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 Let's revisit Jesus’ teaching about “old wineskins”. (Matt.9, Mark 2, Luke 5) In my opinion, Jesus was referring to old, outdated, and/or inaccurate belief systems that prohibit us from hearing, recognizing and receiving truth. He was addressing the fact that at times old, outdated beliefs - what God did, can prevent us from receiving new revelation - what God is doing. The wineskins of his day are, in my opinion, an illustration of our “mind skins”, our belief system. So the wineskins are actually mindskins. Mindskins are things we have learned and experienced that were new revelation in their time but have been held to tightly, seen incompletely or are no longer relevant. I believe each of us have things from within our belief systems that actually prevent us from recognizing truth. I’m not saying we are all devoid of truth but that each of us have elements from within our theology, culture and even our Christian culture that we think are true, but aren’t. These things can actually prevent us from recognizing new, more complete or more relevant truths. Hopefully throughout your life experience you have changed, modified or abandoned things that at one time you would have "went to death for" but now you can't believe you once believed. In times of fresh outpourings if I am not aware this reality can exist in me, I can set myself up to miss what Papa God is doing next or more importantly now. Remember Jesus said when old mindsets oppose new revelation both systems suffer catastrophic loss. The old guard can retreat further into “what was” and miss what is. The new guard can proceed without valuing the rich heritage of what was. Both are valuable aspects of what God is doing now! I would love to hear of some of your more recent "mindskin" changes!
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Felt Belief Always Overrides Known Belief.
We all have 2 sets of beliefs. They are Known Beliefs and Felt Beliefs. The first set, Known Beliefs, are the things that we believe in our head are true. They are the things we would say are true, the things we would put on a test if we were taking a test on the topic. But there is another set of beliefs, the Felt Beliefs, that we don't even know we believe and, in truth, we would deny we believe them if they were presented to us by someone else. But Felt Beliefs are what we really feel is true AND THEY ALWAYS OVERRIDE OUR KNOWN BELIEFS. Felt Beliefs are the things we believe to be true based on our life experiences. So how do I find out what those Felt Beliefs are? Listen to how you pray in challenging times or what comes out of you in a argument. These are things that come from your “hearts of hearts”. They are the core beliefs that you live your life by that unawarely impact your daily life and determine how you will face crisis. They reveal what you believe to be true because you have learned them from experiences that you what "you really believe is true." Food for thought. What do you think? |