God cannot lie and He promised believers in Psalm 37:4 as follows ‘delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart’.
Yet, despite such a powerful promise, all over Christendom, many believers experience lack because they do not know how to activate the ministry of angels by saying an effective prayer.
And since they do not know how to pray an effective prayer they are unable to transfer their burdens from their weak shoulders to the titanic shoulder of God.
Psalm 55:22 shows us clearly that it is God’s intention that we cast our burdens on Him-‘cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you”.
I watched a movie and there was an American military plane that needed refueling. Now this was a special plane that did not have to land to be refueled. It could be refueled in the air.
A refueling plane was sent to fuel the plane, however, the plane bearing fuel could not load it unto the plane needing fuel until that plane had the same coordinates as the refueling vessel and was aligned to it.
God refuels us using unseen angels. Every prayer that you prayer that requires something to be done outside your body is attended to by an angel.
The Holy Spirit works within us and on our body but angels work outside our bodies.
Now, when we want God’s help through the ministration of angels, we have to be aligned with God’s Word in the sequence that God has ordained that they be used.
We have to understand something about angels, they are unbiased.
We see this in Joshua 5:13-14 “now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?”
Notice that the angel was not for or against anybody. He was for implementing God’s command. Thus if the Israelites had failed to speak God’s Word in faith and their enemies did, the angel would have worked for their enemy’s benefit.
The angel himself had said he was neither for the Israelites or for their enemies.
So, what moves angels?
Psalm 103:20 answers that question. ‘Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word’. Notice here that it says angels “obey his word”.
That verse did not say they obey God’s voice. They do obey God’s voice. But that is not what that verse is saying.
The verse is saying that they “obey his word'”. In other words, they obey anybody that voices out God’s Words.
But you can not just voice God’s Word to an angel. You must voice it in faith knowing that they are ministering beings sent to minister to you who are the heirs of salvation.
This is confirmed in James 1:6-7 “but when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from The Lord”.
God is not going to get up from His throne to wait on us. He created angels to do that.
We have proof of this in Hebrews 1:14 “are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
Many people are unaware that there are sounds that only dog can hear? Whistles and other devices exist that can emit such sounds. When you blow on such a whistle, the human ear cannot pick that vibration of sound. But a dog can.
Likewise, When we speak the Word of God without faith angels do not even hear it. They can only hear the vibrations of the Word of God spoken in faith.
In England, if a policeman wants to arrest you he tells you ‘stop in the name of the Queen’.
Now, you are not obeying the policeman when you stop as he directs. You are actually obeying the Queen.
We pray to God in faith but by virtue of Psalm 103:20, we are empowered to speak God’s word in faith and angels will obey.
But they are not obeying us. I have to make this point very clear. They are obeying God.
That is why Joshua 1:8 says that we should meditate on the word and that is why 2 Timothy 2:15 says we should study so we know how to “rightly divide the word of truth”.
It not just angels that act thus way. Demons, Bow ONLY to the Word of God Spoken in Faith: “One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?”-Acts 19:15.
In learning how to make prayers that register in heaven and initiate immediate angelic ministration, we must study and understand the time tested principle in Philippians 4:6 “do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.
Look at the sequence: prayer, petition and thanksgiving.
Now, the tendency amongst many Christians is to think this is a New Testament teaching. But the New Testament is only a fulfillment of the Old.
Let us consider 1 Chronicles 16:4 “David appointed the following Levites to lead the people in worship before the Ark of the LORD–to invoke his blessings, to give thanks, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel” (NLT).
Notice the similarity?
Now let us read Daniel 2:18-19 “he urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. During the night the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision. Then Daniel praised the God of heaven”.
Here you see Daniel practicalizing this principle.
In Daniel 10:12 we see that Daniel’s prayer was directed at God but the answer was brought to him by an angel. “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them”.
So, the question is why do we often not get the results that Daniel got?
Two things: doubt and fear.
I have already addressed doubt now let me address fear.
In the verse we just read, notice that the first thing the angel tells Daniel is ‘Do not be afraid’.
In Luke 1:30, Luke 2:10, Judges 6:23 and Matthew 28:5 we see that angels said the same thing to those to whom they were sent to by God.
Ministering angels go to great lengths to calm people of the shock of seeing them so that they are not frightened because fear repels the particular type of angels that minister to man. (There are other types of angels with power to destroy and enforce God’s judgment, I do not refer to those classes of angels).
We have all encountered people who are nervous and ill at ease in public. Many times, the reason why such people are frequently lonely is because they project fear and their fear makes us as human beings uneasy around them and so we avoid them.
But there are people with evil intentions who purposely seek out such people because they are vulnerable and can be taken advantage of.
Conversely, we all have encountered people who are confident and comfortable in their skins in public.
We generally feel drawn to those types of people. We are attracted to them. We like them. Even if they are lying, we often want to believe them.
Now, people with evil intentions generally stay clear of such people because they are not vulnerable and cannot be easily taken advantage of.
You see, fear repels good people and attracts evil people but confidence attracts good people and repels evil people.
But let me remind my readers. Remember I said Angels are not for us and are not for our enemies. They are for the Word of God spoken in faith.
So, be careful, especially with leadership.
A people may be good but if they have evil leaders, God may send angels against that nation to deal harshly with them.
Sometimes they may even have God fearing rulers who are seduced by satan to do something God finds detestable. And God may punish that nation by the hands of angels.
In 1 Chronicles 21:1 we read “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel”.
Verses 8-12 of the same chapter reads as follows “Then David said to God, “I have sinned greatly by doing this. Now, I beg you, take away the guilt of your servant. I have done a very foolish thing.” The Lord said to Gad, David’s seer, 10“Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’ ” So Gad went to David and said to him, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Take your choice: three years of famine, three months of being swept away before your enemies, with their swords overtaking you, or three days of the sword of the Lord—days of plague in the land, with the angel of the Lord ravaging every part of Israel.’ Now then, decide how I should answer the one who sent me.”
Now let us read verse 14 and 15 of that same chapter “So the Lord sent a plague on Israel, and seventy thousand men of Israel fell dead. And God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem. But as the angel was doing so, the Lord saw it and relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was destroying the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand”.
Do you know that if this sort of thing should happen in many nations today, even believers would blame satan.
Some of my readers may say this is merely an Old Testament occurrence, but they would be mistaken.
In Acts 12:23 we read “immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died”.
Another thing to know about ministering angels is that they are assigned to individuals and to nations.
Psalm 91:11 reads “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways”. From this verse, it is clear that one of the benefits God gives to those who believe in Him is a guardian angel. We see that even more clearly in Acts 12:15 “you’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
Now, it is not just people that have angels. Nations have angels as we see in Daniel 12:1 “”At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people–everyone whose name is found written in the book–will be delivered”.
To clarify, Michael is a prince amongst angels. He is what is known as an arch angel.
There are hierarchies amongst angels. You have angels and you have arch angels (1 Thessalonians 4:16 “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first”.) There are seraphs (Isaiah 6:2 “Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying”). And then you have Cherubim who surround the throne of God as He sits ( Psalm 80:1 “Hear us, Shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock. You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth”).
So, what is the point of all I have written about angels and their ministration?
It is to equip the believer to know that angels exist, that they are unbiased, that they are moved to action by the Word of God spoken in faith and that if we do not understand these principles we will remain helpless whereas God has provided angelic help to His people as well as the means by which we can access that help via the Scriptures.
Secondarily, it is to equip my readers to know that leaders are particularly vulnerable to the operations of the enemy and they should regularly be prayed for for the simple reason that when they make errors with strong spiritual significance, the consequence of those errors are borne by the people they lead.
