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You're listening to the Encounter Podcast, featuring the latest messages and teachings by David Diga Hernandez. Don't forget to subscribe the Encounter Podcast. Encounter the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit.

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Why is it that you don't feel the Holy Spirit? Did something go wrong? Is God mad at you? Was everything you felt before just emotions? What? Are you not as important to God as those who seem to always fill Him? I want to talk to you about this. Why does it feel sometimes like the Holy Spirit isn't near to you? Why does it feel like sometimes He's a million miles away? There are some days where you sense the presence of the Holy Spirit. You can sense him in your emotions. Maybe even you can sense that physical manifestation of his power. And then there are days where you're aware of Him. Yet sometimes it seems that the Holy Spirit has abandoned you. Now, we know he doesn't do that. But what do you do in those seasons? More importantly, what is God doing in those seasons where you don't feel like the Holy Spirit is with you, where you don't feel the sense of his presence? Well, first of all, he's teaching you to live by faith. You can't live by faith if all you're ever doing is relying upon your feelings. Watch this now in James 1, 2. 4. Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way. Notice here that we read when troubles come, not if they come when they come. Consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing. Look. It's difficult to feel God in difficult times. Sometimes the emotional pain distracts you from the sense of his presence. And in those seasons where everything seems to be falling apart, nothing seems to be working. It's one disappointment after another. You feel like something's finally going to come through, and then it doesn't. You feel like you finally find someone you can rely upon, and then you can't. You feel like you're just about to reach your destiny, and then you don't. In those seasons, it does feel difficult. And it can feel like you're abandoned. But this is where God is growing your faith. You see, if all you ever rely upon is the emotional experience of God, if all you ever rely upon is the physical manifestation of his presence, like what you sense at revival meetings or in church services, or even in your own prayer time, perhaps there are those moments where you can feel the Holy Spirit's power. If all you ever rely upon is your feelings, as good as those feelings may be, then you'll never learn to develop your faith. Faith is what remains when filling fades away. Faith is what remains when enthusiasm fades away. Faith is what remains when your emotions are no longer stirred. God is teaching you to live by faith. Really, you're maturing. You cannot mature without trials. You cannot learn endurance without resistance. So the pain of what you're going through is actually perfecting your nature, perfecting your character. And it's teaching you to live by faith. Your faith will become stronger. Here's what actually happens. Let's say you have a trial come your way. And that trial seems really big. And you're wondering, how on earth am I ever going to get out of this? How on earth does this actually end well for me? You can't see the end as being positive. Well, the way you respond to that trial at first may be fear, confusion. And you might feel as though this is some insurmountable thing that you'll never be able to overcome. But then you do overcome it. You do endure. You do get past it. You do climb that mountain. And then on the other side of that trial, you come out purified, and your faith is stronger. So the next time that a trial comes, maybe it's about the same size of a trial. Maybe it's similar to the last thing you went through. And now when it comes along, there's this confidence, and you say, I've been here before. I can do this. And as your faith grows, your problems begin to shrink. As your faith grows, your confidence in God, even in the middle of trials, begins to stabilize. You're no longer inconsistent. You're no longer confused or wrapped up in yourself, all tense with emotion. But now, because of what you've gone through, because of how God processed you, your faith has been strengthened. I'm telling you, he's strengthening your faith. The next thing he's doing is he's drawing you closer. Now, I want to be careful with the way I say this, because you have often heard me said that you can't get any closer to the Holy Spirit because He already dwells within you. And I believe that you're one with the Holy Spirit. You're not working for union with God, you're working from union with God. So you're already united with God. So when I use that terminology, getting closer to God, I'm wanting to meet people where they are in their thinking. And I want you to understand that trials help you to become more aware of Him. Trials help you to become more surrender to Him. Trials help you to become more in love with him, to prioritize Him. So that's what I mean when I say he's drawing you closer. So when the Holy Spirit hides, He's not leaving you. He's leading you into deeper waters. So why does it seem sometimes like the Holy Spirit is hiding from us? Well, the Holy Spirit doesn't hide. He doesn't leave you. You may have lost the sense of his presence. You may. May have lost the, the. The thought of his presence, but he has not abandoned you. Even when you're not thinking about him, he's thinking about you. So he's drawing you closer. Watch this. Now, Acts 17:27. His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps fill their way toward him and find Him. Though he is not far from any one of us here we see plainly that God desires that people seek him. In Jeremiah 29:13, we read, if you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me. That's a promise. So when we tell ourselves things, and sometimes we feel sorry for ourselves, don't we? When you tell yourself things like, well, I've already tried to seek God and He just ignored me, or I've prayed and I've prayed and I've prayed and I prayed and God just seems to overlook me. Or I've already sought him, but he's turned his face from me. Or I've already prayed for this or prayed for that, and God just never grants my request. And there's this bitterness that begins to develop in the heart. There's this subtle sense of entitlement that becomes offended in you. And really we have to begin to correct our thinking and submit it to the Word of God. Because the Word of God says, if you search for Me wholeheartedly, you will find me. That's a promise. No disclaimers, no explanations, no cheaping out on you. That is a promise that you can bank on. If you search for him wholeheartedly, you will find Him. So that leads me to believe that if someone claims to have sought God and they didn't find him, then they're lying. Let God be true and every man a liar. They're lying to themselves. And so in these seasons we seek after him. 1 Kings 19:11 12 says this, Go out and stand before me on the mountain, the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose. But the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind, there was an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, there was a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, there was the sound of a gentle whisper. Notice here. The Lord is not in the windstorm. You see, if God was in the wind, the prophet would have no choice but to be blown away. God was not in the earthquake. The prophet would have had no choice but to be shaken. God was not in the fire. The prophet would have had no choice but to be burned. But God was in the whisper. And because he whispered, the prophet had to choose to respond to that voice. It was a decision to be made. You know, in order to hear a whisper, you have to be close. And so in these seasons where you feel like God is pulling away from you, he's not leaving you. Remember, he's not leaving you. He's leading you to deeper places. He fully expects you to follow. In these seasons, you're being driven to seek him. You're. You're being pushed to go after him. You're. You're focusing your mind now to become more attentive to him. I want to know you, Lord. And maybe God is using your reliance on emotion to cause you to seek him. In other words, he pulls that from you. And now you're saying, I don't feel him. He's not near. I have to go seek him. And there's this holy desperation. And I wanna be careful with the way I use that word, desperation, because I don't think desperation should be a lifestyle. Desperation implies lack. Desperation means I'm missing something. Desperation means I've not been disciplined if I'm in a desperate situation. And yes, God can meet you in a desperate situation. And sometimes you find yourself in a desperate situation through no choice of your own. But generally speaking, as a lifestyle, I believe in spiritual hunger, not spiritual starvation. So when I talk about holy desperation, I'm simply talking about a desire for God that's unquenchable. You're constantly going after him, and you say, lord, I have to know you. I have to see your face. I have to hear your voice. I just want anything and everything to do with you. You can take all else. I just want you. That's what happens in those seasons where you feel like he's pulling away. And that's how you know he's drawing you. Because that holy desire is birthed in you now to where instead of just saying, well, he abandoned me, well, that's it, I give up now. No, there's this, this fire in you that says, I have to go after him, I have to seek his face. And there's this holy stirring that begins to drive you back to the prayer room, back to devotion to the Word, back to that place of no compromise. Maybe you did get a little off. Maybe you compromised. Maybe you're lacking in your time in the Word and maybe you're lacking in your time in prayer. And, and now the Lord is using that lack of emotion, that lack of feeling to put you back into place, to put you in check and say, hey, you were too reliant upon emotions, you were too reliant upon feelings. And now you're being put in a position where you, you can sense your need for me and you seek him and you will find Him. Number three, he is purifying you. The Lord is purifying you. In those seasons where you feel like he's distant, watch this in Hosea, chapter, chapter 10, 12 Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy. Break up your follow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until he come and reign righteousness upon you. Seek him until he comes to reign righteousness upon you. Do you realize that seeking God, and I want you to hear this because this, this will be life changing for you. I believe it. If you apply it. When you seek God, your sin nature weakens. So if you have some habit, some mindset maybe that you are trying to change, some attitude that you can't seem to shake free from, if you have some darkness that surrounds you that you're trying to break out of, then, then when you seek the Lord that begins to fade away. You put Jesus first. Jesus becomes your focus. Jesus becomes your obsession. Jesus becomes the subject of your affection. And now as he's your focus and you begin to seek him, there are layers of self that begin to fall away. You begin to shed the old nature. This is why, by the way, it's very difficult to pray for you. It may be that when you go to pray, you sense this tensing in your body where you can't sit still for too long. Think about all of the ways that we treat our minds and think about all the way that we've trained ourselves to just have everything instantly. The way we scroll through social media, the way we order our food and it comes to us, the way we travel fast and live fast and everything is fast paced. So when you go to pray, this is a different experience. Now for the flesh. And the flesh starts to Become weak. It starts to become bored. It starts to look for any distraction. This is why you're distracted when you pray, because the flesh is too strong. And so. So the flesh starts to seek any opportunity that it can to escape that place of prayer. Because it is in that place of prayer that the old self becomes so weak that it cannot rule over you anymore. So when you seek God, there is a purification. When you seek God, he's molding you into his image. For every moment, please hear this now. For every moment you are seeking him, you are being transformed. For every moment you are seeking him, something is happening in the realm of the Spirit. For every moment you are seeking him, you are becoming more like Jesus. You are falling more in love with God. Whether you feel it or not, whether you realize it or not, whether you see the manifestation of that right away or not, something is changing. It is impossible to. To accomplish nothing in true prayer. When you seek him because of maybe that sense that he's drawn away. Now in that seeking, there's purification. So in the seeking, you become like Jesus. It is in the seeking that the divine life of God begins to manifest in you and through you, transforming you to where you can say, no longer I live, but Christ lives in me. And it's that seeking that weakens the sin nature. It's the seeking that gives that takes the power of sin and causes it to become less and less and less to where now there's less resistance when you pray. Now there's less resistance when you go to read the Word. That's why when you read the Word too, your mind is distracted. You're bored. The Word of God's not boring, but the flesh is bored with the Word of God. And so as you weaken that sin nature, the flesh, through seeking God, now the Word becomes alive. Now it's life giving. It's vibrant, it's filled with color, and you can't get enough of it. Well, you want to get to that place. It's in the seeking. And you would not have gotten there. By the way, most of us had God not allowed us to experience this sense of his distancing again. It's not that he's actually leaving us. It's that he simply withdraws from the realm of the emotion, or at least their sense of him in the emotions and, and withdraws from that physical manifestation that we can feel. And that's where the testing begins. Now that is number four. He's testing you. Second Chronicles 32, 31 says this. However, when ambassadors arrived from Babylon to Ask about the remarkable events that had taken place in the land. Watch this. Now, God withdrew from Hezekiah in order to test him and to see what was really in his heart. So God withdrew from Hezekiah to test him. You know, when we feel like God is distant, it truly reveals character. Because when you feel like God is distant, maybe that's the opportunity for the sin nature to say, now I can get away with it. I don't sense his nearness, I don't sense his presence. And so I'm a little more comfortable in compromise. Now, what you do when you feel like God is at a distance reveals who you truly are in your character, in your nature. And God tests you in these moments. He looks to see, are they still faithful? Even when they feel like I'm at a distance, do they still seek me as a discipline? Even when they don't have some experience of ecstasy, do they still obey me? Even when they don't sense my hand weighing heavily upon them, do they still trust me? Even when they don't feel like I'm there in the room with them, do they still walk as if I walk with them, even when they're not aware of my nearness? He's testing you. He's testing you. Psalm 105, 19. Until the time came to fulfill his dreams, the Lord tested Joseph's character. Well, think about Joseph. He had these dreams from God and those dreams weren't fulfilled right away. And in fact, he spent some time as a slave and then some time in prison before the dream finally came to pass. But all the while, he didn't stop obeying God. He didn't stop putting his faith in Him. You see, this season of your life, if you're going through this, this season will reveal what you truly believe. And this season will purify your motives. Because in this season, either you're doing it because you love God or you're not doing it at all. That is what's happening in this moment. So remember, in these seasons, when it seems like the Holy Spirit is distant, he's teaching you to live by faith. He's drawing you closer. He's purifying you, and he's testing you.