David Diga Hernandez - This Will TRANSFORM Your Prayer Life

So I want to talk to you this evening about ascending the mountain of glory and reaching higher places in the presence of the Holy Spirit—higher places in your walk with God. Now we understand that everything God is resides in us. We recognize that all that God offers has been given to us by the Holy Spirit. We understand that we don’t need more of the Holy Spirit, but rather we should learn to surrender more of ourselves to Him. So when I talk about ascending to higher places in the Spirit, I’m not just referring to receiving more of God because that’s not possible; you can’t receive more than all of Him. I’m not talking about receiving more power; that’s not possible either, as you can’t receive more than all of the power of God, which resides in you. Luke 1:35 refers to the power of the Holy Spirit as the power of the Most High, meaning it is the power of God that comes upon a life when the Holy Spirit comes to dwell. We know that according to Romans 8:9, those who are born again have the Holy Spirit. The moment you are saved, you have the Holy Spirit; the moment you give your life to Him, He’s yours; you belong to Him. It’s a covenant; He comes to dwell in you in fullness—in the fullness of His power and in the fullness of His grace. Everything you need to pray, everything you need to understand the Word, everything you need to worship (John 4:24 says they worship in spirit and truth), everything you need to evangelize boldly, everything you need to drive out demons, everything you need to heal the sick, everything you need to preach the gospel, everything you need to have confidence in your salvation, everything you need to receive instruction from the Lord, and everything you need to understand the Word—all of this is in you the moment you give your heart to Jesus, the moment you receive this free gift of salvation.

So I’m not talking about a tedious, burdensome religious approach to trying to find these higher places. I’m talking about greater levels of surrender. I’m talking about allowing that which is in you to be manifested around you. I’m talking about releasing that which God has already deposited in you. Now, I know that the enemy can lie to us. I understand that the enemy can try to persuade you that perhaps you are the exception to God’s grace, that you are the exception when it comes to receiving the Holy Spirit at salvation. The enemy will try to remind you of your past mistakes, your flaws, and the character traits that aren’t quite polished yet. If we’re not careful, we can become convinced that we are lacking; we can become convinced that we are without. I want to discuss approaching this from the perspective of faith.

So it begins in the Spirit. It begins in knowing who I am in Him. It begins in being firmly planted in my relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit, by faith and by grace. So when I talk about ascending that mountain, I’m talking about the fact that your nature begins to disappear and God’s nature begins to shine. Scripture declares, «Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.» I told the Lord, «Lord, I want to be a ‘was not’ too.» He simply was not; he ceased to be. I’m talking about a fellowship, a union in which your presence and His presence become indistinguishable from one another. I’m talking about the ripping away of self, and it is a tearing—a shedding of the old mindsets, a shedding of the old self, a shedding of your former ways. The higher up the mountain you go, the less of you goes with you. I’m talking about a death to self; I’m talking about truly being alive in Christ. «No longer I live, ” the Scripture declares, „but Christ lives in me.“ This means that where I step my foot, Christ steps His foot; this means that when I lay my hand, the Christ in me also lays His hand. My hands become extensions of His. I become an expression of God’s divine presence on the earth when I begin to allow Him to strip away.

So I want to look at Exodus 24. Before I continue reading, I want to reiterate that when I talk about this, I’m not talking about receiving more. I’m not coming to this from a place of frustration because the reality is that when you come to the place of frustration, frustration is a great initiator but a terrible sustainer. Frustration will propel you to have an encounter, but if you’re constantly living in frustration, my question to you is: why do you feel lacking? Why do you constantly find yourself in these cycles? I want to discuss how to break those cycles through ascension.

So, go to Exodus 24, and we’ll look at Moses’ interaction with the Lord. Exodus 24, and I will begin reading at verse 12. What I want to do is go verse by verse. Now, understand that the context here is that Moses was called to the top of the mountain. God picked him out of all the children of Israel; God chose him to lead. God marked him; God sanctified him when he encountered the presence of the Holy Spirit in Exodus 3. It was in Exodus 3 that Moses encountered the presence of the Holy Spirit. Notice that when he came into contact with that fire, it produced in him a desire to bring deliverance to a people. Whenever you come into contact with the presence of the Holy Spirit…