“No one puts new wine into old wineskins; else the wine burst the skins and both the wine and the skins be lost.” Mark 2:22 NIV

A fire is being born in the earth. A hunger for God. This hunger doesn’t look like what we’d expect. In fact, older saints often find themselves shocked, disturbed, even uncomfortable with the expressions of this fire, this longing, this passion. ‘Too much!’ ‘Too long!’ ‘Too loud!’ ‘Too emotional!’ These are the comments sometimes heard from those who are observing this outpouring. It is the outcry of the old wineskin, protesting the mess, the noise, the gassiness of the new. The new wine barely notices and continues to pour out all over everything, everywhere. Because this hunger is so great; the outcry of the lost and the broken is so loud it rises over all objections.

The Jesus People appeared in the 60‘s during a time of great generational struggle. Hair grew long; and blue jeans and army jackets became a uniform for both male and female. Drugs and sex flowed freely, hurting many and destroying lives. Street preachers began to reach out to these lost ones on the path to nowhere. To everyone’s surprise many opened up their hearts to the love Jesus! By the hundreds of thousands they came. Laughing. Happy. High on Jesus. Healed of addictions. Singing their new songs with their guitars and their new rock beat. Contemporary worship as it is known to this very day. Some of the older generation wanted these new young lives to change outwardly as well as inwardly. The old wineskin was very uncomfortable with this new wine…and often tried to get it to ‘settle down.’

In the mid 1990‘s there were again rumblings of something new the Spirit of God was doing in the earth. Healings. Deliverance. Repentance. Salvations and…what?? Laughter? Laughter? What on earth? Tears were all right, tears we understand. But laughter? Laughter it was. As usual, the Holy Spirit was not asking anyone’s permission how He should manifest Himself to the hungry and hurting. He poured out without measure. We called it the Toronto Blessing, and John Arnott, the pastor who oversaw that revival told us that they stopped counting at 4 million people who came through their doors. Virtually every nation on the earth was affected.

Now, the hungry are coming again with tattoo’s and piercings and marijuana tee shirts. They are fermenting, fast and messy. Gassier than ever before. They can worship and pray for untold hours. They do not grow tired of going after God and even the most fervent of us must dig deep to go with them. Oh! But when we do, we can feel our old wine being refreshed into new. Yes, please Lord. I want to drink the new wine of Your Spirit! Fill my cup, Lord! I lift it up!

~ Debbie Ecker