You Don't HAVE to Pray!

When God came to earth in Christ Jesus, He gave us new wine: Himself unveiled! And in order to rightly mediate this new wine, there had to be a new wineskin. Jesus addresses this in Mark 2:18-22 when speaking about fasting; I believe, however, that this truth can probably apply to all that has to do with the gospel, including prayer.

The purpose of the wineskin is to contain the wine in order to experience it; in other words, it “mediates” the wine. If Jesus is the new wine, then there must be a new wineskin in order to experience Him. The old wineskin cannot mediate His life adequately.

The apostle John makes a startling statement in John 1:17 “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Until Jesus came, what humans knew of God was mostly through the wineskin of the law. With the appearance of God in the flesh, the way we encounter Him now is through an entirely different medium or wineskin. Under the law, we experience God as Judge; under grace and truth, we experience God as Father.

When it comes to prayer (and other issues in God), the paradigm shift that has taken place through Jesus’ coming is that there is no law to pray. Part of the good news (gospel) is that you don’t have to pray! The old wineskin was about law/obligation/ requirement; the new wineskin is about voluntary acceptance of God’s loving invitation to participate with Him.

Apart from this new wineskin, we can’t experience Jesus rightly; He is too untamed to be contained (mediated) by the old wineskin of law.

So when it comes to prayer, if need be, ask the Lord for grace to see it through a new wineskin: grace and truth (God's gracious invitation to participate with Him).