David Diga Hernandez - The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Now, I know that for some believers, this might be a taboo topic, especially because there are so many emotions usually involved when discussing it. However, I specifically wanted to address this today because, number one, I believe that speaking in tongues is still for today; it is still for the church and comes with many great benefits that God wants to give you. God wants to bless you with this gift so that you can communicate with Him on a higher level than you've ever known before. When you begin to speak in tongues, you create a closeness and a conversation in the Spirit that could not happen otherwise. As you watch today's program, I want you to remove any reservations from your mind; I want you to eliminate any barriers or mental blockages or emotional reserves that you may be holding against this gift. Maybe in some church culture you were part of, they were very forceful with the gift, or perhaps you've seen the gift used in bizarre ways or have witnessed various misuses of it. But I want to assure you, this is a beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit. This is something that God has given to us, the church, to bless us so that we can function at a higher level of expression and in a higher realm of prayer, and that's really what this gift is all about. I believe that as you watch, I will address a couple of things: I will discuss the purpose of the gift, the fact that it's still for today, and what is really going on in the Spirit when you're praying with the gift of speaking in tongues. As we address this topic, I want to assure you that God loves you, and He’s not going to give you a stone if you ask for bread. God is not going to give you a serpent when you ask for a fish. He is going to give us, His children, those who ask for the Holy Spirit or the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the very same gifts. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, and I want you to know that as you're watching this program right now, you can be filled with the Holy Spirit to such an overflow that that gift begins to manifest in your life. So, remove any reserves, remove those emotional barriers. We’re going to go to the Word of God today, and we will see what the Scripture has to say on this particular topic. So, let’s go now to Laale, California, where it's actually a men's conference where I was teaching this particular lesson, but I believe it’s for everyone. So, even though it’s a men's conference, you’re invited to come in and take a look. This took place in Laale, California, where I taught about that gift. We’re going to go there now—watch this!

The Bible says this in 1 Corinthians 2:9-16, and it's funny how often you hear it read so mysteriously. They get up and say, "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him." We talk about this as if it’s some distant thing: “Well, when you get to heaven, those are the things you won’t even understand.” But the very next verse, verse 10, states that it was to us that God revealed these things by His Spirit. The scripture goes on to say that nobody knows you better than your spirit, and nobody knows God better than His Spirit. Therefore, God communicates these things spirit to spirit. God is talking to you; God is speaking to you; God is imparting to you; God is fellowshipping with you, whether you are aware of it or not. As your day goes on, there is a celestial conversation happening in the heavenly realm. That’s why the scripture says the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. There is something happening inside the spirit that can't be put into physical words.

I was going to teach this whole lesson on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but I’m going to jump way ahead. Jesus said, “Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water.” When you are saved, you receive the Holy Spirit, but at the baptism, you release Him and become filled. This is why we get confused. We say, “Wait a minute, I was already saved and I had the Holy Spirit. Why do I need to receive the Holy Spirit again?” You don’t receive from without; you receive from within. Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water. The Holy Spirit doesn’t flood you from the outside in; He floods you from the inside out, from spirit to soul to body. As this flood begins to happen from deep within, the waters overflow into your soul. Your anger becomes patience, your fear becomes peace, your lust becomes holiness, darkness becomes light, and bondage becomes freedom. As the floodwaters move through, they break through, and the flood overflows. Then, what happens is the flood begins to overflow into your physical body. You begin to talk differently; your eyes begin to look where they should be looking; your feet begin to walk where you should be walking; your hands that used to sin now carry the very power of God. Where once they might have inflicted pain, they can now heal the sick. God will take what you give Him. The Holy Spirit fills what is empty; He cannot fill you if you’re full of yourself. This is the emptying that happens as the flood rises from deep within. I die daily, and as that flood covers me, it drowns the old man. That's where we get water baptism; it’s symbolic of what’s happening on the inside.

All right, we're going to be going back to Laale, California in just a moment, but first, it's time for our Mark 16 Miracle segment. This is where we take footage from you, our viewers, submitted from all over the world, of you getting out there, evangelizing, praying for the sick, prophesying, capturing it on footage, and sending it to us. This is a result of one of the viewers who sent it in because they didn't know quite what it was. So how do you know? And the other thing is, do you want to be well from that? Do you have some kind of an idea? Yeah, I do. Do you want to be well from that? I saw it on you right when you walked up, you did? Yeah, but if you want to be well from that, I'll pray for you right now. Oh, I just—I'm on my knees every morning and every night. Well, I'll pray. Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, absolutely. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. But I see that there's something tormenting your mind, causing you to go like this. Do you want that? I'm just asking you, do you want that to go? Because also it chokes you up in your breathing sometimes, and also your knee right here. God wants to strengthen that. So I’m just—just stand right there, okay? Father God, in Jesus' name, I want to first start with her head, Lord. I just cover her in your blood. She loves you. Holy Spirit, I pray your kingdom to come. Holy Spirit, come upon her right now in Jesus'. Let the kingdom of God come upon her right now. I ask for a wind to come in the natural and start coming around her head. I just pray for full-blown deliverance from all witchcraft and curses. Everything—I speak blessing over you right now, and I command healing into your right knee right now in Jesus' name. I command healing underneath your kneecap and strength all throughout the back of your spine, all the way up. And I pray the blessing of God right now. I break the power of the spirit of affliction and pain. Come to go in your sinuses. I pray for healing right now to open up in Jesus' name with your nose. And heaviness, go. I pray for the fire of God to come now in Jesus'. See all the winds blowing around you now? And the pain in your lower right side of your back. I pray for healing in there right now. There it is. Go ahead and take a deep breath and move around now. Take a deep breath and move around. I can feel chills when you did that. Chills? You felt chills going through you all over in the sinuses? You hit everything, right? Yeah, the sinuses and the knees—wrong with me. You—you hit every single thing wrong with you. God hit the sinuses, the knee, everything. Yeah, it's just God loves you. And what happened is His kingdom just came upon you by the power of the Holy Spirit. God just brought salvation to you, you are forgiven. But He just brought deliverance and healing. And so now God wants to restore joy to you and even wants to—God can do the same with you. Here’s my challenge to you now, as always, with the Mark 16 Miracle segment. I want you to get out there, prophesy, evangelize, pray for the sick, capture it on footage, and send it into us. We may feature it here on the Mark 16 Miracle segment here on Encounter TV. For more information on how you can get that footage to us, stick around until the end of the program. We're going to give you some general contact information. Now, let's go back to Laale, California, where I'm continuing this teaching on the language of the Holy Spirit. Watch this.

Something amazing happens with this gift called speaking in tongues. Oh, I've been feeling the Lord put this on my heart. I tell you, I literally have—and I'm not saying this to sound impressive; this is true, and it's true of all of us. We could all preach a sermon on the Holy Spirit every weekend for the rest of our lives, and we'd never run out of material; that's the reality. But when I was praying about tonight or this morning, the Lord told me to talk about the language of the Holy Spirit, the language of speaking in tongues. You know, police have their lingo that helps them get things done quicker; the military has their lingo that helps them get things done quicker; the medical field has a lingo that helps them get things done quicker. We have a lingo that helps us get things done quicker when we're praying in tongues. 1 Corinthians 14:2 says, "When I'm praying in tongues, no one understands me, for I'm speaking to God and not to man." 1 Corinthians 12:4 tells us that when you're speaking in tongues, you're edifying, enlightening, building, and strengthening yourself. When I pray in tongues, I'm giving the Holy Spirit words to use. Here's how it works: every book written in English uses only 26 letters. I want you to think about that. Every poem, your Bible, every book you've ever read in English—26 letters. Yet the author can take those 26 letters, and he can form and fashion masterpieces from those 26 letters. When you pray in tongues, you're giving the Holy Spirit syllables and sounds with which he can work. The Holy Spirit is a gentleman; he's classy. I don't care what anybody says; the Holy Spirit is classy. He's not going to come grab you and force you to speak in tongues. It is the language of faith; it is the language of surrender. You'll only feel what is empty when you speak with your language. You're speaking words and intentionally attaching your own purpose to those syllables and sounds; you're giving those words meaning yourself. But when you pray in tongues, you're giving him syllables and sounds that come with no meaning. You remove the meaning from them; you speak them in faith, and you say, "Holy Spirit, add what you want to add to that." Speak that language, and the Holy Spirit takes those words and begins to pray Spirit to Spirit for you in places that you didn't even know existed within your heart. Imagine! I mean, people come from all over the world to these types of events. They tell different preachers, "Lay hands on me, lay hands on me, lay hands on me." The Holy Spirit himself wants to lay hands on you, but you have to surrender. When you pray in tongues, you say, "Holy Spirit, pray for me." It's as if he's saying, "I would pray for you myself if you just gave me a mouth." You know, it's funny about the Holy Spirit: when you talk about him, he shows up. I mean, when I said that, I smiled because I sensed that familiar presence. How many of you sense the atmosphere shifting in this place? The Holy Spirit—he's doing what he does, and so this type of surrender—as we begin to speak these things—really, there are three different types of tongues. I'm going to give them to you real quickly. There’s the personal tongue (1 Corinthians 14:1-4). This is what comes from within, and it edifies yourself; that's the personal tongue. Then there is the proof tongue, as you see in Acts 2:6, where the scripture says that each one heard them in their own language. This is not an earthly dialect, guys; it says that each individual person heard the collective speaking in their own language all at once. This is the proof—this is where the scripture says that the unbelievers will come in, they'll hear it, and they'll say, "Oh my goodness, God is among you!" That also works with prophecy. The third is the prophetic tongue, which is 1 Corinthians 14:26-28. The way you find this gift, the way you surrender to it, really is simple, and people often ask, "How do you know that what you're receiving is from God and not, you know, from the Devil?" The other guy—and they're sincere. Let me tell you something: I know we're afraid of the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, but there is nothing wrong with asking very sincere questions because the most sincere questions often yield the deepest answers. Jesus said when you ask your Father for bread, he's not going to give you a stone. If you ask him for a fish, he's not going to give you a serpent or scorpion. We trust that what we have received is of God, not because of our ability to pray for it, but because of God's intrinsic goodness. We trust not in our ability to communicate with him, but we trust that every good gift comes from above.