We aren’t given the luxury of hindsight when it comes to our dreams, unless we are living in the past.

a lot of us still dream about the way things used to be, because it was good… and God was in it…

but sometimes we miss what God is doing NOW,

because it doesn’t look like what he was doing, THEN.

Jesus says (Matthew 9:17):

you can’t put old wine into new wineskins.

He says that when you do that, the skins burst, and the wine spills…

and just this morning, as I thought about this verse… I realized something so simple about it... its not profound at all, but it shook me a little, because I have a lot of great stories... I have had a LOT of fun over the years... and a lot of times I look back wondering how do I create something “like that” again?

but Jesus says that if you put new wine into old wine skins, the skins burst, AND the wine spills.

which would mean that BOTH ARE WASTED.

both are ruined… both are useless.

You see, if you live in the past, you are destroying it… you are actually damaging those memories and you are destroying its power… because it wasn’t meant to be relived over and over, the Bible says that “God is doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:19) - and if you spend your whole life trying to relive what was, missing out on what is… I would argue that it in many instances it would have been better had you NEVER HAD THAT ORIGINAL EXPERIENCE in the first place… it is debilitating to always look backwards. It robs you of your future when you long for the past…

and when you do that, you aren’t honoring the past, you are letting it distort your hope for a future.