crusade and Sutera Twins meetings. It seems that God often moves in waves of revival. If we were caught by such a wave and have had a taste, it's left us with a lingering appetite for more.

David Wilkerson was one of the men God used to propel revival in the 1960s and '70s. His book The Cross and the Switchblade, that tells of how God used him to work in the lives of New York's gang members and addicts, became a bestseller. Soon he was holding crusades in cities all around the U.S.

In his biography David Wilkerson: The Cross, the Switchblade and the Man Who Believed his son Gary tells of the ups and downs of Wilkerson's ministry. For years, thousands found Jesus at the meetings he held. But then invitations to speak began to slow, went to a trickle, stopped altogether as crusades lost their appeal.

At such times it's natural to ask, what changed? The temptation is to try to copy what other popular ministries are doing or duplicate the conditions of fruitful times. Wilkerson's team questioned their boss's refusal to go on TV and lack of new books. We may think, if we sang the same songs, accompanied them with accordions instead of guitars and drums, put up a tent instead of using an auditorium, revival would return.


Though I believe Jesus was referring to the big notion of old and new wine here, i.e. the Old Testament Law era versus the new wine era of salvation by grace through faith, I think we can also apply this old and new wineskin principle to the ways God visits succeeding generations.

Let's keep our hearts and eyes open to the new ways God is growing His kingdom that don't look anything like the city-wide crusades, the week-long conferences, or the deeper life meetings of the past. Let's not allow our hankering after the old wineskins of revival delivery blind us to the new wineskin ways that may even now be poised to engulf our generation with a wave of revival.

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to be alert to the moving of Your Spirit, from whatever wineskin it pours. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

When your heart breaks for the world—PRAY

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Matthew 9:27-38

TO CHEW ON: "Then He said to His disciples, 'The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest.' " Matthew 9:37,38


Gary Wilkerson tells the following story in the book David Wilkerson: The Cross, the Switchblade, and the Man Who Believed.

In 1957 David Simmons was pastoring the Brooklyn Presbyterian Church. But the glory days of the beautiful old structure seemed in the past. The neighborhood had become the headquarters for the feared Mau Mau gang and weekly church attendance was below 100.

One morning Simmons saw the police right outside his building, loading two bleeding men onto stretchers after a shootout. The neighborhood violence and bloodshed sickened him and he began coming to the church early in the morning to pray. " ' My prayer,' he says, 'was that God would thrust worthy laborers into the harvest field' " David Wilkerson, Kindle Location 1030.

Meanwhile in a small town in Pennsylvania, young David Wilkerson was restless and dissatisfied with pastoring his predictable, self-absorbed church. He began spending his afternoons in prayer, asking God to show him the more he hankered for. One day when he took a break from praying, he glanced at a Time Magazine that told the story of the Michael Farmer trial. Michael Farmer was a defenseless white kid with polio who had been senselessly murdered by a bunch of teens on a New York street. 

Wilkerson felt anguish: "Anguish over the senseless murder of a defenseless boy. Anguish over the seething hurt and deprivation that had boiled over in the boys who had committed it. And, finally, anguish over their fate, the waste of every life involved" - David Wilkerson, KL 1246.

That day was a turning point in Wilkerson's life. He ended up moving to New York, becoming an evangelist to New York's drug addicts and gang members, and founding Teen Challenge. In other words, he became the answer to a praying pastor's prayers.

I find it interesting that in our reading today, Jesus didn't say to the disciples, "You go and be laborers in God's harvest" but " '…pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.' "

Sometimes we're not the people for the job on the ground. But we're always the people who need to respond to the burdens of this world, its weary scattered sheep that move our hearts to compassion, with prayer.

PRAYER: Dear God, I need Your tender compassionate heart that weeps over the world's heartbreaks and finds its most effective release in prayer. Amen. 

MORE: Photos that move to tears

A photo gallery from Boston.com illustrates the current plight of Syrian Kurdish refugees flooding into Turkey.




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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.