New Wine New Bottles (Sermon summary)

As I considered how to summarize Sunday's sermon in the best way, I realized that (if you heard it) I would have to eliminate many good points to get to the essential points. Here they are:

1. If you want to experience a real new year, that doesn't look like an identical twin of your other years, you are going to have to drink new wine (spiritual insight) from new bottles (mindset).
2. When new insight comes "to" you, that idea must replace the old idea it relates to. Otherwise, it will not seem to bear fruit in your life. For example: If the idea flashes in your Consciousness, "God is my body, it can't be sick," that idea has to replace the old host of ideas you have entertained throughout the years.
3. Those ideas might include: (a) identifying yourself with a disease ("cancer patient"), (b)the doctor's prognosis, (c) age as an excuse for aches and pains (d) deliberate actions to avoid disease, (e) judging the body by the apperance of having a disease, etc.
4. Christ Jesus said, "Neither do men put new wine into old bottles, lest the bottles break and the wine is spilled." In other words, if some new insight strikes a responsive chord in you, it will not bear fruit in your life if you are holding on to old, conflicting ideas.
5. Much of what appears to be Truth "not working" is the result of trying to embrace the new while holding on to the old.