David Diga Hernandez - Praying in the Holy Spirit (Powerful Message on Prayer)

The Bible says in First Corinthians chapter 6, verse 17: «He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.» In First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 23, the scripture alludes to the fact that man exists with three different aspects to his nature: his body, soul, and spirit. Many of you have heard me teach on this before, and the reason I teach on this so often is that this is a foundational truth that, once you grasp it, actually opens up your understanding of how God operates—not just in prayer, but also in deliverance, healing, ministry, and the anointing. Once you understand that you have three aspects to your nature, I want everyone to say with me: «I am a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body.» One more time: «I am a spirit who has a soul that lives in a body.» You are your spirit; you are not your soul, and you are not your body. Your body is not the source of your identity, nor is your body intrinsically evil or evil in itself. The physical body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit dwells there. Your physical body is your earth suit, so to speak—how you interact with the world around you, how you interact with everyone in this room, and everyone you’ve ever interacted with before. It’s through speech, through sight, through hearing, and through touch that human interaction occurs in the earthly realm, through that earthly being, the physical body. The physical body is how you get around; it’s where the decisions of your heart are manifested. The soul is the realm of decision; it’s the neutral ground—the mind, the will, the emotions, and the personality. The mind is what you think, the will is what you desire, the emotions are what you feel, and personality is how you behave. All of those contribute to what you’re going to express in the physical body. Then there is a deeper part of you that the scripture refers to as your spirit. The body and the soul are outer shells of who you are; they do not make you up in your entirety.

Now here’s the issue: when we pray and worship—what did Jesus say in John chapter 7, verse 38? The King James Version says, «Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water.» But what do some translations say? The NASB words it: «Out of your innermost being"—not the body, not the soul, but the spirit. Out of the innermost being will flow rivers of living water. The baptism with the Holy Spirit and the evidence of speaking in tongues is not rain from heaven; it’s a river from within. It’s not something that I have to receive; it’s something I must release. Several years ago, a story came out about a man who survived deep in the Atlantic Ocean for almost three days. His ship had sunk, and everyone on board was killed but him. When the divers went in, they thought they were going in to recover bodies, but they found the man still alive after three days stuck underwater in the boat. That’s what I said when I read the headline; I thought it was clickbait, as they say. So I went and read the story. It turns out that when the boat sank, there was an air pocket preserved right where he was. He had found a place where he could breathe, and he was surviving on Coca-Cola and that little bit of air he had. He was running low on oxygen when they found him; his oxygen level was low, and he was disoriented—he was not completely himself. They brought him up slowly; obviously, they didn’t want his lungs to become crushed by ascending too quickly. What fascinated me about this was the fact that that man was able to survive because, though the boat was in the water, the water was not completely in the boat. And your flesh finds air pockets to survive in. We say «Fill me, Holy Spirit,» yet we insist on being full of ourselves and our own ambitions. Instead of yielding those areas of our hearts to Him, we preserve them out of protection for ourselves, or what we imagine to be protection for ourselves. We preserve them because of bitterness, we preserve them because of a sense of entitlement, we preserve them because of how we were raised, and we say, «This is how I am. This is how I was raised. This is how I was brought up. This is how I was trained to think.» What begins to happen is we begin to stifle the move of the Holy Spirit—not because we don’t have Him, but because He doesn’t have us. The Holy Spirit dwells in me; out of your spirit, out of your innermost being will flow these rivers of living water. The problem is that many believers try to worship, pray, evangelize, and live holy out of the flesh rather than out of the spirit. I’ll never forget one time I was in a church service, and there was a woman leading worship. You ever see an angry worship leader? They’re just furious that nobody is responding to their gift. I know the clichés that they use. I remember we were standing there, and I’ll just be honest with you—it was not the greatest music in the world. I mean, the worship was wonderful; the music, not so much. I remember trying to worship, but I couldn’t worship because this worship leader was just yelling at everyone, angry, «Come on! Lift…»