INTIMACY II

Wine is a drink that affects the mind. Spiritually, we need to produce wine in our lives that comes from maturity. The new wine has nothing to do with being drunk in the Spirit during a meeting. The new wine has to be produced in us that our old wineskins can be renewed. The old wineskin has to do with our mindset. My mindset can only be affected when I have a vineyard, and I am producing that newness and freshness of life in every relationship I have. If we grow stale in our marriages, it will take more than going out to a romantic dinner to restore it or going to a marriage seminar for help. When we do not produce a vineyard, we have no understanding how to produce new wine. When the Spirit of God touches us, it awakens our inner man. How does God affect us? When we preach in a different culture, I cannot bring an Americanized version of the gospel. I have to penetrate the people’s mindset and their culture to impart the newness and freshness of life.

In marriage it is the same. When we are devoid of understanding of what fulfillment in marriage is all about, then we are not complete. My completion in marriage is when I have a freshness of life when I go through the process of being poured from vessel to vessel. We cannot continue to strive with ambition for things that we wanted in our prime of life. We can change on the outside and grow old without having produced the life to inspire and to encourage and to enlarge each other. We have talked to couples that do not know what to do with each other after the children have left the nest. They have been in church all their lives, praying together; reading the Bible together and suddenly they do not know what to say to each other. I know people, who love God and have nothing to show but hurt and wounds with no life, no freshness and wonder what marriage is all about. Ministries are so successful, yet our marriages are shriveling up, because we are devoid of understanding. We have no knowledge or vision why God put us together after the children are gone; after our sex drive is diminished; after we have become so familiar with each other. We begin to look for something outside the relationship to stimulate us and fulfill what marriage was meant to do.

Some of our marriages exist on the level of constant warfare. Often the relationship just comes to fulfilling our sexual needs. The husband wants to have his sexual fulfillment at night, but during the day he and his wife are fighting all the time. A man cannot be a man of war and make love, without taking off his amour. There is no flow of life in the bedroom because we have not cultivated the right environment throughout the day. That is not God’s plan for us that we walk around with a shield over our hearts, carrying our armor in self-defense. We don’t need to fight the devil. We can fight our husband or wife all day long. That atmosphere comes right into The Church. There is a cycle of unrest in The Church, and people go from church to church hoping to find the rest that they should have at home. We can never substitute The Church or Christ for the lack in our marriage because we have been lazy to develop an understanding for our marriages, hanging on to selfish things that need to die. For me to die to self is not The Church's responsibility. The Church is there to pray, and I should leave the dying to self at home. I die to self when I want to be right, and when I want to be exalted in my battles and fights. We want to fight at home and die to self in church, so we can fight again when we get home. The Church is not the place to die to self because God does not accept the carnal man.

In His Love,
      Sigi

• David & Sigi's complete: International Schedule