>> Hello, I'm David Hernandez, and I'm an evangelist.
And for several years, I suffered with severe anxiety.
And this anxiety had followed me
since I was seven years old in various different forms.
And I'll never forget the day that the Holy Spirit
gave me a real breakthrough in this area.
Now, for me, freedom from my anxiety
didn't come necessarily in a single moment,
but rather throughout several moments in my life
that I call breakthrough moments.
This was one of them, in fact, one of the key moments
where I really sensed a strong liberty coming over my life.
And it came when the Holy Spirit revealed a powerful truth to me.
So, I was married. I was already in ministry,
had been preaching for several years,
but I was battling this very, very, very intense war
with fear and paranoia and even panic attacks.
I had several panic attacks for several days
throughout a season of my life that was just horrendous.
I remember not being able to enjoy anything.
I couldn't enjoy a meal with friends.
I couldn't enjoy a date with my wife.
I couldn't enjoy sitting in a church service in many instances
because I would feel the physical symptoms of the panic
that would set in, and it would come from seemingly nowhere.
Now, if you've never had a panic attack,
a panic attack can mimic the symptoms of almost anything.
So, if I read an article about somebody passing away
due to a heart disorder,
then immediately I would begin to feel
the symptoms of that heart disorder.
Often my panic attacks made me feel closed in.
There was this tunnel vision that would begin to develop
to where I couldn't really see my surroundings.
A side of my body would go numb,
and another side of my body would feel pain.
My heart would beat so fast that I could feel it in my throat,
and it felt like I was going to pass out or die even.
It was a very, very strong sense of dread and fear,
and there was nowhere to go.
I couldn't just run outside of my body.
There was nothing I could do to distract myself from it,
whether I was reading or walking or driving.
If I had a panic attack,
that became the focus of the moment.
And so, these panic attacks continued
because the anxiety began to get worse.
And, you know, there was a single instance, as I said,
where there was a real breakthrough.
It wasn't complete freedom from this moment,
but it was the beginning of a freedom.
I like to say that breakthrough
is when you realize the truth, and freedom
is when you begin to walk in that truth.
So, all of this culminates to one evening
where I'm getting ready,
and I'm heading out to minister in North Carolina.
I was flying out from California.
I was set to go to North Carolina
the next day and minister at a church there.
And at that moment in my life, the ministry wasn't doing well,
at least by the metrics that people naturally measure things.
Viewership wasn't strong. Nobody was reading the blogs,
nobody was buying the books.
I wasn't really preaching to big crowds.
It was a good thing if I filled up half the room even.
And so, the ministry by Mann's metrics wasn't doing well.
So, I was discouraged in that area.
I was a newlywed, so I was struggling
and fumbling through all of the dynamics of marriage.
Marriage wasn't really in a good place,
not a terrible place, but not a really good place.
I felt like I was failing even there due
to my paranoia and anxiety.
Even my friendships were becoming strained.
So, there I was in this moment
where I felt like everything was just falling apart.
I'll be honest with you.
As I prepared to go to the airport the next day,
I didn't want to wake up that early.
I didn't want to go to the airport.
I didn't want to deal with the security.
I didn't want to get out of bed. I'll be honest with you.
I didn't even feel like preaching.
God forgive me, but I didn't even feel
like preaching in that moment.
But I woke up very early. I was picked up by a friend,
had another friend traveling with me,
and we're driving down the freeway
on the way to the airport
and suddenly from the far-left lane,
this vehicle begins to swerve across lanes
right in front of us until it hit a center divider.
The vehicle hits the center divider flips over,
and it flipped right onto its top in front of us.
And this car began to skid along the road with sparks flying.
We were so close to it,
the sparks were hitting our windshield.
The sparks were flying as my friend applied the brakes
as quickly as he could.
And we're basically moving right along with this.
I watched in the car as the driver was flailing about.
We called and asked for help,
but because I didn't know who this individual was,
I was never given an update.
I still to this day do not know the result of that car accident.
I remember seeing papers and debris
and even luggage all over the freeway
and still, believe it or not,
we made it in time for our flight.
I like to leave very early.
And so the time was accommodated for in that sense.
And we get to the airport.
I remember checking in and my hands were still shaking.
And I was swallowed by anxiety.
I had never sensed anxiety so strong.
I had never sensed that heaviness,
that weight, that darkness,
that sense of dread so strong in my mind.
I was convinced something terrible
was going to happen to me.
And so I'm shaking. I'm checking in.
We get on the plane. And to be honest with you,
I don't remember much else from that day.
That wreck just burned into my memory.
I wake up the next morning,
I'm lying in bed in the hotel room
and I'm looking up just staring at the ceiling.
At the same time, I felt hollow and fear.
I felt hollow inside. I felt fear inside.
I felt this pain in my heart.
I couldn't quite describe to you just the sheer emptiness,
but also the sense of fear. It was a strange combination.
And I'm staring at the ceiling, and I just remember thinking,
this has got to be the worst moment
or the worst I've ever felt in my life.
With having experienced all of those areas
that I saw as failure in my life.
Along with that encounter with that car crash,
it was just all of it culminating into that moment.
And I remember just saying this simple prayer.
I didn't have anything fancy to say.
None of my theology was helping me then.
I remember at that point in my life
I had prayed all the curse breaking prayers.
I had gone to all the revivals. I had people prophesy over me.
I had people anoint me with oil, gone to the prayer sessions.
I'm not saying none of that works.
I'm saying, just being real in my life.
In that time, in that situation,
none of that seemed to be working for me.
And so I'm looking at the ceiling
and I just say, help me, Holy Spirit. Simple prayer.
It was a plea to God. Just please.
I said, look, I can't do this.
I can't. I don't know what you expect me to do.
Help me, Holy Spirit. So, in that moment,
the Holy Spirit began to do something quite unique.
And this is, he'd never worked this way in me before.
This was a rather unique experience for me.
I know the Holy Spirit. He's my friend.
I love Him. He's precious to me.
But he'd never done this before. He begins to ask me questions,
and as He's asking me those questions,
He's exploring with me and inviting me to remember
all of these different memories that I had since childhood.
Holy Spirit asked me,
do you remember when you were a boy
and you used to hear those demonic voices
and see those demonic faces
tormenting you as you tried to sleep?
And do you remember how fearful you felt?
I said, yes, Holy Spirit, I remember. He said,
and do you remember when you were a kid
and you would go to school and you were afraid
because of the kids who would make fun of you?
Do you remember how alone you felt?
Do you remember how rejected you felt?
I said, yes, Holy Spirit, I remember.
And then he says, do you remember
going to going to theme parks as a boy with your family?
And do you remember how it was something
that you would look forward to,
but that how your whole day would be ruined
because, even while you were at those theme parks
having fun with your family,
you would be totally convinced that you were going to die.
I said, yes, Lord, I remember.
And he did this for several key memories in my life.
And then the Holy Spirit asked me a question
that absolutely broke me.
He said, why don't you believe that I love you
and that I plan to do good things in your life?
Now you're listening to this.
You may say, okay, that should be obvious.
God loves you. He has good plans for you.
That's what the Bible says. Yes, to me it was obvious.
I knew that intellectually,
but I did not allow those truths to permeate me
and to to truly have their implications
played out in my life.
And in that moment, something in me broke.
Tears began to stream down my face,
and I felt this weight being lifted off of me.
And I realized in that moment, all along, this whole time,
it's been that same lie
since the beginning, in many different forms,
coming at me in all different ways
and coming at me at different phases in my life.
It felt different. It was experienced different.
It was seen from different angles, but it was the same lie.
The Holy Spirit told me it was the same lie
that was affecting me all throughout my life.
I just didn't believe, truly deep within my heart
that God loved me and additionally
that he planned to do good things.
I had been steeped in legalism.
I believed that God was angry and ready to punish me
and that I was just hanging by a thread.
That He was always on His last bit of patience with me.
I believed that God had plans to harm me
and that God was planning to destroy me.
I didn't think it here,
but deep within there was that subtle root,
that lie and the Holy Spirit that day uprooted that lie.
And ever since then, I can say with great faith,
as I'm filled with joy and peace, and today,
now living completely free from that type of bondage,
today I can say, every day something good
is going to happen to me.