I'll say it like this.
We have to leave
pagan beliefs with the pagans.
We have to leave the beliefs of the occult
with witches and warlocks.
We have to leave the beliefs
of New Ageism with New Agers.
What begins to happen
sometimes, and it all comes out of pure
motives, and that's why I want to deal
gently with this, because I think all
believers can agree we want to see victory.
David Digger Hernandez, it's great to have you
here on Charisma News to be able to talk
about what God is doing
in this upcoming year, 2024,
what God's been speaking to you, and
you have a vantage point about
spiritual warfare that is
really impactful, and so
we're going to talk about this
area in a little bit later, but
welcome to the broadcast.
Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate
the opportunity.
So, David, you've written a lot of
books about spiritual warfare,
and Glory Carriers
is one of the ones that has stuck
out to me as well.
You are somebody that
I look to and say, he hears the
voice of God very well, and you're helping
other people understand that. So one of the
first things that I like to talk with you about
is, how do you know
whether what you're hearing
is the voice of the Lord, or
it's just your own thoughts? Because
I know sometimes for me, it's like, I
know the right things, but I'm not sure if this
is me or this is God, and
sometimes I feel like I just don't
know how to
distinguish between that. I know if I'm
feeling that, then there's a lot of people that are probably
feeling that as well.
Well, 2 Timothy, chapter
3, verses 16 and 17
make it clear that the word of God
is the foundation
for the voice of the Holy Spirit, for really
the voice of God in the life of the believer.
And the word of God
is profitable for every
good work, and that includes hearing the
Holy Spirit. But something that we have
to remember is that the moment
that we are born again,
we receive the Holy Spirit, Romans chapter
8, verse 9. And
when we are born of
the Spirit, we are born
again with new senses.
So, hearing the voice of the
Holy Spirit is not a
skill to be learned.
It's a sense to be sharpened.
The difference being that if you imagine
that it's a skill that you have to acquire,
then you think that you have to work
a certain amount of hours or contribute
a certain amount of good works before
God will reward you with his voice.
But really, it's something that you're
born with. Jesus said, my sheep
hear my voice. And so
the question isn't, can I hear
the voice of God, or am I
hearing the voice of God, or
how do I hear the voice of God? The question
is, am I a sheep? Do I belong
to him? And if you belong to him,
then the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, even
now, the Holy Spirit is
speaking to you. Even now, the Holy Spirit
is instructing you. So
it's not a matter of getting him to
speak to you. It's a matter
of being silent and still enough
that you might hear the voice of the Holy Spirit
clearly among the other voices.
The Satanic speaks,
the secular speaks,
the flesh speaks,
or self speaks, and then the Spirit
speaks. And so all of these
voices are constantly coming at you,
vying for your attention, trying
to get you to focus on what it is that they're
speaking to you. So the
key is to cause the other voices
to go silent. You do this,
number one, through reading the Word of God.
And reading the Word of God really becomes the
foundation. It is the grounding.
If we are not basing
what we hear and know of the Lord
on the Word of God, then
we are left to
very strange things. We're left
to very unstable beliefs.
We're left to emotionalism
and hype and fanaticism.
When we are grounded on the Word, we're grounded on
Christ himself through his Word.
Then we are stable enough in the Spirit
realm to hear God clearly
in a practical way that can affect us in our
everyday lives. So we
must know the Word of God. If you're
serious about hearing the voice of
the Holy Spirit, you'll get serious
about knowing the Word of God. So that's number one.
Number two, we have to
practice silence and stillness.
Now, silence is easy.
Matthew chapter 6 verse 6, Jesus
tells us that when you pray, go away to a quiet
place. Go away privately.
And your father who sees you praying privately
will reward you. So
there is this element to prayer that
requires that we schedule it, that we have
some seclusion to that schedule,
and that we drown out all the other
voices. That silence is practical.
Setting aside your cell phone, telling your
loved ones you're not available for a certain amount of time.
Making sure that things in your
everyday life are contributing ultimately
to the prioritization of prayer.
And so once you've gone away to this
place of prayer, and now you
yourself are committed to that place of
silence, that's where God will begin to speak to you.
Now, this is what's interesting, is that
many times when believers come into this place
of silence, suddenly now they begin
to hear what I call the inner chaos.
That's the chatter of life, responsibilities,
all of the different things that flow through their mind about
what they have to do, or what they haven't
done yet, or what's bothering them,
or what's bothering them from their past,
or their future, or even their present.
And all of these things produce
anxiety. All of these things produce the
busyness of mind. And so
believers will say things like, well,
it's interesting, none of that
chaos, none of that inner chatter, none of
that noise was there until
I began to pray, and then they want to blame the enemy
for trying to distract them from prayer.
But it's not that that inner chaos
suddenly showed up when you decided
to pray. It's that that inner chaos
was revealed when you went to pray.
That inner chaos is your inner
dialogue 24-7.
You're just never silent enough to actually hear what's going on
within yourself. And only when you commit to
that place of prayer where you're silent,
do you now begin to hear what's happening
inside of you. Well, no wonder many believers
are walking around with depression,
and anxiety, and confusion, and distraction,
and worldliness,
because of all that turmoil inside. So
number one, silence and stillness, silence,
the second point I'm making, silence and stillness.
Silence is the setting aside of outer
distraction, but stillness
is the quieting of the soul.
Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace,
whose mind is stayed on thee,
because he trusteth in thee.
When we learn to focus
on Jesus in prayer,
that is when that inner chaos begins
to become dealt with. You ever notice
that you can sing and
dance and jump up and down in church and there's no
issue? You can even to some extent
study the word of God and there's no issue.
You can participate in ministry and
there's no issue. You can participate
in the feeding of the homeless and there's
no issue. You can do good works and there is no
issue. But the moment you go to
pray, the flesh starts to squirm.
Why? Jesus said the spirit
is willing, but the flesh is weak. It's
that weakness in the flesh that pulls
you from the places of prayer. Why?
Because prayer is the death of the
flesh. And only when we come
to that place of prayer where our eyes and our
attention is focused on Jesus,
can we begin to see the weakening,
the dwindling effect of the flesh's
influence. And now that
begins to become weaker and the spirit
gains more influence in your
life. That's through silence and stillness.
And this, of course, clears the way
of all that inner chaos. And of course, you're able now
to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit with greater
clarity. The third thing that we need to do to be able
to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit with greater measures
of clarity is live righteously.
The steps of the righteous, the Scripture
says, are ordered by the Lord.
So if you lack righteousness, you'll probably
lack direction. Because why
is the Holy Spirit going to tell you step
three if you have yet to obey step one?
Why is the Holy Spirit going to give you the
Rhema word if you haven't obeyed the written
word? Why is the Holy Spirit going to give you
a specific instruction if you haven't
acted on His general commands in
Scripture? So, number one,
know the word. Number two,
practice silence and stillness. And number three,
walk in obedience. You do those three
practical things and the voices
of secularism, the voices
of the satanic, the voices of the
sinful are going to begin to grow silent
and the voice of the Spirit
will begin to speak. And you will
hear with clarity if you simply do
those basic practices.
That is very well
put. And I love how you
described about this inner chaos
because I think that's one of the things
where a lot of people don't
hear teaching about that and how
there is this inner
chaos in there and we're trying to just rebuke
that. But I love how you said
that's one of the first times that we actually
are still enough for those
things to actually come up.
But that's what's always going on.
And yeah, that does make so much sense
why there is anxiety and depression in the body
of Christ because we're not practicing
the presence of God like we should
be. You know, what are some
of the things that, what are some of the
practical things that have helped
you deal with these
inner
chaos things? I know I heard one
teacher, I think it was
Graham Cook said
the Holy Spirit wants to go
with you to deal with some of those things
and then bring back
your attention. What are some of the
practical things that we can do? Because there's
not as much teaching about this whole
inner chaos thing than there should be.
Well,
James chapter four, verse seven
tells us that if we submit
to God, resist the devil
and he will flee. That submission
to God is ultimately what
leads to being able to work through
these different areas of the flesh that are
ultimately distracting us from the things of God.
So
practically that looks
like living right. Practically
that looks like saying yes to the Holy Spirit
and no to the flesh. Practically
that looks like implementing a
discipline of daily prayer. And these
are things often that we don't want to hear because
that requires some action
on our part. Remember this, when it comes
to the realm of the spirit or spiritual
acts, the Holy Spirit
will give you the desire.
You must implement
the decision and the discipline.
So he gives you
the desires. He gives you the willingness.
But if we are not acting
on the desires that the Holy Spirit gives to us,
we can't expect that anything will come about as a result
of the influence of his power in our lives.
And so we as
believers have to respond.
Psalm 80, 18 says, quicken
us and we will call unto thee.
That is the quickening of the Holy Spirit.
He quickens us, gives us the
desire, gives us the strength, gives
us a new nature, and we must choose
to act upon that new nature. So
people want hands laid upon them
and to have discipline imparted.
Discipline is not something that can be imparted.
I can't lay hands on you
and make you pray more. I can't lay hands
on you and make you read the word.
I can't lay hands on you and make you
choose to obey God. We
have to act based upon
what the Spirit is telling us to do.
We have to act based upon
the desires that the Holy Spirit is giving to us.
And as we begin to do this, we will
see a breaking of those
strongholds in our lives. We will see
the diminishing of the work of the enemy
in our lives and we'll begin to actually see
a fruitfulness of the Holy Spirit begin
to develop. And that really
again comes down to what we call the spiritual
basics. What people don't want to hear about the spiritual
basics because the spiritual basics to many
sadly are boring.
They're not as exciting as saying
well, it's something you have to break
in your family bloodline. It's not as exciting
as saying well perhaps there's some hidden
object in your home. And to some
degree I think that believers sadly
are satiating a hunger that they have for darkness.
They can't watch scary movies anymore.
So what we do in the body of Christ is we create
our own version of Dungeons and Dragons and call it
a spiritual warfare.
And then now we're interested in the demonic. We're interested
in the power of the enemy. We're interested in blaming demons
when what we should be doing is living
a life unto the Spirit for the life of the believer
is one of victory and choosing
to implement these very practical spiritual
disciplines and then seeing those things
begin to bear fruit in our lives. That's why
the scripture tells us, Galatians chapter
5 verses 22 and 23
about the fruit of the Spirit, which is the character
and the nature of Christ. As we abide in the Spirit
we begin to see that nature develop
within us. And so we as believers
have to implement those practical things.
How do you pray more? Well you have to
choose to pray more.
How do you pray daily?
You have to choose to pray
daily. How do you read the word of God
more often? You have to choose to read
the word of God more often.
These are things you have to implement.
And then here's the thing is believers get discouraged.
They say well it didn't work. It's not helping.
I'm not seeing really anything in my life
that's transforming as about as a result
of what's happening in my spiritual discipline.
This is why you have to practice faithfulness.
Galatians chapter 6 verse 9
makes it very clear that as we
practice that which we are supposed to
practice that eventually we
will reap the harvest. We will gain
what we are supposed to gain from that.
But it's not going to happen if you just
say well you know I want to do it once and
then like a magic trick I want everything in my
life to be transformed. Now we understand that I'm not
by any means downplaying the fact
that the Holy Spirit can do a miracle like he
did in the life of Saul turning him into Paul
and various other key figures in the
scripture that experience the life transforming
power of the Holy Spirit in an instant
that bore immediate results. That of course
can happen. But in a more practical
sense all of us have experienced that
regeneration when we were born again and
received Christ and now it's up for
up to us to choose to walk in
the Spirit is what Galatians 5 says.
Let the Holy Spirit guide your life.
It's something you have to choose to do.
And as you do that daily consistently
you're going to begin to
experience that freedom that
comes from walking in the Spirit. So
you want to see that fruit begin to bear out.
You want to see God begin to do this work
and you are going to have to implement those
daily spiritual disciplines and
from there you'll begin to see
transformation. Is there room for spiritual
warfare? Absolutely.
Does the enemy attack us? Absolutely.
Are there demonic strongholds
we need to break? Of course.
Do Christians sometimes need
deliverance different from exorcism?
Absolutely, positively yes
to all these things. But 99%
of your spiritual problems will be
solved if you simply implemented
the basics. And again, believers don't
want to do that because then they have to bear
the responsibility for that.
That's so good. David
we're going to talk about
spiritual warfare in just a second and kind of
as a transition here. I was in
YWAM for eight years and we always
had a week about spiritual
warfare. And one of my favorite
teachers that we had come in to talk
about this, he said something that has always
stuck with me and I think you just kind
of echoed it in a lot of different ways there.
But basically it's, I'd rather
deal with a demon any day because
it has to come, you know, come
under the submission of the name of Jesus.
But your flesh, you have to deal
with that by yourself
and through discipline. And so even though it was
spiritual warfare week, we ended up
spending more time about spiritual
disciplines and focusing
on that. But I do want
to talk about some of those other
things that you talked about, you
know, deliverance. And I know you
have written several books about spiritual
warfare and that's one of the things that God's really calling you
into to focus on right now.
And you got to publish
one of the books with us, 25 Truths
about Demons and Spiritual Warfare.
What are some of the misconceptions
that people have about spiritual
warfare that you like to address?
Oh, boy.
Yeah,
I mean, that's been a major part
of the ministry that God's given me in terms of
teaching on spiritual warfare is dealing with a lot of
these misconceptions. I'll say it like this.
We have to leave
pagan beliefs
with the pagans.
We have to leave the beliefs
of the occult with witches and warlocks.
We have to leave
the beliefs of New Ageism
with New Agers.
What begins to happen sometimes, and it all
comes out of pure motives. And that's why
I want to deal gently with this because I think
all believers can agree we want to see
victory. Second Corinthians
chapter 3 verse 17 tells us
that where the Spirit of the
Lord is, there is liberty.
John chapter 8 verse 36,
if the sun sets you free, you'll be free
indeed. So we have to start from this point.
The life of the believer
is one of victory.
The life of the believer is
one of peace, not necessarily
perfect existence to where
you're not dealing with any trials or tragedies
or circumstances.
That all on the exterior,
yes, can be happening. Just ask Paul the apostle.
He was shipwrecked three times.
He was whipped. He was beaten. He was imprisoned.
He was rejected. He was lied
about. He was ridiculed.
Did he think he was under some
curse? No, he called himself blessed
even in the midst of those difficult trials.
It's that inner victory that we're talking
about. So we start here.
The life of the believer is one
of victory. If
you are in bondage,
you are not living the Christian life.
Now, here's what people hear when I say that.
David, are you saying I'm not a Christian
if I struggle spiritually? That's
not what I said. I said, if
you are in bondage,
spiritual bondage, you are not
living the Christian life. Why?
Because that is not the standard to which
we must aspire. Now, that's not a statement
of condemnation. That's a statement
of hopefulness. Why? Because
this means that you don't have to
settle for spiritual bondage. This is
the lie that many believers have bought into.
They accept
spiritual defeat as if
it's a part of the Christian experience.
And we even hide behind
our bondage
while using spiritual sounding
excuses like, well,
the enemy's only beating me up so badly
because he knows how much of a threat I am.
Bullies don't beat up people they think
are threats. They beat up people
who don't know how to fight back.
And the scripture tells us very clearly that if
you submit to God, resist the devil, the devil
flees, he doesn't fight. So, again,
I'm not saying the believer won't struggle.
I'm not saying the believer won't be attacked
spiritually. I'm saying living in the place
of defeat is a problem.
It's not what God called you to do. Now, getting back
to the point I was making just a few moments ago,
we need to leave paganism with pagans.
Because what happens is,
especially if somebody is born
again and they're saved, let's say,
from New Ageism or they're saved
from paganism or they're saved from the occult.
What we attempt to do in that
case is we take the belief
systems of those demonic
doctrines and we,
instead of leaving them behind and saying,
well, they need to stay there and be
considered the lies that they are,
we take from those belief
systems, call it spiritual
intel, reverse
engineer the teachings of the occult
and then call it deliverance doctrine.
Here's the thing.
We do not need to supplement
the teachings of the word of God inspired
by the precious Holy Spirit
with the teachings of paganism.
We do not need to supplement
the precious word of God with
the teachings of the occult. And
when you have that mixture, that's where you
have confusion. And then you
get believers to approach spiritual warfare
as if it's transactional
like they teach in the occult,
as if it's some legal process like
they teach in the occult, as if it's
something where they have to go through some minute
details. I mean, what if I don't have
a membership to ancestry.com
and I'm not able to research all of the
sins of my grandfathers and great
grandparents and then the generations
before them? How then do I destroy
what some would call this legal right?
And I understand about family bloodlines
and I am not saying, and this I have to be
clear on because there's a lot of nuance to what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that demons
don't strategize against believers
generationally. They absolutely strategize
against believers generationally.
But I would rather call this generational consequence.
Why? Because the word
curse implies that I can't
be free unless I solve
or unlock some demonic mystery
hidden in ancient times past.
As if God is looking over from the
balconies of heaven with his arms folded saying,
I would set you free, but you
didn't name that sin that your great great grandmother
committed and therefore my Holy Spirit
is powerless to work in your life.
That doesn't line up at all with the teachings
of scripture. That lines up with the teachings of
the occult with paganism. And
again, we have this mixture and that's why believers
are stuck in bondage. And I know what
I'm saying is not popular and it may
not be trendy, but it is the truth.
And I know this because I used to try to defend
those worldviews and teach them as
if they were biblical until I began to study
for myself to say, I'm going to study the scripture
so that I can have a robust defense
of these doctrines that I support.
And as I began to study the scripture looking for
that robust defense, I began to find
that a lot of these things were based on proof text,
using scripture out of context,
and a misapplication
of some of the truths that are actually given to
us in scripture. And again, let me
say this for clarity sake. I'm not
saying that demons do not
strategize generationally against us. I know I said
that already, but with things like this, you have to be
careful because if people hear what you're not saying,
they tune out what you are saying. I'm
saying that as those demons strategize
against generationally,
they only have as much power as
your decision will give them. I have a scripture
here I wrote down. Ezekiel chapter
18 verses 20 to 25
really
makes it clear that God does not
punish us for the sins of our
fathers and mothers. And you may be able to reference
something from the Old Testament where it
says that, you know, it'll be
visited upon generations or
I will punish the sons and the daughters,
but this has to do with God dealing
with the nation of Israel whenever they would fall into
idolatry. He would cause one of
the surrounding pagan nations to overtake
them and keep them subjected under
slavery. And in so doing, that
would naturally affect the generations, but those
were consequences of the choices that the parents made
not in the spiritual realm, but manifesting
in the natural. Secondly, that's
not a demonic curse, that's a curse from God.
And who among us can break a curse from
God if God
put it there? I mean, so we don't have to worry
necessarily about that, especially if we're born again,
for Jesus broke the curse of the law.
Now, I understand about family
bloodlines, but there's something
else we need to consider. Yes, you may
have some issue with your family bloodline, but I promise
you, no matter what your family bloodline
is, there is more power
in the blood of Jesus. So it all comes
down to what I would call fighting strongholds.
Spiritual warfare,
summarized, is simply the fight to
believe God's truth over the enemy's
lies. Second Corinthians, chapter 10,
verses four and five tells us, we use
God's mighty weapons, not worldly weapons,
to knock down strongholds of human
reasoning and to destroy false arguments.
We destroy every proud obstacle
that keeps people from knowing
God. We capture their rebellious
thoughts and teach them to obey
Christ. We can break this down.
You have weapons are not carnal. This
means that this is not battled
by physical means, by any means.
The enemy does not fret when
we raise our voices or shout at him
or scream at him. You can't
fight the darkness by punching the darkness.
You fight the darkness by turning on the
light. Then the scripture says mighty through God.
This means literally
effective for the cause of God. This is
effective unto the purposes of God.
To the pulling down of strongholds,
I like the language here, because
what the Greek is implying is
the utter destruction and removal
of a barrier in that
when the stronghold is removed,
such as is being described in the scripture here,
there's not one stone left upon
the other to where when you're overtaking
the enemy's ground and you're stepping into new territory,
you don't even have to worry about getting a
pebble in your shoe because there's absolutely
nothing left of the stronghold, completely
obliterated, casting down imaginations.
These are reasonings, deceptive
paradigms, mindsets. Now,
in the context of what we just reference
there, Paul the apostle is
basically defending his apostolic authority
against pretenders who were
saying that Paul the apostle wasn't who he said he was.
And so in his defense, he
likens their deceptive reasonings and
lies to strongholds, which
is where we get this analogy from. For
every high thing that exalts
itself against the knowledge of God, this is
the truth about God or the truth that
helps you to know God, and that's still debated
among some scholarship.
Bringing into captivity every
thought. I love this because
we can now take captivity
of the thought. We can now take the thought
captive once the stronghold
is taken down. What is a stronghold?
It's a thought pattern. So it would look something like
this. A lie
doesn't become deception until you believe
it. So John, if I sit here and
tell you that I'm wearing a red shirt right
now, that's a lie. But because you
can see plainly the truth, you
don't believe the lie that I'm communicating to
you. Instead, you say, no, David, you're
wearing a blue shirt. Well,
so that lie didn't become deception, did
it? So a lie doesn't become
deception until it's believed.
If I lied to you and you don't believe me, I lied
to you, but I didn't deceive you.
So once we embrace a lie of the enemy,
this leads to deception. That
deception produces thought patterns
and feelings that ultimately
produce actions. Those actions
become cycles and habits.
Those habits and cycles are what we refer to as
spiritual bondage. The problem is
many believers try to address
the symptom, not the source. The result
instead of the root. They try
to address the action or they try
to address the feeling rather than
getting to the root of the lie that they're believing.
For instance, many Christians believe
that they have to accept just some form
of spiritual bondage in their life, and that's just
the normal part of the Christian life. Well,
if you grant that premise,
then from the very get-go,
the enemy has you bound. And again, people might be
confused because they say, well, I live clean,
I live right, I'm in the Word, yet I still
struggle or I still have tragedy
or why are my finances in order
or why are my loved ones not serving the Lord
or why am I still sick? And this is to confuse
a trial for a bondage or a
curse. When the book of James tells us to rejoice
in those trials because those trials
are the purification of our faith, the strengthening
of our faith. This is not to say that
we pray for trials
or that we pray that we're not blessed
because many times that's just the ebb and flow
of the Christian life. The rain
falls on the just and the unjust alike.
That's part of life. You're going to experience ups
and downs. But the believer looks
at these trials and sees them as opportunities
for growth. And thus, even in the midst
of struggle, they are victorious.
So never mind with these exterior circumstances.
Spiritual warfare is that fight
to believe God's truth over the enemy's
lies and that battle, that
to claim that belief
in the truth of the Word of God. To choose,
no, I am not
going to believe what the enemy says
even though I feel this way.
I'm not going to believe what the enemy
says even though this is going on in my
life. Consider the power of the endorsement.
If an unknown political
figure is endorsed by a well
known established political figure, that can
help to win them an election. If
a new clothing company
is endorsed by some famous athlete,
that can skyrocket sales. Same
is true for an unknown author and a best
selling author. If that best selling author endorses
an unknown author, that can cause them
to become a best seller. That's the power of an
endorsement. And so what the enemy tries
to do is use our circumstances
to endorse his lies. So when he
lies to you and says, I have you,
you're bound, the curse wasn't broken
when you were born again. Well, he's going to
point to your circumstances. He'll say, see, look,
your finances aren't good. Look, you're
sick. Look, your family doesn't serve the Lord.
And if you're not careful, you can allow
him to use those circumstances to
endorse that lie that you're defeated.
Or to endorse using your
emotions to where you feel down one day.
Or you feel like quitting. Or you
feel like you're not enough. And then the enemy takes
those feelings and says, see, God has rejected
you. And because we feel and we see
in the natural, ultimately we say, okay,
I grant the premise, you have
the victory. And the enemy has
no victory. Now, there's a popular
saying that says the enemy doesn't own anything.
This isn't true. You can reference Romans
chapter 8 verse 9 that tells us that if you
don't have the Holy Spirit, you're not born again, you don't belong
to God at all. Think about what Jesus
told the Pharisees, I think, was
in Matthew or John chapter 8 verse 44
where he tells them that you belong
to your father, the devil, because you're all
liars. In the book of Acts where the Bible
talks about having been rescued from the
enemy himself and being under his
rulership. So yeah, the enemy does own
the unbeliever, but he does not own
or possess or have power over
the believer themselves. And
that is the lie he tells them. I have
a right. I have the power. I have
the influence. And this is
why Christians get stuck in
perpetual bondage. They go from
deliverance to deliverance instead of from
glory to glory, because though
they may experience some encounter with the
Holy Spirit's power, though they may experience
some relief for a week or two,
ultimately, at the very
source, they believe that the enemy
has some right in their life.
Wow.
David, you've broken that down
quite extensively, and I really
appreciate all the verses
that you've given us to... I
want to encourage everybody to go look those verses
up for yourself, because what David is
saying, he's making a great
case and a great...
I don't know what the opposite
of a stronghold is, but I guess a
righteous stronghold as opposed to an
unrighteous demonic stronghold,
because if we have a stronghold,
we've got that place that we
can go to, that we can, you know,
I think David says in the Psalms,
the Lord is my rock, my fortress,
my deliverer, my God,
and my strength, in whom I will trust.
Psalm 18, verse 2,
you know, that fortress
as opposed to a stronghold. So
use those verses that David just gave
and to help build that fortress
that the Lord is allowing
you to find your
solace in. You know, David, we've
talked a bit about
the disciplines
and the things that we need to do
as believers and, you know,
not get caught up in the cessation
or the sensationalism
or cessationist. That's a different story.
We're not going to go there in this conversation.
That's a different stronghold, very much.
But one of the things that,
you know, we're heading into the
year 2024. This is at the beginning
of the year is when people, they're going to
get fit, they're going to eat right, they're going to do
all these good things, they're going to start reading their Bible
more, you know, they're going to start
doing all these things.
What is God saying to you
about the year 2024 and
what we have in front of us? And I know
you've given some practical tips
and practical advice about
what Christians should be doing
in 2024.
Well, in that teaching
I gave, and I'm just going to be very honest
with you, I gave practical, basic
spiritual disciplines that we should be
practicing every single year.
And so some might criticize and say,
well, why does this only apply to 2024?
I didn't say it only applied to 2024.
I said we should definitely do this in 2024.
And some might say we should do it all the time.
I say, I agree, all the time, even in 2024.
But, you know,
it comes back down to those
spiritual basics. Read the Word every day.
I'm going to say this.
Read the Word and pray every day.
Just try this challenge.
I have very rarely, I can't say I've
ever met a believer
who was bound internally. Again,
when we confuse external circumstances
for bondage, that's when we can begin
to grant the premise that we're bound.
I'm talking about joy
in the midst of tragedy.
Love in the midst of opposition.
Peace in the midst of chaos.
When we have that internal
grounding, that's when we walk in victory.
No matter what happens around us,
there's victory and life flowing within us.
But if you
will commit yourself,
I'll just say these two things, I guess,
for 2024, to reading the
Scripture every day.
To committing to prayer
every single day.
You do those two things, and that's
going to solve a bulk of your problems.
Think about the fact that if you
go and see your primary care
physician, and you tell your
doctor, listen, I have
aches, I have pains,
I don't feel
right, something is off.
The doctor is going to ask
you a few things. What are your
sleep patterns like?
Are you drinking plenty of water?
What's your diet like these days?
Are you exercising?
Usually, they'll go through those four basic
questions because they want to get a
baseline for your general health.
And by doing
those few things, sleep,
sleeping correctly, not just
sporadically, drinking
plenty of water, eating correctly,
exercising regularly, just by
doing those basic things, you're going to
solve or prevent a lot of physical
problems. And so
it's the same in the Spirit.
You pray and read the word daily.
And I mean, not just like where
Jesus said where people babble or they
just kind of go through the motions of it.
Not praying and reading because you're trying to check
it off some list of obligations that you have
to do in order to earn God's favor. No, you already
have God's favor. That's why you can pray in the first
place. But going to it,
praying and reading every day, committing
to that, do it for one year.
And if you're not completely
transformed,
then let God be
true and every man a liar.
Just like when my wife likes this documentary
where these people try
to lose a lot of weight. And when they go
in to see their physician for the weigh-in,
sometimes they actually gain some weight
and they'll say, well, I stuck to the diet.
I did everything I could. And the doctor
will always tell them, no, I'm looking at it right now.
Like the scale doesn't lie.
You are lying to me. You are lying to yourself.
And that's what we do. We lie to ourselves
about how committed we are to the word
and to prayer. And then, of course,
we don't reap the results that we want.
I'll say this, John chapter 8, verse 32.
And you will know the truth
and the truth will set you free.
If you are
still bound,
then there's a truth you have not yet come to believe.
And you can only know
that truth by getting in the word,
by bringing it full circle,
hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit,
coming back to this place where you're committed
to fellowship with him.
I mean, no
demonic bondage or demon can swim in the
depths of the glory of God. You walk
in the Holy Spirit, you're going to walk in freedom.
You walk with the Holy Spirit
as you should. You're going to live the Christian life.
And so you need to come back to that
place where you can hear his voice. I'll
give them, I want to give them just one quick little breakdown
here. There are
degrees of hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit. The first
is the word. The word
is the primary way we hear him.
That's the foundation. And everything
else we hear from him is measured by that
standard. Now, there are some
people, not such as we have in the cessationist camp,
as you referenced just a moment ago,
who will say, well,
if God said it in his word, he doesn't need
to speak it to you in
your heart and in your spirit. And if God
didn't say it in his word,
he wouldn't speak it to your heart or to your
spirit. But that thinking
fails to take into account the very specific
directions that we need for everyday life.
You cannot find chapter and verse,
what state you should live in, what job you should take,
what spouse you should marry. Sure, in the Scripture
we find groupings of wisdom that can
ultimately help to guide your decision-making process
in those areas. But you are going
to need to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and discern
those things for yourself on a very personal
level. And then some might ask, is the
word of God not sufficient? I would say
it's because the word of God is sufficient
that we can hear the voice of the Holy Spirit
in our spirits, because it did its
job and connected us to him, and God didn't go
mute. So number one is the word.
Number two is wisdom.
Wisdom is a result
of the word. Wisdom is
that purposeful pool of God on your
life. It's not necessarily a specific
instruction to your heart. It's
a knowing. It's a way
of thinking. It's the divine reasoning
of God through the Holy Spirit
in you. So the more
you're in the word, the greater your wisdom
will grow. And that wisdom is a form
of the Holy Spirit speaking. So the
word is the most reliable. The second most
reliable is wisdom, because wisdom comes
from the word. Then there's
what I call the whisper. This is where
the Holy Spirit will begin to speak to you
directly and begin to talk to you.
Now, he will speak more often
to the word and wisdom than he does to the whisper,
but he still will occasionally speak to the
whisper. People who think they hear the whisper
all the time are probably mistaking
that for wisdom. And then
there are wonders. Wonders
is the prophetic.
God speaking through another individual. Signs
and wonders. And that is,
I put it this way, I'm not necessarily
trying to be negative in my description
of this, but it is the least reliable
way to hear God, because even Satan can duplicate
wonders. Now, I believe in healing
deliverance, signs, wonders, the
prophetic. I'm in the healing ministry.
Many of you watch and see
the healing testimonies coming from our ministry.
Many of you also don't, but for reference,
that's where I stand in it. So I'm not by any
means, and I'm not saying that to brag,
I'm saying that so that you understand that I'm not by any
means downplaying the
role of wonders. Now, some Christians
reverse that. They try to live based
on wonders and the whisper, and
look at wisdom and the word as just restrictive
ways that the
distractions come. When it's actually
the opposite, you begin with the word,
then wisdom, then whispers,
and then wonders. And you live that way,
and going into 2024, you're going
to notice a stability coming upon
your life, and a real confidence
in the voice of the Holy Spirit, a deeper
fellowship with him, greater demonstrations
of power. And I'm not talking
about just gifts, I'm talking about glory.
People can move in power, but do they carry
the presence? And there will be that
beautiful resting of the glory of
God on your life and being in such a way
that it begins to transform you internally
and even those around you.
Yeah, that's so good. David,
thank you so much for sharing about those
tips about what we need
to be doing in 2024,
and really every year. I mean, those are so
practical, and I love how you gave those
the word, wisdom,
and whispers, and wonders.
I love alliteration like that. That's really
helpful.
Could you just tell people where they can find more
information about you, your social
media, and things like that, if they want to follow your
ministry more?
Well, primarily, I suggest our YouTube
page. You can just type in my name,
David Diger Hernandez, David D-I-G-A
Hernandez, on
YouTube, and you'll get our
YouTube page. And as you
connect with the YouTube page, you're going to
obviously be connected naturally
as time goes on with our various other means
of communication.
But I tell people all the time that
subscribing to that channel
will benefit you because I release teachings
on the Holy Spirit, prayer, spiritual
warfare, and similar topics.
We also show footage and live
streams from events that we do around the world,
where people are saved,
healed, delivered,
and empowered. And you can witness
the power of the Holy Spirit in action.
We actually capture
some of those moments on footage. So that's
all there at the YouTube channel, David Diger Hernandez.
And when you do subscribe, make
sure you click the notification bell so that you can
receive notices whenever we release new content.
I'll make sure to put a link to
your channel on YouTube
in the description or tag that
in the title as well.
David, it's been a pleasure to be able to talk
with you. I know our time has come
to an end, and I hope that we can do this again
sometime soon.
Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.