David Diga Hernandez - Befriending the Holy Spirit

What does it mean to be a friend of the Holy Spirit? It is the Holy Spirit who helps us to worship more sincerely, study the Word of God more deeply, pray more powerfully, live more righteously, and engage in various other activities. I believe that today, as you hear about how to cultivate a friendship with the Holy Spirit of God, your life is going to be transformed. It is my prayer that as you watch this program today and join in for this edition of Spirit Church, the presence of God would invade the room and the very surroundings that you have around you right now. I pray that you would experience the manifested presence of the Holy Spirit in a way that you’ve never felt before. I hope that this broadcast today draws you closer to the person of the Holy Spirit and, by doing so, allows you to tap into a greater level of divine power that God wants to place on your life for your calling for such a time as this. Steven Montazuma is here with me, as usual; he’s going to lead you in some worship, then we’ll come right back and get into this lesson on friendship with the Holy Spirit, where I’ll teach you how to cultivate that Holy Spirit friendship in your life.

Well, I pray that you enjoyed that worship, and like I said, we are going to be talking today about how you can cultivate a friendship with the person of the Holy Spirit. I’ll never forget what happened to me when I first discovered that the Holy Spirit is not a thing, an object, or a force, but a person. It was life-transforming, and since that day, I’ve experienced the depths of God in ways I never thought I could. So, I pray that today, as we get into this message, not only would you be drawn closer to the person of the Holy Spirit, but you would also be given a greater understanding of the depths of God, and that you would experience the manifested presence of the Holy Spirit in a very special way. I believe some of you watching this are going to sense the Spirit of God around you. You know, I don’t believe in accidents. I believe that you are watching this right now because God has appointed you to watch this teaching at this very moment. My prayer for you was simple: God, lead everyone who needs to be led to this teaching today, for such a time as this. I really do believe this. I’ll say this because it’s something that has been on my heart: I believe that the church is getting ready to shift into a greater awareness of the Holy Spirit of God, such as we’ve never seen before. You’ve heard of things like the Azusa Street Revival and the revival in Florida. You’ve heard of the outpourings of the Holy Spirit that have visited this nation and other nations of the world throughout church history, and I believe that we are coming into something that is akin to the charismatic movement—a new move of the Holy Spirit. For such a time as this, there has been somewhat of a spiritual vacuum created. In other words, you’re not hearing much talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, about the fire of God, or about the depths of prayer. We hear a lot about success, positive thinking, and fulfilling your dreams, and none of those things are wrong in and of themselves, but I believe that God is bringing a greater demonstration of His supernatural aspects to the church in the coming season. I believe that this message today could very well be pivotal because perhaps God wants to use your life. Maybe there’s someone watching me right now whom God wants to use to help usher in this new move of the Holy Spirit. Now, when I say «new move of the Holy Spirit,» I simply mean fresh. Of course, God doesn’t change; His Word doesn’t change; the gospel message doesn’t change. But what we are coming into is definitely going to be fresh. It is going to renew people, and I believe it’s going to result in a great harvest of souls all around the world. So, having said that, I’m starting to teach on the Holy Spirit again. You know, at the beginning of last year, for the first six months or so, I was just focusing on teachings about the Holy Spirit, and today, we are getting back to that focus again. The scripture says this in 1 Thessalonians 5:23: you’ve heard that man has a body, a soul, and a spirit, and the scripture actually does teach this. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 says this: «Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.» This scripture in Thessalonians spells out for us very clearly that man is tri-fold just as God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So, man is body, soul, and spirit. Your identity, however, rests not in your body or your soul; your identity is based in the spirit. You are a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body. Your body is very obvious—it’s your physical connection with the world in which you live right now. Some have come to call it your Earth suit. It’s not really you; it’s not entirely who you are, but it represents you here in this realm of the world. You have a body that interacts with the physical world around you, and you have a soul. Your body is your physical being; your soul is your mind, will, emotions, personality, decisions, and thought life. Then, your spirit is something else entirely. Your spirit is your divine connection with God. This is what it means to have inner fellowship. We don’t have fellowship with the Holy Spirit in body, though, according to 1 Corinthians 6:19, where our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We don’t have fellowship with God in our soul, though God does save our souls, affect our souls, impact our souls, and transform our souls. We have fellowship with the Holy Spirit in the deepest parts of who we are. It’s spirit-to-spirit communication. In fact, the book of 1 Corinthians actually spells this out very clearly for us. 1 Corinthians 2:10 says this: «But it is to us that God revealed these things by His Spirit, for His Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one knows God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit, not the world’s spirit, so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us.» So, it’s talking about a very deep knowing of who God is.