David Diga Hernandez - We Need the Holy Spirit

Let me be honest with you: we need a fresh emphasis on the person of the Holy Spirit in a world that is crying out for the supernatural. There is a church that is treating the Holy Spirit as a liability instead of as the power to reach the world. We need to stop limiting the Holy Spirit to special services and private meetings. We need to stop drinking and sipping from the river; we need to jump into the river and say, «Holy Spirit, have Your way.» The Holy Spirit wants to move; the Holy Spirit wants to speak. Will you give Him a voice? Will you give Him your hands? Will you give Him your being? Come, Holy Spirit! Everywhere else, they may say You’re not welcome; everywhere else, they may treat You like You’re bizarre and weird, and You’re an outcast. But not here, Holy Spirit, not here. Holy Spirit, here we welcome You. Lord, surge through our being! I’m so aware of Him right now; I can sense Him moving and touching hearts. Church, the Holy Spirit’s power cannot be replaced with programs; His miracles cannot be replaced by methods. Our systems cannot take the place of the spiritual; we need the Holy Spirit. I promise you this to the generation that comes after me: never will I reject the Holy Spirit. He will be the emphasis; He will be the stirrer of the Gospel. You know, when we say that we welcome the Holy Spirit, we mean it in our hearts. But you must recognize that no believer knowingly rejects the Holy Spirit. If ever somebody rejects His moving, it’s typically unknowingly. So we must humbly open ourselves to the pressing question: Am I welcoming the Holy Spirit? Nobody says, «I don’t want Him.» I’ve heard preachers tell me, «Make sure nobody’s slain in the Spirit; you can pray for the sick, but afterwards.» And I say, «Don’t you want the Holy Spirit to move?» And they’ll say to me things that sound clever, like, «Well, people are saved, aren’t they? Lives are being impacted, aren’t they? That means the Holy Spirit is moving.» I said, «Yes, the Holy Spirit is moving, but you’re basically telling Him that after salvation, you can take it from there. Yes, save the soul, but then don’t get too weird because we’ll take it from there.» They wonder why they have to counsel so many people. You’re counseling them when you need to cast the devil out of them, but you can’t cast the devil out of them because you’re not allowing the Holy Spirit to move. How sad that the church in many parts of the world has become a referral program instead of the source of the power of God. It’s His presence, it’s His power that we need now more than ever. We cannot say to the next generation, «You can build it on a system; just be relevant.» Listen, I am all for modernizing things; I am all for excellence. But given the choice, you can keep your fancy haircuts, your tight jeans, your graphics, and your methods—give me the power of God! The church is shying away from the very thing that the world is longing for. We need Him now; we need Him now! I want to share this thought with you—a very simple thought—and then I want to pray for you in just a moment. Thank you, Lucas. The scripture says in Philippians chapter 2, verses 6–8, and I’m reading out of the New Living Translation: «Though He was God, He did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, He gave up His divine privileges; He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He humbled Himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.» Jesus was truly God and truly man, but He was so much man that He stripped Himself of certain divine qualities. He gave up certain powers by choice. You see, you can’t kill God because He is eternity itself, but the reason that Jesus was able to be subject to death was because He stripped Himself of that eternal nature. The scripture tells us in Matthew 1:18 that it was by the Holy Spirit that the Word became flesh. I want you to think about this: an incomprehensible God, of whom we receive understanding only by the Spirit, became flesh. It’s easier for me to explain how my iPhone works to an insect than it is for me to explain to a human the complexities of God’s divine nature. God is eternal, God is all-powerful, and God is all-loving. Yet the Holy Spirit took eternity Himself and made Him a man. He opened an impossibly tiny door, and the Creator stepped into creation. It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that the Word became flesh. The scripture tells us, «In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.» And then in John 1:14, the scripture says, «And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, full of grace and truth.» Jesus was the fullness of the image of God. This is why He could say, «If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.» The Holy Spirit missed nothing; when you look at Jesus, you see the Father. So if Jesus stripped Himself of these divine qualities, how was it that He moved in such power? Well, the scripture makes it clear that the Holy Spirit enabled Jesus to do many things. Isaiah 61:1 lists many things that Jesus did by the power of the Holy Spirit.