Are You New Wine 2K Compliant?
By Georgian Banov

I personally didn’t need any revival, I thought. I was managing just fine. The fact that I was a minister of the Gospel and yet couldn’t do anything to help motivate my spiritually shipwrecked wife was beside the point. After all, I was a man with a calling and a vision, and I wouldn’t let anything slow me down even if our marriage seemed to be falling apart.

In early 1994, some of my pastor friends kept phoning me and urging me to go and check out the “extended” revival meetings that were taking place at the Carpenter’s Home Church in Lakeland, Florida. But by the time I was able to arrange my schedule and coax my “less-than-willing-to-go-to-another -Christian-conference” wife to fly with me all the way from the Seattle to Florida, it was the beginning of 1995.

SURPRISED BY HIS JOY

When we finally arrived late for the Monday morning service, we were shocked to find the church filled! The meeting started and within minutes, the glory of God began to fill the “dead and barren” heart of my wife with His sweetness. The long lost sense of the presence of Jesus was back again, and the prodigal daughter was coming home.

While everyone else present seemed to be rejoicing, laughing, rolling on the floor or running around the large auditorium, Winnie sat next to me completely overwhelmed by His nearness, weeping uncontrollably through most of the meetings that entire week.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t figure out how to respond to the South African preacher who kept inviting people to, “Take another drink of the new wine!”
“Drink, ” I thought to myself, “what do you mean, drink?” “How do you do that?” If he had asked me to do something like “pray” or “confess” or “believe,” I would have understood, but “drink”? It seemed like I was the only guy in the whole place that was having a hard time with this.

Although I’d read chapter 2 of the book of Acts many times, I didn’t know much about what the Bible calls “new wine.” All I knew about wine was the old wine. I recalled growing up in Eastern Europe and watching my grandpa treading his own grapes and storing wine in wooden barrels. But since I’d become a Christian I hadn’t thought much about wine since it was such a controversial subject in the Church. I couldn’t help thinking as the evangelist was talking, “How do you get drunk with new wine if the wine isn’t real wine anyway? After all,” I thought, “ the big thing about Pentecost was speaking with new tongues, not about wine, or getting intoxicated.”

As these thoughts ran through my mind, I found myself half-praying, “Do I need to go all the way back to the beginning to learn something basic all over again? Do You mean, Lord, I’ve missed something? Have I veered off course somehow?”

FROM FULLNESS TO DRYNESS AND BACK AGAIN

Suddenly, like a movie, my experiences as a Christian through the previous 20 years began to flow through my memory, starting with my first encounter with the Lord on a naked mountain top north of Los Angeles when I first believed in Him.
Then I recalled the day I was baptized with the Holy Spirit, when the heavens opened in a vision and I saw the throne of God covered with thousands of angels and balls of fire raining on my chest, burning everything on the inside of me. I was an immigrant then, fresh from the boat, alone in America, but I was so excited about Jesus and so hungry for His Word that I started spending every free moment with Him, sometimes 10 to 12 hours a day. What a time we had together. It was like a yearlong honeymoon. The stories of the Bible and the realms of the Spirit became so real to me.

Then I went to discipleship training school. I was so eager to learn, reading more and more books, Bible commentaries and theological studies. Soon came ordination, then marriage and then more leadership responsibilities. Yet, the more “mature” I became, the busier I got, and the less time I had for Him.

The supernatural went out of my life. The visions and the dreams faded and evolved into man-made plans and self-set goals. The times of open-ended devotions and extended feasting on the Lord slowly ceased and got replaced with scheduled appointments squeezed into the calendar. My devotional life turned into strenuous spiritual warfare. Gradually my love relationship with the Lord was reduced to repetitious, scriptural confessions and a perpetual struggle to develop something known as Christian character. The visitations of the Lord had long since subsided, replaced by the multi-step, self-improvement formulas, demanding performance and measurable results.

And now here I was again in an ocean of God’s glory and spontaneous joy, and although I was starving for it, I didn’t know how to participate. In an indescribable manifestation of glory, everyone present seemed to be caught up on their feet for hours, spontaneously applauding Jesus with loud voices. There in His presence, what I had tried to do to help restore my wife, through seven long, hard years and could never do, God did in seven short glorious days.

Winnie dived into the River of God! Our daughter, Yana, didn’t know what was happening to her mom at first. For years she had never seen her mother even read the Bible. Suddenly Winnie began devouring the Word again day and night like she did when she first came to the Lord. She would frequently burst out in laughter spontaneously for no particular reason and would often end up rolling on the floor.

Eventually I, too, was gloriously touched. As God manifested in me one evening, everything on the inside of me began to spin like a blender. The jet streams of the Holy Spirit blew right through my spirit, propelling my life like an invisible turbine, propelling me back up into the high altitudes of His grace. He began to take control of my life again.

RESTORING OUR MARRIAGE

As our love for Jesus returned, romance in our marriage came back, too! We started falling in love with each other again.

One morning I said, “I love you, Winnie, like Christ loves the church.” She fell on my lap and began to weep uncontrollably. I believe it was the Lord talking to her using my voice. Why did it take me 17 years of marriage to let Him say it? But I’m so glad I finally yielded to His voice.

Several months later in that same unforgettable year we went to Canada to visit the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. Oh wow!

We’d never seen anything like it. Again we saw the same awesome River of the Holy Spirit, just like the one flowing in those meeting in Lakeland, Florida. But here the River carried a different variety of manifestations and expressions. Here we saw dried up believers and wounded ministers from the nations coming for healing and refreshing.

It was in Toronto that the Lord restored my wife’s ministry as she watched ordinary people on the prayer team function under the anointing of the Holy Spirit. When we came home from that trip, she quit her other job and joined me ministering on the road full time. Now we are partners. “My” ministry became “ours,” and God restored the calling He gave us as partners in ministry over 25 years ago. How we missed it for so long, I don’t know!

But finally like Abraham and Sarah, God has given us an “Isaac”. It is the essence of the Gospel; the majestic revelation of His manifest presence living in us forever.

The “new wine” is for the “new man”, chuckles Winnie as she continues to drink from the Spiritual Rock. “Not another dry moment!’’ is among her favorite slogans. How can it be any other way when we have been destined to be continually filled with the Spirit at all times? Winnie is not a “social sipper” either. Her newly found “Divine intoxication” has already turned into a permanent addiction!

“What can I say?” She smiles with that “sauced” look on her face. “It seems to work for those who believe!”

Yes, you see, while we approach the year 2000 and everyone is asking whether we’re Y2K compliant, Winnie and I and our daughter, Yana, have become “new wine 2K compliant!” Why don’t you join us and start drinking His new wine?!

Georgian Banov is an evangelist whose musical works with the group, “Silverwind” include the well-known children’s albums, “The Music Machine” and “Bullfrogs and Butterflies.” He and his wife, Winnie, and daughter, Yana, travel the world serving “new wine” and celebrating the joy of this revival!

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