The Necessity of Renewal | Ep. 183

Change demands more than motivation; it requires renewal that begins at the heart and reshapes how we think, speak, and act. Trace that living rhythm through Scripture: seasons in Ecclesiastes, Sabbath rest for the land, and the sound of Jubilee that announces release and return. From there, we wrestle with Jesus’ promise and warning in John 15—pruning hurts, but it is how fruit multiplies—and we press into why so many of us resist the very shifts that make growth possible.

Together we unpack the parable of new wine and new skins, confronting the hard truth that yesterday’s habits can’t carry today’s anointing. Paul’s guidance frames a pathway: put away bitterness and corrosive speech, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, renewed in knowledge after the image of Christ. We also acknowledge an all-too-common trap that derails many: mistaking a past move of God for a permanent resting place. The river keeps flowing; comfort can turn into an eddy that spins us in circles while we think we’re moving forward.

What does faithfulness look like on the ground? Prepare for the next season with simple, concrete steps. Keep asking, seeking, and knocking. Seek humble companions who still hunger for the living God and build small, sturdy communities where repentance comes quickly and obedience is normal. Renewal is not a one-time surge but a daily exchange: shed the old, receive the new, and stay light enough to move when the Spirit shifts like the wind.

Chapters

• 0:00 A Vision Of Renewal
• 0:28 Times And Seasons In Scripture
• 3:16 Sabbath For The Land And Jubilee
• 6:57 Pruning, Change, And Resistance
• 8:20 Preparing For The Next Season
• 9:04 Unbelief And The Remnant
• 10:23 New Wine And New Skins
• 15:32 Repentance And Ongoing Renewal
• 18:24 Guarding Against Complacency
• 25:20 Move With The Wind Of The Spirit
• 29:21 Hungry Communities And Next Steps
• 29:53 Closing Blessing And Support

Transcript

j - Jesus M. Ruiz: 0:03

The vision received was that of blood cells traveling throughout the body, supplying the much needed oxygen and other nutrients to the differing members of the body to fulfill their purpose. Once the blood cells are spent, they must return back to the heart to be refilled before being sent out again and fulfill their purpose. Hello everyone. I want to talk to you today about the necessity of renewal in our lives. Let me begin by reading the scripture from Ecclesiastes chapter 3. I'm sure you know it as soon as I start sharing it. To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance, a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to rend and a time to sow, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war and a time of peace. There's a season and a time for everything in our lives. And sometimes we get so caught up in the activity of our lives that we don't see that clearly. We forget that our life is in seasons. Sometimes we don't discern too well the changes that are coming into our life until it hits us in the back of the head, like a two by four, and we're just so surprised. Jesus spoke about that to the people of his day. He said, You can discern the face of the sky, but can you not discern the signs of the times? They were having a hard time realizing that what was happening in their present day was a tremendous change. Now we know that there are four seasons. We know God ordained them to be summer, fall, winter, and spring. But what would happen if we did not move into the next season? What would happen if we resisted and tried to remain in the present season or the previous season we came from? Did you know that there are even seasons of change for the land itself? Every seven years the Lord ordained a rest for the land. For six years they would plow the field, they would sow the seeds, they would harvest all the crops in their due season. But we see in Leviticus 25 that the Lord instilled or initiated a rest even for the land, a change of season for it. It says, And the Lord spoke unto Moses in Mount Sinai, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof. But in the seventh year, that shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord. Thou shalt neither sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of the vine undressed, for it is a year of rest unto the Lord. We see here that God has ordained seasons of even rest, even for the land itself. The same way that we see seasons in the earth, you know, some might call that mother nature. We all experience seasons of change in our life. And the natural does give a reflection of the spiritual. If we go back to Leviticus 25 and we read verses 8 through 13, it says, And thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years, and the space of the seven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty-nine years. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, and in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land, and ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. It shall be a jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you. Ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed, for it is the Jubilee, and it shall be holy unto you. Ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this Jubilee ye shall not return every man unto his own possession. Excuse me, in the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his own possession. God has seasons of liberation for his people, even for the people that are under his children, he has seasons of returning, seasons of reconciliation, seasons of healing, seasons of deliverance. In John chapter fifteen, verse two, Jesus said, Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Let's not focus in on the result, but what it took, what was the cost that it took to get the far better result? The purging is the change in our life. Many of us don't do well with change. Many of us resist it, we fight against it, we wrestle against it, we just we we it makes us very, very uncomfortable to change. And we remain rigid and we may remain stiff-necked in so many ways, and our growth in Him becomes stunted because we refuse to change. We adapt very slowly if we if we do at all. And when change is coming around, we we we tend to bicker and we tend to complain and wonder well why is God doing this to us? And it's because we're not discerning the signs of the times, the times of testing, the times of cleansing, the times of securing, and the times of renewing. Every change in season must be preceded by a change in preparation and action. If I know that the winter's coming, I'm gonna get stuff out of my attic, my winter clothes, and I'm gonna get ready for that change of season. When spring comes around and winter's over, probably gonna put away my winter clothes because they're not gonna be needed, and I'm gonna change my clothes that I put away for the next season, the spring or the summer. I'm gonna get those clothes down. And that's just a natural example of the changes and the preparation that's needed in order to move into the new season. If I look at biblical examples, I remember the wilderness remnant, the church in the wilderness. Paul spoke about them in Romans 11, 20, and he says, Because of unbelief, they were broken off. And the author of Hebrews in chapter 3, verse 19, he shared in his presentation that we see that they, meaning the church in the wilderness, they could not enter in the promised land because of unbelief. And the author in Hebrews says in the next chapter, verse, chapter 4, verse 6, he says, Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief. Remnant people are those that have allowed themselves to be renewed, so that they can move in the direction that God was presently moving in. They were the ones that were trusting, they were the ones that are obedient to the voice for the day. They were the ones prepared to take the next step and face the next challenge that God had set before them. There are seasons of renewal or seasons of change for the people of God. If we look at Luke chapter 5, verses 36 through 39, Jesus said, or it says of Jesus, and he spake unto them a parable. He said, No man putting a piece of new garment upon an old, if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agrees not with the old. No man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles perish. And the new wine must be put into new wine bottles, and both are preserved. No man, also having drunk old wine, straightethway desire the new. For he saith, Uh, the old is better. Now, as I read this years ago, and I started meditating and reflecting on the meaning and how it applies to me today. It brought to my mind, Lord brought to my mind several thoughts of a few things that I would like to share right now. History is cyclical. And my previous pastor always talked about when things continue to happen over and over again in the Bible. Uh, we we we called it in my previous fellowship, uh, that many times the scriptures are a progressive, repetitious revelation. Each time that repetition comes around again, it seems to crescendo greater than the last. Our natural physical life is cyclical. And it's a picture of our process to spiritual maturity. To grow, think naturally, to grow, you must constantly be shedding the old to mature in the new. Not only in our bodies, we have to shed off our old skin so that the new skin and the new cells can grow into their place, but also in our paradigms and thoughts and thinking. Sometimes we need to shed our lower levels of understanding, maybe because they were childish or childlike levels of understanding. But in order to mature, we've got to put away those childish things and walk in new things, more mature things. So our natural life, physical life, is cyclical and it's a picture of our process to spiritual maturity. I mean, even when we shed our old skin, it makes up a lot of the dust around our homes and we wash it off when we shower. Like a snake needs to shed off its old skin as the underskin grows. So was must we shed off our old skins in order to receive and move in the new things of the Lord. Jesus spoke of this in these passages that I shared above. We see from verse 26 that we are instructed: don't mix the old with the new. Why? They will not be in accord. Or as Jesus said, the new agreeeth not with the old. Because if we remain in the old or as the old without being renewed, we're not going to be in accord with the new. And whatever we're trying to hold that God is doing in the new, it's it's just gonna burst open and the anointing is gonna be lost. When we were nearing our born-again experience as individuals, we needed to be renewed. In order to become born again, it was required of us that we repent. Repentance is a renewal. And that repentance, as we continued to pursue and press into the Lord, it led us to being baptized in water in Jesus' name. And and if we continued further, it led us to be baptized in the Spirit. And this is what Paul spoke to his son Timothy about. This is the renewing and the regeneration that he spoke to Titus. If I said Timothy, I apologize. It was Titus chapter 3, verse 5. Every step forward toward Jesus and his will, his way, his word necessitates a renewal of some kind. So 1 Corinthians 13, Paul was writing to them, and he said of himself, Paul had to put away childish things as well in order to mature. He said, When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I had to put away childish things. And in order for us to move on and mature in the things of the Lord, we have to be renewed. We can't remain thinking the way we did in our youth, in our naivety. Sometimes those things that we thought of were true, we need to, okay, that that that was a level of maturity, and that's what I could handle at the time. But when we start maturing, okay, then we start realizing, oh, okay, there's more to this than meets the eye. Paul said to Ephesians or to the Ephesians, and he also said in 1 Corinthians, he teaches us to put away certain things. And to the Ephesians, he said in chapter 4, 31, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. He said to Corinthians, therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. So sometimes there are things within us that we need to deal with in order to move on and progress in the Lord. Maybe there's bitterness, maybe there's wrath, maybe there's unforgiveness, or we're holding on to some anger. Uh, maybe it's the way that we're speaking. Put it away, put it away. Sometimes we're hanging around the wrong crowd. And that crowd is holding us back from moving further on with the Lord. So put away from among yourselves that wicked person. Because if that wicked person remains in your vicinity, in your area, there's a very good chance that that wicked person's behavior is going to cause you to stumble. In our faith walk, spiritual renewal must be constant. It must be progressive. It must be repetitious. Paul told the Corinthians that there's a renewal of the inward man that is taking place. He said to the Ephesians in chapter 4, 23, there's also the renewal of the spirit of our mind. Though our outward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by day. He said to the Ephesians, Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. There's a constant shedding of the old that will keep us ready and willing and malleable to move in what it's God is doing in the new. So we see from the heart of David when he he's crying out and praying to the Lord in Psalm 51, he says in verse 10 and 11 and or 10 and 13, it says, Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Then, in verse 13, then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. You see, before we can start preaching and teaching and trying to reach sinners and transgressors and lawbreakers, um, sinners, we need to get right with God. We need to let God clean us, renew a right spirit within us, where He's indwelling us and He's causing us to walk in His ways and guard His statutes and keep his judgments and do them. And when we start walking in the light as He is in the light, then we can teach by our life, not just preaching at them, but by our life, we can teach transgressors his ways, meaning the Lord's ways, because we're walking in a very different manner than they are. And that's when sinners can be attracted to the holiness of the Lord if their hearts are ready and willing to pursue after him and seek after him. But we've got to get our house in order first. What it really is deceptive of us to think that we can teach sinners the error of their ways if we don't have a renewed right spirit within us. If we're walking like they are or we have some situations, manners of walk that are contrary to the Lord. We cannot teach sinners about righteousness, holiness, purity of heart. That message is going to be distorted in their eyes because they see like the Pharisees. They say one thing, they do another. We can't teach them the ways of the Lord if we don't know the ways of the Lord, nor are walking ourselves in the ways of the Lord. So Paul says to the Romans, hey, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Did you know that if you are in covenant with God, if you are a tried and true child of God, led of his Spirit, that it is incumbent upon you and me and the rest of our brethren that we prove to this world what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect in regards to the will of God. We're supposed to do that. And the only way we can do that is if we're walking in renewal. Renewal of mind, renewal of heart, renewal of spirit. Paul describes to the Colossians it in, and he puts it in this manner in chapter 3, verse 10, and have put on the new man, meaning us. We've put on the new man, which is what? Renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. We are renewed. To put on this new man, this new man in Christ, we had to be renewed in knowledge. We could not remain with our old stinking thinking. It needed to be renewed. And renewed specifically after the knowledge of Him. God comes in a way that we declare, oh, revival is at hand. Mighty moves of the Spirit are evident to those in and outside the church. And when this happens, oh man, we can, we can, we can get caught up in the moment. We could get so super excited. And and and maybe this move of the spirit lasts for for uh a certain duration of time. And and sometimes it has happened in different moves of God in the past, um, in different places where he's poured out his spirit. Some there have become so familiar and comfortable with that move of the spirit, and that's the trap. And that's where we miss him. You see, the enemy tries to stop the move of God through deception. He does not have the power to stop the move of God. But if he deceives the people into believing, ah, this is it, this is as good as it gets. This is all there is, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it can't be made better. As soon as he's able to deceive people into believing that, then we become complacent. And then we stay in our boat of comfortability and we just enjoy the ride. His deception lulls us into a false sense of security in this new move of God. And when we become complacent, we stop hungering, we stop thirsting, we stop yearning, we stop longing, we stop asking and seeking and knocking for the presence of the Lord. And when that new move of God came into our presence, it was because he was responding to the hunger, the thirst, the yearning, the longing, the asking, and the seeking and the knocking. He was responding to that. That's what started the move of God. But if after a certain duration of time we get comfortable in this move of God, that's when we don't realize that God has actually moved on. Because we were so enamored with that new thing that he was doing. And then we stopped following him and we don't realize he's moved. He's gone on somewhere else to do new things because we just got comfortable in that move of God that pretty soon became an older move of God because God is trying to do a new thing in the earth everywhere he goes. It's like being in a small kayak or a canoe or some sort of boat in a river. Doesn't have an engine, maybe has some steering mechanism, but it's just flowing with the river. And if the river's going fast, man, you're going fast. If the river's slowing down, you're slowing down. Sometimes it's a rushing mighty river, and sometimes it's just a calm, serene river. And it's a thrill when we're when we're rushing with the river, it's a thrill. It's it's awesome. We just get so, wow, this is great. But sometimes we get caught up in an eddy. And because we're in the boat, and the boat is kind of our comfort zone, and we're flowing, we're at the river, but sometimes we get caught in that eddy and and we just start swirling around and around and around. But we find ourselves in the boat, so we're kind of feel safe and secure. We're in the boat that that was traveling in the river of God, and we just start getting in an eddy, and we're just going around and around and around, and we're going nowhere fast. We're still moving, we're still in the water, but we're not really going anywhere. We're not really accomplishing anything because we got comfortable. And comfort is the enemy of moving with God. Has this ever happened to you? Well, you were flowing in the move of God, it was spectacular, and then after a while of enjoying the move, it just seems to like God stopped. And you're like, what happened? Well, where'd he go? And many times it's He moved, and we got left behind because we were enjoying the eddy of old things. Let me put it to you another way. God is constantly moving, and he refers to the people of God in John 3:8 in a very interesting way. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but you can't tell whence it comes and whether it goes. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Those that are born of the Spirit are the children of God, and they should be moving like the wind. It's not so that there's a cookie-cutter movement, and then everybody follows, you know, the paradigm of the previous movement. He's constantly moving. And if he's describing everyone that is born of the spirit is like the wind, you don't know where it's coming or where it's going, that's pretty interesting to meditate and reflect upon. And many times, the more we listen to men setting ministerial offices higher than that of listening to the Spirit of God, the more we as a people of God will remain immature and not produce the fruit of the Spirit in abundance. Many times in our youth, in our carnality, we continue to try to tap ourselves into men because they're famous, they're popular, because of their position, rather than tapping into the true vine, the Spirit of God. If we don't constantly pursue, seek, ask, knock, thirst, yearn, long, hunger for Him, we're gonna continually get misled and derailed in our faith walk. It is vital for all of us to find those humble ministers of God, humble brethren that have not stopped hungering and thirsting for the living God themselves, seek those men and women out and make lasting bonds with them because they are rare and few. If we can remain vigilantly hungering and thirsting after the living God, not just as individuals, but also with close brethren, also those in small groups, also those in small communities, we will continue to be renewed for the next new thing God is doing. We can then be the remnant God has called us out to be. And we won't get left behind. If you were blessed and appreciate listening to this podcast, and you would like to support us in our efforts, consider lifting us up in prayer first. Then remember these four social media buzzwords: share, like, subscribe, or follow. Share this podcast link with someone else by text, email, or word of mouth in the hopes that they might be uplifted as you were. Like by leaving a positive rating or review with whomever you listen to our podcast with. Subscribe to support the show monetarily with the link in our podcast description. Follow us on all our social media platforms. May God bless you and make you prosperous in Him as you listen and obey His voice.