By David Ryser
And
no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the
skins, and it will be spilled out, and the skins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into fresh
wineskins. And no one after drinking old
wine wishes for new; for he says, “The old is good enough.” (Jesus of Nazareth, Luke 5:37-39 NASB)
There once was a man who, while
shopping at an Arts & Crafts store, came across a plaster mold that was on
sale at a deep discount. He examined the
mold closely, but could not determine what shape the mold might produce. Being a curious sort, the man decided to
purchase the mold intending to pour hot wax into it in order to see what the
result might be after the wax had cooled.
So the man bought the mold and took
it home.
Taking the mold into his workshop,
the man proceeded to melt some cheap wax over a low flame. Then he poured the melted wax into the mold
and waited for it to cool. When the wax
had cooled and hardened, the man popped the wax out of the mold and onto his
workbench.
He looked at the formed wax…and
gasped!
Staring up at him from the table
was the face of a gargoyle! It was
ugly! Hideous! Fiendish-looking! The man was repulsed by the wax image, so he
destroyed it. Then he began to consider
how he might change the figure produced by the mold into something beautiful.
And he had an idea.
“I know what’s wrong,” he
thought. “The problem is that I used an
inferior wax the first time.” So he
resolved to use a higher quality of material on his next try. He purchased some more expensive wax, melted
it over a low flame, and poured it into the mold. As the wax cooled, the man eagerly
anticipated the beautiful image that the mold would produce as a result of this
effort.
The wax cooled and hardened.
The man popped the wax out of the
mold. Looking up at him from the table
was the face of a gargoyle! A gargoyle
as ugly as the first!
In fact, the faces were identical.
Determined to produce a thing of
beauty from the mold, the man decided to switch the material he would pour into
the mold on his third try. So he procured
some inexpensive plastic, melted it over a low flame, and poured it into the
mold. The plastic cooled and
hardened. The man popped the plastic out
of the mold.
Another gargoyle! Identical to the first two!
The man was disappointed, but
undaunted. He made several more attempts
to produce something beautiful from the mold…using plastics of higher quality (and
greater cost) each time…but the result was always the same. In the end, an ugly gargoyle face stared up
at him from the table.
Finally the man conceded defeat.
“The materials I have been using
are not good enough, not pure enough, not valuable enough,” he reasoned. “If I would use silver or gold, the mold
would produce a thing of beauty.”
And then, because the man had
neither silver nor gold, he hung his head…and he wept.
The moral of the story: It doesn’t matter what move of God you put
into the religious system…the power, the people, the hearts, the anointing, and
the giftings…because as soon as the move cools and hardens, what is left will look
exactly like the old religious system--the system is incapable of producing
anything else.
Responses to this article are
welcomed. You may contact the author at drdave1545@yahoo.com
