Sid Roth - The ONLY Way to be Friends with the Holy Spirit
Sid Roth: Welcome, Holy Spirit. Go and flow. My guest, David Hernandez, was raised in a Christian home, but dealt with severe demonic attacks at a very young age. David, what happened?
David Hernandez: Well, as you said, I grew up in church. I'm a fourth generation Christian, third generation preacher. I knew Jesus socially, philosophically, historically, but I did not know Jesus personally. So growing up, I had experience, severe demonic torment, in the forms of horrific nightmares; seeing demonic faces in the walls. On a couple of occasions I actually saw, in the physical realm, demonic entities.
Sid Roth: Were you scared?
David Hernandez: Terrified. It was a fear that gripped me. And there were times that I would be lying in my bed just staring at my ceiling shaking, not being able to move, wanting to get up and run to my parents' door, but I was so terrified that I wasn't even able to move. And we were able to trace some things back in terms of our family lineage. My great, great grandfather was a warlock from Zacatecas, Mexico.
Sid Roth: Hmm.
David Hernandez: And people would bring different individuals who were sick to him, and have him cure them, always the demonic entities that were doing the curing. They would request that he would curse certain ones of their enemies. And he was also able to do other displays of demonic power. Now, this, of course, caused our family to be a target generationally, and I do believe that when you come to Christ, that generational cycle is broken because of the power of the Blood of Jesus. And I grew up in a Christian home, so the demonic entities were, to some degree, held back from being able to do their worst forms of attacks. But still, I was susceptible to something.
Sid Roth: You had, from what you're telling me, what are known as generational curses that passed on from one generation to the next to the next, all the way going back to your, what, great, great grandfather?
David Hernandez: Yes. I like to call them "generational cycles," because when I use the term "generational curse," which sometimes is referenced, it implies that there's this sort of fatalism attached to it, in that I'm just doomed to repeat the mistakes of my parents, whether or not I do anything about it in terms of turning to God or not. But when it comes to what is generational, I believe that previous generations can set the conditions by the choices that they make, but you and I, by different choices, can find that freedom and break through, which is ultimately what happened with me. One even, while at a Bible conference with my family, I finally had enough. The suffering had reached its pinnacle, and I remember being alone...
Sid Roth: About how old were you then?
David Hernandez: I was 11 years old.
Sid Roth: Okay.
David Hernandez: I remember being alone in a hotel room. My family had gone to the service at a Bible conference, and I stood behind in the hotel room. And I'm lying on the bed, Sid, staring at the ceiling, sweating. I could feel my heart beating in my neck and my body is trembling because the devil was tormenting me with thoughts of hell, harassing my mind... just in every form of wickedness in terms of deception. He was attacking my mind. And I began to have somewhat of an existential crisis is what I can compare it to, in terms of thinking about eternity and hell. And so when my family came back, I told my father I needed to talk to him, and I assumed that by the look on my face, he was able to tell that something was wrong. So he dismisses the rest of the family. He sits down on one of the beds, it was a two-bed hotel room. And I'm sitting on one bed; he's sitting across from me on the other. And Sid, I don't necessarily see in the Bible the sinner's prayer, but in the Bible you see sinners who pray. And there's something about confession that goes along with that. And so as I'm sitting there with my father, we're joining hands, he begins to lead me in prayer. And I'll tell you, it was like that room became heaven on earth, because as he begins to lead me in this prayer, I can sense it even now as I'm talking to you.
Sid Roth: I was just going to tell you, I was sensing that.
David Hernandez: I can sense that right now as I'm talking to you. As he begins to lead me in this prayer, I felt almost to a euphoric degree the love and the peace and the joy welling up from deep within. And as he's leading me in this prayer, I couldn't pray because my mouth was shaking, and I was so overcome with emotion that all I could do was say to my mind, as I felt the warmth of my tears beginning to flow down my face, and all I could think was, I'm finally meeting Jesus, the One they talked about. The One I read about. I'm meeting Him now. And the moment I received Christ, the moment Jesus walked into that room, every demon ran out. That torment was lifted, there was freedom that came upon me. I sensed the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit. And this began, actually, a spiritual journey. So now I'm endued with power, I have this sense of the presence of the Lord, and there was this excitement, this vitality, this life-giving energy from deep within that began to flow. I start seeking the Lord in prayer, praying four to eight hours a day, reading 10, 15, 20, 30 chapters of the Bible a day, just going after the face of Jesus. And this really began a season of personal revival in my life.
Sid Roth: And then the last thing that he felt would happen, he had the sense, this wonderful Presence of God that was surrounding him, inside of him, outside of him, he felt like God left him. What happened?
David Hernandez: Well, I was experiencing that spiritual momentum, prayer, reading books on prayer. I was reading books on spiritual warfare, sitting with mentors, going to church revivals... again, it was a personal revival. And I could sense like as if I just put my hand in front of my face, I could sense as if God was that close. And then all of a sudden, there was this stop to that momentum, and I had felt like I had hit a brick wall in the Spirit. And I'm thinking, okay, something's wrong here. And I started to panic, and asked questions like, "God, did I do something wrong? Lord, did I offend You in some way? Was I not praying the correct way? Did I not pray enough? Did I not read enough Scriptures in the allotted amount of time and reach my spiritual quota"? So I start being filled with that old form of anxiety again. And this is what happens in the lives of many believers, where they experience the ebb and flow of the Spirit, and they assume that because they no longer feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, that somehow He has abandoned them or left them. Well, what did Jesus say? Jesus said, "I will send you another, and He will never leave you".
Sid Roth: Hmm.
David Hernandez: And so we often think that because we make mistakes that the Holy Spirit just abandons us. Well, Ephesians 4:30 tell us that the Holy Spirit grieves within us when we're disobedient, so the Holy Spirit doesn't leave, He grieves. He abides to help us get it right. I mean, what sense would it make for God to remove from you as a punishment for not being holy, your only power to be holy? He gives you the Holy Spirit that you might get these things right. And so this begins this spiritual seeking. I'm wondering, I'm asking questions, okay, do I have the Holy Spirit sometimes? Why is it, by the way, that when I'm saved, I'm told I have the Holy Spirit, and then there's this secondary experience that seems to be described in Scripture and at all the revival meetings I'm hearing about? And what is the role of the Holy Spirit in my life? All these questions begin to flow out of me because of this loss of spiritual momentum. And that began another season of seeking.
Sid Roth: Then David had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Here's what happened. He locked himself in his bedroom and prayed for four hours. Then he gave up. Gave up?
David Hernandez: Well, I like that you worded it that way, because I did, in fact, give up. It came to this point of frustration where I was trying everything that I knew to do with my own ability. So finally, I create this ultimatum, and I say to the Lord, "Okay, Lord, I'm going to lock myself in the room, and I'm going to be gone for four hours". Well, I didn't know at the time it was going to be four hours, but I said to myself, "I'm going to lock myself in the room and I'm not coming out until I have an encounter with the Holy Spirit". Now, to be honest with you, Sid, I didn't even know exactly what I was looking for. I didn't know how that encounter would look. All I knew is that something was not right, and I needed it to be fixed. So I shut the door, I lock it, I turn on my ceiling fan... my room would get a little bit warm... I'd turn on the light so that I could see the Bible sprawled out on the desk. I turn on some worship music, and I began to pray and seek the Face of God. And I was hungry for an encounter with the Holy Spirit. So I thought maybe 45 minutes had passed, I look at the clock, it's only five minutes. I'm thinking, okay, this is going to be a long journey here. That's because when you go to pray, it's the death of the flesh. This is why you can sing and you can dance and you can jump and you can hear great teaching, and you can kind of sit there and just enjoy it, but typically when you begin to pray, you feel that squirming because your flesh knows it's the death of it, and so it fights you in prayer. And so I had to remove a lot of layers of that flesh. And when I say "flesh," I'm just talking about ego and carnal nature. And so I began to pray for that first hour. Nothing happens. And so I say, "I'm going to really dig in now". So that second hour, I began to reach for my deepest emotions and I start crying out to God, forcing the tears, hyping my emotion. "Lord, don't You hear me? God, aren't You there? Why aren't You responding"? I was trying to guilt God into a response as if it was a negotiation.
Sid Roth: Didn't work.
David Hernandez: And nothing was happening, because God doesn't to emotion, He responds to faith. And so I'm praying for that second hour, and finally, nothing happens. So the third hour comes, and I said, "Now, I'm going to get real aggressive. I've read books on spiritual warfare. I know how to pursue the Presence of God. I know how to attack demonic powers". So I start calling down angels, praying the bloodline of Jesus. I start praying against demonic entities that maybe were or were not there. I just picked adjectives attached to the demons, and rebuked them. The spirit of this, the spirit of that, the spirit of distraction and prayer... you name it, I'm rebuking it. That hour goes by. All that aggression, all that warfare, all that trying... nothing happens. Fourth hour comes. And now I say, "I'm going to figure my way into the Presence of God". I have all my theology and the books that I have read, and all of the sermon outlines that I'm thinking of in terms of the presence and the glory and prayer. And the fourth hour goes by, Sid, nothing happens. Intellect failed. Emotion failed. Willpower failed. Technique failed. And here I was standing there, just completely broken. And so after all of my frantic fighting, I finally came to this point where I said, "Lord, I don't know how to pray. I don't know how to find Jesus. Help me find Jesus". And this calm comes over me. And the Holy Spirit tells me, "Turn off the fan". And I know why now, it was distracting me, this noise of the fan. I turned off the fan. "Turn off the light". I turned off the light. "For now," he says, "just for now, close the Word". I had already read dozens of chapters and was still feeling guilty for not having read enough. I closed the Word just for that moment. The Holy Spirit says, "Turn off the music". My religious reaction was, "But you can't move without the music". But I, moved by the Spirit, turned it off. And then in that moment, with my hands lifted and my eyes closed, I felt like my room itself had been raptured into a heavenly realm. And this is really the beauty of the presence of the Holy Spirit, as He's that foretaste of glory because He is the Kingdom within us, heaven within us, power within us, joy within us. And there, in that room, with my hands lifted, eyes closed, I began to fill pulses of electric-like sensations move up and down my body. This is the manifested Presence of God. Now we know, Psalm 139:7 makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is everywhere at all times. But whereas the omnipresence of God is His awareness of all things, the manifest Presence of God is our awareness of Him. And so in that moment now, I start to feel like pulses of electric sensations move up and down my body. I felt warmth, and that same love, joy, and peace, only it was different this time, it was like in the air, tangible, thick. Almost as if the air itself was thicker. Sid, even the very light waves, I feel, reacted to the presence, because the color tones of the room shifted. And there I am, hands lifted, eyes closed. I felt peace, tears streaming down my face. I feel the Love of God. I was afraid to even move my hand, because I thought, if I move my hand, I'm going to feel that brush up against His robe. I'm going to open my eyes, see Him looking at me. It's going to distract me and break me from whatever this is. It lasted for mere minutes, but had I sought it for 100 years, it would have been worth it. But what began to happen is, I now realized that it wasn't because I prayed for four hours that God suddenly said, "Okay, you prayed enough, I'm going to reward you with My presence". It's that after four hours, I finally realized there was nothing in me that could do it, and I had to rely upon the Holy Spirit. And it was finally then that I gave up... that's why God sometimes will wait seemingly until the last minute, it's so that when the miracle finally comes, you recognize who deserves the glory.
Sid Roth: Hmm. Now at age 12, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are radiating out of him. All of a sudden, he knows things about people. Are you ready for the Holy Spirit to be your best friend? David is going to teach and then pray for you. And the relationship that David has, you're going to have, if not greater. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello, Sid Roth here with David Hernandez. David said, and he's provoking everyone viewing to jealousy, the Holy Spirit is his best friend. I have challenged him to teach in this segment what it means to have the Holy Spirit as your best friend, and how you can do this, and to pray that the Holy Spirit will be your best friend. David Hernandez.
David Hernandez: Well, as Sid mentioned, just before we went to break, after this encounter with the Holy Spirit, supernatural occurrences began to take place in my life, including the manifestations of the spiritual gifts, the Power of God. There were instances when I would be having conversations with individuals, and knowledge would just come to my mind. And I began to speak aloud that information, not realizing that it was the supernatural acquisition of that information, information that I would have not otherwise known. I began to see people getting healed at my school and in my family gatherings. And there was this overflow that took place. In fact, that is the definition of all true ministry. It begins in the prayer room, and it's overflow out of your relationship with God. And that presence that you tend to in private becomes the power that you walk in, in public. And so these manifestations began to unfold, and God began to direct me down this path of my calling. But it was all tied to a relationship with the Holy Spirit. And this is something I want every believer to understand, that the Holy Spirit dwells in you. I had mentioned just previously that I couldn't reconcile this idea that there seemed to be these secondary and third experiences that the believer has with the Holy Spirit. So let's make this clear. John 3, Ephesians 1, Romans Chapter 8, and they all make it clear that at the very moment you receive Christ as Lord, the very moment you're born again, you receive the Holy Spirit in the fullness of His power. You don't get a baby Holy Spirit, a new convert Holy Spirit, a portion of the Holy Spirit, for the eternal cannot be divided into portions. You get the same Holy Spirit who hovered above the face of the deep when God spoke the word and caused all creation to come into existence. You get the same Holy Spirit who inspired the craftsmen to make all the different articles of the tabernacle, the same Holy Spirit who moved the prophets to speak, who gave wisdom to Solomon, who wrote worship stanzas that came out as poetry in the songs of David. The same Holy Spirit who interpreted dreams through Joseph, who rested upon the early church and the apostles, and Christ Himself, for Romans, Chapter 8, Verse 11 tells us that "the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you". So then, what does it mean, to have this friendship? What does it mean to have this secondary experience? Because we look and we see patterns. John 20:22, Jesus breathes on His disciples and tells them, "Receive the Holy Spirit". And then this same group, in Acts, Chapter 2, they receive the Holy Spirit. Many in that same group, Peter and John among them, are found in Acts, Chapter 4 again, receiving the Holy Spirit. You see, we experience more in God, not in receiving more from God, but in surrendering more to God. Jesus said in John 7:38, "Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water," which means, it's already in you. The Holy Spirit Himself already dwells within you. All power, all love, all boldness, miracles, the mind of God, the nature of God, dwells in you. This is why I say that spiritual growth isn't even necessarily your spirit actually growing. Spiritual growth is when the rest of you catches up to who you already area in Christ, because that new creation, who you are in Christ, that's already you. And once you come to understand this, you understand that the Holy Spirit is not a reward for the super-spiritual, He's the only chance that any of us have at ever being spiritual in the first place. And so it's not a matter of begging and pleading, it's a matter of simply being aware, of acknowledging that the Holy Spirit, indeed, dwells in you. When you make mistakes, He abides, not to excuse the sin, but to help you get it right. He's more patient than we are sinful. He's more loving than we are stubborn. He abides as a friend day to day, and He is a person. Now, by "person," I don't mean that He's fallible or human or mortal, I simply mean that He is personal. He has a voice. He has a will. He has feelings. And Romans 8:26 and 27 tells us that He prays for you. And so He is actively pursuing you as a friend. It's not a matter of how gifted you are, how talented you are, how special we think we are. It's a matter of how surrendered we are to the Holy Spirit. So it comes by faith, not through begging. It's not as though God is looking over the balconies of heaven with His arms folded saying, "Well, if you pray enough, you read enough, you get it right enough, I'm going to send you that power"... no. He gives us the power that we might accomplish those things. When you think the Holy Spirit is an it, you'll want to use it. But when you know that the Holy Spirit is a person, you lift your hands and you say, "Holy Spirit, use me". And so, dear believer, He's not far from any one of us. It's not a matter of striving, but of surrender. Simple faith... acknowledging that we don't even pray to connect with God, we pray from connection with Him. He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit with Him. The Holy Spirit dwells in you, whether you fill Him or not, whether you think you have Him or not. Whether you think you deserve Him or not. The Holy Spirit is there as a faithful friend, a comforter. In those moments of pain, in tragedy, He's there to guide you and speak to you, and bring clarity. In those moments of confusion, He directs you on the right path. In those moments where you are being assaulted by all of hell, the Holy Spirit's power comes up against the powers of hell like a mighty force. And He doesn't fight with demons in terms of struggle, because He deals with them in ways that we can't even comprehend. Like a mighty ocean wave coming over a sandcastle, so the power of the Holy Spirit comes over demonic power, and He's there with you now. Listen to me. He's in the room with you. He's in the room with you. He's looking at you. He's listening to you. And so as we pray right now, I want you to understand that it's simple awareness, coming into that place of simple faith. So precious Holy Spirit, I can sense His presence even now. Precious Holy Spirit, envelope them in Your presence and power. Let them come to know I pray in the Name of Jesus. The beauty and the majesty and the glory of Your presence. Then experience joy overflowing, peace beyond comprehension, divine love. Let them drink of that fountain that never runs dry. And Father, we come against every sickness and disease in the Mighty Name of Jesus. We come against every demonic bondage. Thank you, Holy Spirit, that You are present, that You abide, that You are with us. Cause them, Lord, not just to have this encounter, but to live in it by faith, in the Mighty Name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.