What do we need?

At our weekly 'Call to prayer' Pastor Andrew began by reading from Matthew 9. In the end we read the entire chapter but something really hit home as I began to mull over what Jesus was saying:
"And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old skins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved." Matt 9:17 (NLT)

I have heard people pray for 'new wine' (presumably something fresh and invigorating from God, a real sense of His Good News and an inspired need to live and share it thoroughly) to be poured out into the church. I'm sure that I have probably prayed for this myself.
But listening to Jesus made me think about this.

Does Jesus say that we need to ask God for this 'new wine'? The suggestion here is that the new wine is coming regardless. Instead Jesus places the focus on us.
It is not new wine we need to pray for but new us.
We need to become 'new wineskins' able to contain the new wine.

Jesus then goes over this again even more clearly in another conversation later in the chapter:
He said to his disciples, "The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send out more workers for his fields." Matt 9:37-38 (NLT)

It is not selfish of us or introspective to pray for ourselves in this manner; it is essential!
The 'harvest' is ready and waiting (people who are waiting to hear the good news of Jesus Christ – although they may not realise yet), but it will not gather itself miraculously. The irony in the prayer that Jesus encourages us to pray is that it is an open and direct invitation for God to send us.
We cannot pray for those outside of the church and then be unwilling to meet go meet them. We need an Isaiah type response in our prayers:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!" Is 6:8 (NIV)