Angels Among Us

We have spent the last nine lessons looking at some of the roles angels play in God's kingdom and in the realm of man. Most of this has been gleaned directly from Scripture. Two lessons shared information about angels taken from the Book Of Enoch -- which must be viewed as a historical secular writing detailing several of the ancient Jewish traditions about angels. I also shared a couple of my personal experiences with angels as God's messengers in lesson 9.

For this last lesson, I would like to share some more of my experiences with angels. I would like to start by sharing two things that I learned about angels from an angelic visitation. Please do not take this as authoritative or with the same credibility as Scripture. But here are a couple of things that angels taught me about angels when they were instructed to come teach me in certain areas...

The first is that the angels are God's servants. They are sent by God and their main priority/objective is serving Him. While they interact with us, their main focus and priority is serving God. They do not become emotionally attached to us to the point were they want our good over God's will. An angel that had been protecting a person for years would not hesitate to strike that person dead if God so commanded. Their main focus is on serving and honoring God and obeying what He tells them to do. While they work and interact with us, they see themselves as God's servants and they focus on God's agenda.

The other thing I learned is that angels sometimes have a latitude in how they do their job. They may get an assignment, such as delivering a message to a person. The angel may choose to appear directly to the person (as an angel appeared to Mary in Luke 1:28). Or the angel may choose to appear to the person in a dream (as it did with Joseph in Matt 1:20, Matt 2:13 and Matt 2:19). In some aspects, angels are very similar to prophets, because they are given a message from God to deliver to someone. The big difference is that the clarity and accuracy of an angel's hearing is always 100% accurate. There are times when God dictates a message from a prophet word for word, leaving the prophet no choice in how to deliver it. But many times God will deposit a message in a prophet and give the prophet leeway to decide how to deliver and phrase that message. It is similar for the angels. They get their assignments and their messages from God, but God will often give them leeway to decide how to carry out that assignment. Angels are not robots, they are cognizant beings who love God and who gladly and willingly serve Him.

Now I would like to switch gears and share a few stories that fall under the realm of angelic protection, as per Psalm 91:11-12. It says, "For He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." In other words, one of the tasks that God gives His angels is to protect His elect from harm.

One day in October of 2000, I had been sick and was recovering from the stomach flu. It had been raining outside and the dogs had been cooped up in the house all day. I was working on GodSpeak lessons all day and concentrating on that. The rain finally let up and I let the dogs outside for a few minutes to do their "doggie business." I did not intend to leave them outside very long because they have a tendency to get out of the yard and cars zoom down our street very fast, it is not a safe neighborhood for dogs to wander the streets unsupervised. As is my habit, I shut and locked the front door. I ran back to my computer to check e-mail really fast ... and soon I was caught in a lengthy e-mail "emergency" and temporarily forgot about the dogs.

I was in the middle of something very involved when I felt strongly prompted to go check on the dogs. That type of prompting is often the Lord, so I would normally go do it immediately, no questions asked. But I was not dressed since I was home sick that day. I decided I'd take five minutes to get past this really involved thing, then I would throw on some clothes and go outside to check on the dogs. So I turned my concentration back to the task. About three minutes later, I heard the front door open. I heard the jingle of the license and id tags on the dogs' collars which indicated that the dogs came in the house. My first thought was, "Oh good, Ed's home. I won't have to get dressed and look after the dogs." Then I remembered that it was muddy outside and I went running downstairs to wipe the dog's feet before they tracked mud all over my carpets.

I came barreling down the stairs and to my surprise, the previously locked front door was wide open. I was still in my nightee, so I hoped no one would pass by. I went to close the door, and looked out briefly to see if anyone had passed by and seen me. No one was in eyeshot. But Ed's car was not in the driveway. I did not have any time to ponder it, because the dogs were trying to run to the carpet. So I shut the door, grabbed the larger dog and began wiping it's feet with the towel we keep by the door. I asked the Lord how the locked door got open so the dogs could get in. He told me that He had sent an angel to let them into the house since I would not listen to Him when He told me to go downstairs and get them. They had gotten out of the yard and were in danger of getting hit by a car. I was able to verify the last part of the story by seeing muddy paw prints (the same size and shape as those in my entry-way) on the sidewalk outside of my fence at the area where they usually get out of the yard.

Here is another story that was sort of amazing. I had gone to the auto teller to withdraw the maximum amount I could take out, which was $200 cash. I did not want to spend a lot of time messing with opening my purse, taking my wallet out and my money in it because this was in a "seedy" part of town very early in the morning. There were a lot of derelicts around, some of which had been known to attack people at the auto teller for their cash. So I shoved it and my auto teller card into my jacket pocket and walked quickly away from there. When I got about a block away, I glanced at my pocket and noticed it had a big hole in it. I felt a surge of alarm and looked in my pocket. It was empty! Just then a man tapped me on the shoulder and said, "excuse me. You dropped this." He handed me a wad of 20 dollar bills and the auto teller card. I said "thank you." I glanced down briefly at my hand to look at what he handed me. When I looked back up at him, he was totally gone. I only looked down for maybe 2 or 3 seconds and there was nowhere he could have gone in that short period of time to get out of sight. It was like he disappeared into thin air. I held the pile of money cupped in my hand until I got safely to the building where my office was in. When I counted the money, the entire $200 was there. I believe that an angel picked this up for me and handed it back to me to protect me from loosing all that money.

And here is one last story, which happened on Nov 19, 2002. I had to borrow my husband's van (an automatic) to take my dogs somewhere. I had been writing a lesson for this teaching series on Angels for the prophetic-school list just before I left with the dogs.

I am used to stick shifts, not automatic transmissions. So I did not realize that there were two different settings that could cause the car to move forward. So I had it in low thinking I was in Drive. Everything was ok when I was on city streets for 2 or 3 blocks on my way to the freeway. But as soon as I hit the freeway and started to accelerate, the van began acting up. It all happened very fast. The van began to shake and jerk, the engine began making what I knew was a "very bad" noise and was not accelerating like it should. I found myself throwing out one of those "help Lord!" prayers.

I glanced at the gear setting indicator and realized I was in Low instead of Drive. I realized I had to shift it to drive. The engine sounded like it was going to explode and the noise startled me and I hesitated in reaching for the gear shift. Before I could compose myself and reach over to grab the gear shift lever, it moved on it's own from Low to Drive and the car settled down. I was a bit astonished.

"Lord," I asked, "did you just shift the gears on my car for me in response to my prayer?"

"Not exactly," the Lord replied, "I asked one of My angels to do it for you." He went on to explain that since I was studying and writing about angels, He decided to orchestrate an encounter with one for me. This is very interesting because the part I'd been studying just before I left the house was the Scripture discussing the angels' role in helping and protecting God's elect!

I have one last angel story to add to the collection that started about 20 minutes after I thought I'd finished writing this lesson. I went to get my check book to pay a bill before my husband and I left to go to a sporting event. This was Saturday afternoon, two days after Thanksgiving. I thought I'd left my wallet in the car after I'd run to the grocery store on Thanksgiving morning to get some flowers. But it was not there. So I tore the whole house apart looking for it and could not find it. I knew the last time I'd seen my purse was when I paid for the flowers at the grocery store. So I asked my husband to drive me to the grocery store.. I wanted my purse back.. it had my passport in it, my personal and ministry check books, my credit and bank cards and over $300 cash. I knew that something left in as public of a place as a grocery store was not likely to still be there, so I prayed very hard for God to return the purse to me.

We got to the store and the assistant manager said the lost and found would be in the office, so she took me there. We looked around the office.. no purse. The counters were clear, nothing on them. The cabinet they put lost and found items in was empty. They checked the two drawers in there as well. They found someone else's wallet, but not my purse. All this time I am silently praying for God to somehow get the important items back to me, like the passport and check books. I had already written off the cash and figured I'd have to report the credit cards as lost.

As I left the office, the assistant manager suggested I leave them a written description of the purse and my contact info. I remembered thinking to myself "if you don't have it after two days, you wont' have it in a week", but did as she asked. There was a window to the office and a counter right outside the office. So she handed me a piece of paper and a pen. I began to write on the counter as she went back inside the office and closed the door. As I was finishing the note, she opened the door and came out looking sort of amazed. "Is this it?" she asked and held up my purse. I was so glad to get it back. Then she told me that suddenly there it was in a place where we'd already looked and did not find it!

I believe that an angel was involved in this incident, because as I left the store, the Lord reminded me of how He uses angels to protect and He reminded me that I'd just been writing a teaching on experiences where angels protected us. I felt like I was supposed to go back and add this story to this lesson.

I wanted to conclude this teaching series by sharing a few angel stories with you from my own personal experience. I hope you have found this series enlightening and helpful. I would like to end by reminding you of the charge Randy Clark gave us on working effectively with angels. This was first presented in lesson 4, but I would like to repeat it here:

God expects His Church to work with angels to be effective. Therefore we need to learn how to work with them. Obviously we must make a place for them to co-labor with us. At the same time, we must not get wrapped up in angels and put our focus and our attention on them.

Rev 19:10 makes it very clear that we are not to worship angels or overly elevate them. John writes, "And I fell at his feet to worship him (the angel who had been speaking to John). But he said to me, 'See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!'"

We should respect angels and cooperate with them. But we should not give an angel more honor than or respect than we would give another anointed human minister.