Joel 1:5 Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!
Wail, all you drinkers of wine;
wail because of the new wine,
for it has been snatched from your lips.
It took me a few weeks contemplating this verse to understand what the Holy Spirit was saying. The context of Joel is much like Zephaniah. Judah has a good king, but the hearts of the people have grown stagnant and complacent toward God. They are no longer longing for Him. God is jealous for their love and pronounces judgements to remove all hindrances to love and to stir their hearts to long for Him again.
The Lord wants to be the chief source of heart exhilaration in our lives. He wants our hearts to be be intoxicated with Him. A person becomes a drunkard because they look to alcohol and the feelings it brings to exhilarate their hearts as a way to escape different kind of heart pain. They become captivated by the emotions intoxication brings. Intoxication provides another world for them to live in that is more exhilarating than this fallen one. Joel 5 says God is wanting to awaken our hearts to find our escape in our love relationship with Him. He wanted them to return to their first love; to be intoxicated in His love; to have their hearts once again exhilarated with His beauty.
Eph. 5 says we should live continually inebriated with the Holy Spirit instead of with wine. I find it is so easy to become distracted and lured away by shallow intoxications, and exhilarations. I’m so grateful for His rescuing love that brings north winds into my life, to awaken my heart to drink deep again from the endless ocean of His love and glory. Jesus said in Mark 14 that Mary Magdalene’s choice to live a life wasted on Him is to be remembered whenever the gospel is preached. That’s what the gospel’s intended to produce, people who want to waste (live excessively) their lives on Jesus. So get wasted and stay wasted; inebriated on the Love of God.