Who doesn’t love a good party, right?
It’s the people in attendance that make the party what it is.
And who better to attend your party than the Son of God and His disciples?
In fact, it was at an after party of a wedding in Cana where Jesus performed His first miracle and where His glory was first put on display.
It’s this story that I’m wanting to utilize in an effort to draw out some prophetic implications concerning where we find ourselves today.
Although it may seem like I am speaking in metaphors and riddles, I will do my best to help you genuinely understand what I believe the Spirit is highlighting to us in this moment.
Here’s the scene…
Jesus and His followers, along with Jesus’ mother, Mary, have been invited to attend a wedding in Cana of Galilee.
One the third day of the wedding celebration, the wine ran out.
And that, dear reader, is what I want to focus on in this blog.
In many ways, it has felt like the wine has run out.
Let me explain.
The Holy Spirit is likened to wine in Ephesians 5:18.
Paul writes, “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.”
You will always come under the influence of whatever you are filled with.
That is what it means to be intoxicated.
When someone is drunk with wine, they lose control of their faculties and inhibition.
They stumble. Their reflexes slow. They say and do things they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do. Their emotions fluctuate.
In other words, they come under the control of a substance.
Similarly, when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon those gathered in an upper room on the day of Pentecost, some of the onlookers that observed the behavior of the disciples mocked them and said that they were full of sweet wine (see Acts 2:13).
These followers of Jesus were so filled with the Holy Spirit that they appeared drunk.
The glory and power of God was being manifested through them as they spoke in languages they were never taught!
They had lost all control of themselves and were under the control or influence of the Spirit of the Lord!
This is why the Holy Spirit is like wine.
In the same way that wine can intoxicate you, you can be intoxicated with the Holy Spirit!
In the same way that the intoxication of wine can cause joy, the intoxication of the Spirit is pure joy!
In the same way that the intoxication of wine is like a dose of liquid courage, the intoxication of the Spirit results in pure boldness!
In the same way that the intoxication of wine causes a person to become someone entirely different then who they are when sober, the intoxication of the Spirit completely changes you as a person!
And in the case of the disciples in Acts 2, they traded in their fear for courage, their lack of power for a demonstration, and cowardice for boldness.
They were the most effective when they were the most intoxicated.
The more drunk we are with the Holy Spirit, the more we will accomplish.
It seems as though we will always be filled with something.
We will either be filled with the dregs and counterfeits of what the world has to offer, or we will be filled with the Spirit of the Almighty.
I believe that the wine of previous moves of God, and most certainly the wine of Pentecost, has all but run out.
It feels like we are drinking from drops at the bottom of a barrel.
It is my conviction that we need new wine.
In fact, when the mockers accused the disciples of being filled with sweet wine, what they were truly saying was this: “They are filled with new wine.”
New wine is always the sweetest and we desperately need it today.
God did a new thing on the day of Pentecost, and He is wanting to do a new thing today.
The world needs to see the people of God completely intoxicated with another outpouring of the Holy Spirit… not for our sake, but for theirs.
- Brian Connolly, Faith Like Birds
Read the previous blog!
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