ELM - From Vessel to Vessel

 “Moab has been left quite since his youth, settled like wine on its dregs.  He hasn’t been poured from one container to another…So his taste has remained the same, and his aroma hasn’t changed.” Jeremiah 49:11, CSB

I learned this morning in my Bible study that part of making wine is that the liquid pressed from the grapes go through a refining process.  It is not a one-time activity, rather pouring the liquid from one vessel to another as many times as it takes to be free of the dregs.  Dregs are the sour-smelling sediment of things that must be discarded.  ‘Because if not for this intentional, consistent unsettling from one vessel to the next, the juice can never rid of those impurities that would keep it from maturing…Being continually relocated is what refines and prepares it for its intended purpose.’ Elijah – Faith and Fire, Priscilla Shirer, p. 80.  

What a powerful picture of my life prior to 2006 when God moved me from one place in my faith to another.  I didn’t even know that I was being poured into another location in my faith until the unsettling came.  Over the next 15 years, my faith has been an instrument God has continuously poured back and forth to rid me of my dregs.  For years I had settled for the dregs instead of the spiritual wine that God has for me.  I look back and all the years that led up to that unsettling lacked taste and aroma.   It wasn’t until God began moving me from flesh to spirit that He developed both taste and aroma for Him.  I have never tasted anything as satisfying as His Word, ingesting and digesting every truth it holds.  The beautiful aroma of Christ is mine to grasp and it is ever increasing the more I hide in Him.  

We all have unsettling seasons when God is doing the next work in our lives. ‘Comfort and steadiness are what we crave, but overstaying our welcome in one place can rob us of the work God intends to do in us at the next one…He often includes seasons of unsettledness where He transfers us out of the comfort and complacency of familiarity and moves us into a new place and position’ P. 81.