Dear Teresa,
How can you be in the presence of angels as well as talk with them? I have always asked to see them but I never have. I am not asking for a formula, but is it just up to God or is this something we can pray to receive? Must we seek it first?- Wanting To See
Dear Wanting To See
There are two different types of encounters with angels. One is where they are sent to protect you or assist you in some difficulty. This is one of the angel's functions and there are a lot of verses that talk about this. For instance, Psalm 34:7 tells us, "The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them." Psalm 91:11-12 tells us: "He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone."The only way to see that type of angel is to get in a dangerous situation that God wants to deliver you from. Even then, the angels may work invisibly and you may not get to see them. But we do have an example from the Bible in the life of Peter where he saw his delivering angel. The story is found in Acts 12. Herod threw Peter and James into prison, then he executed James. He was planning on executing Peter, but God still had things for Peter to do. Peter was asleep in prison, chained between two guards, on what Herod intended be his last night alive on this earth. Let's pick up the story from Acts 12:7:
7 Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the prison; and he struck Peter on the side and raised him up, saying, "Arise quickly!" And his chains fell off his hands. 8 Then the angel said to him, "Gird yourself and tie on your sandals"; and so he did. And he said to him, "Put on your garment and follow me." 9 So he went out and followed him, and did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. 10 When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord; and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.Peter was apparently used to seeing angels in visions. The passage said that he did not know if this was really happening or if it was a vision. However, Peter obeyed the angel, and shortly afterwards he discovered he was really out of prison. There are two things we should note about this passage.
The first is that Peter obeyed the angel as if he were obeying God. That is always a very good idea, because if God sends an angel to you, then the angel is speaking for God in whatever he says to you. When Moses saw the burning bush, he did not encounter God directly; he encountered an angel (Exodus 3:2). But when Moses dialogued with this angel, the bible treats it as if he was talking directly with God. When an angel speaks to you, he does no more or no less than God is doing. The angel doesn't say anything that God is not saying, and everything he says comes directly from God. So if you disobey an angel, you are disobeying God.
The second thing we should note is that this angel did not stop to explain things to Peter. He did not converse with him any more than was absolutely necessary to accomplish his task. The only things he said were simple commands that he expected Peter to obey. That is because this angel was a delivering angel is not a messenger angel. Their job is to protect us from something or help us in a specific situation. They are not messengers and they do not speak to us any more than necessary. In fact, much of the time they work behind the scenes where we can't see them and we don't know they are active on our behalf.
This was the first type of angel that I encountered on a regular basis. The Lord told me that when I went on my missions trips, I did not go alone, because He sent angels with me. Most of time I did not see the angels, but occasionally He did show them to me for a brief moment. I remember one night in South Africa I woke up in the wee hours of the morning and I was amazed that I was not experiencing more spiritual warfare counterattacks. (I had experienced a lot of spiritual warfare on my first trip.) I asked the Lord about it, and he opened my eyes to see an angel standing by my bed, holding a raised sword. Then the Lord told me that this angel was protecting me from the enemy attacks against me during this trip. I can't tell you how safe I felt once the Lord showed me that.
I knew the angels accompanied me on these trips, but I did not see them very often and I hardly ever interacted with them. They are not the type of angels that carry on conversations with us, and it is not normal to interact directly with them unless they need to give us simple commands to obey.
The type angels who you talk to are messenger angels. In fact, the Greek word that we translate as "angel" literally means messenger. Messenger angels speak God's messages to us, similar to how a prophet does. However, angels have more direct access to God and greater clarity of hearing, and they never get His message wrong. The bible tells us to judge prophecy, but we don't have to judge what an angel tells us. (We do need to discern that this is a God-angel and not a demon masquerading as an angel of light.) But once we have established that this is really an angel from God, we can (and should) take whatever they speak to us as directly from God.
The angel that Moses dialogued with in Exodus chapters 3 and 4 was a messenger angel. He spoke to Moses on God's behalf, commissioned him and gave Moses directions and instructions. The angel that Daniel spoke to in Daniel 8 and 9 was a messenger angel named Gabriel. He was sent to explain some visions to Daniel. Look at Daniel 8:15-17:
15 Then it happened, when I, Daniel, had seen the vision and was seeking the meaning, that suddenly there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. 16 And I heard a man's voice between the banks of the Ulai, who called, and said, "Gabriel, make this man understand the vision." 17 So he came near where I stood, and when he came I was afraid and fell on my face; but he said to me, "Understand, son of man, that the vision refers to the time of the end...."Then the angel went on to explain the vision to Daniel in detail. In short, this angel was acting in a teaching (or mentoring) capacity. God still sends angels to do that today, but it is something that God decides to do, and not something that we can make happen.
I had my first directly experience with a messenger angel in Italy. I went there on what my husband thought was a family vacation, but it was really a prayer journey that God sent me on, to pray for His glory to return to the Catholic church. In fact, God opened some amazing doors for me. I even got to attend a prayer meeting in the Vatican. That night, an angel appeared to me. He emitted so much light that I could not make out his features. The bright light woke me up but my husband slept through the whole encounter. Then the angel began to speak to me, giving me instructions from God for the rest of my prayer journey.
After that, I began to see messenger angels from time to time; but it was never something I could control or make happen. God sent them when He wanted to. There was a season where I did not have a mentor who I could go to, and I would get confused about something related to the prophetic. I would cry out to God about each thing that was puzzling me. Sometimes He would answer me directly, but other times He would send angels to instruct me. Again, this was never at my control, but at times it was in response to intense prayer and seeking Him (for the answer, not for the angelic visitation).
I don't think it is wrong to desire to encounter angels or to ask God explicitly for that. But we must be careful that we aren't desiring angels more than we desire God. If we do, He probably isn't going to send one to us--because He wants to be the primary focus of our worship and attention.
(There is so much more that I want to say on this topic that I am going to continue to answer it next week.)
I started to answer a question about angels by "Wanting To See" last week. I have so much to say on this topic that I had to split my answer into two weeks. Let's review the original question:
Dear Teresa,
How can you be in the presence of angels as well as talk with them? I have always asked to see them but I never have. I am not asking for a formula, but is it just up to God or is this something we can pray to receive? Must we seek it first?- Wanting To See
Dear Wanting To See,
This is part 2 of my answer to you. Last week I talked about how there different types of angels. I mentioned two of them: delivering angels and messenger angels. I shared how the ones that we "talk to" are the messenger angels. Then I said:[Previous Article] [Next Article]I don't think it is wrong to desire to encounter angels and to ask God explicitly for that. But we must be careful that we aren't desiring angels more than we desire God. If we do, He probably isn't going to send one to us--because He wants to be the primary focus of our worship and attention.Jesus encouraged us to ask God for things, fully expecting to receive them, and we would (Matthew 7:7-11). James fine tunes this a bit, by explaining that we have to ask with the right motives. James 4:3 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures." To paraphrase this a bit, when we ask God for something with the wrong motivations, then He begins to work on our motives instead of giving us what we ask for. He might give it to us later, once our motives are right. Or He might change our desires to better line up with His desires, so that we no longer desire the thing we asked for with wrong motives.
Psalm 37:4-5 sums it up nicely: "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." In other words, when God is our biggest desire and motive, He delights to give us things that we desire. So if you delight yourself in the Lord and desire to see angels, and you ask Him for that, I think there is a good chance He might do that for you.
In fact, there is a case in the bible where someone prayed and asked God to send an angel to speak to him, and God answered that prayer. The story is found in Judges 13. An angel appeared to Samson's mother before he was born, and told her that her son had to be a "Nazerite from the womb" and "no razor shall come upon his head." She told her husband about the angel, and he prayed this prayer in verse 8: "O my Lord, please let the man of God whom You sent come to us again and teach us what we shall do for the child who will be born."
God answered their prayer in verses 9-11: "9 And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came to the woman again as she was sitting in the field; but Manoah her husband was not with her. 10 Then the woman ran in haste and told her husband, and said to him, 'Look, the Man who came to me the other day has just now appeared to me!' 11 So Manoah arose and followed his wife. When he came to the Man, he said to Him, 'Are You the man who spoke to this woman?' And he said, 'I am.'"
We see to have a precedence that if we ask God to send an angel to speak to us, He just might say yes--providing we seek God more than we seek the angel.
I had a similar experience in my own life. It was back in late November or early December of 2006, I had a chat with Jim Paul, one of the members of the GodSpeak Board of Directors. He told me about how God had given him an Open Heaven in his living room, and angels were appearing to him on a daily basis. I teasingly said that I would like to fly out and sit in his living room for a few days and seek God. I said it like a joke, but I there was a part of me that really did mean it. I was in a dry place and I wanted an encounter with God! Jim invited me to come, but the logistics of our schedules made it impossible to come before late mid-to-late January. By then the angels were not coming on a daily basis anymore, just occasionally.
I sought God, sitting for hours in his living room and praying. I really wanted an angel to appear to me and tell me all the things that God had been speaking directly to me, to validate my hearing. But God did not do that. He met me, and very powerfully so, but He did it in the way He always does it. I flew all the way to Toronto (a 6 hour flight) in hopes of encountering an angel, but I never saw one.
However, about 2 months later, angels suddenly started showing up in my computer room and in my prayer room. All of the sudden, I had an "open heaven" of my own. There were two angels in particular who God sent to mentor me, and I even got to know their names. It was an amazing experience. They carried so much of the Lord's presence and character that there was no doubt in my mind that they were God's (as opposed to the demonic "angel of light").
There was a six week period where I had near-daily encounters with these angels. Mostly they mentored me. Some of it was teaching me God's ways and things about the prophetic. But a big piece of it was character development, and not all of their lessons were fun. They sort of forced me to look at some blind spots and begin dealing with them with the Lord. But it was a good experience for me and it helped me to grow even closer to God. I still see these angels from time to time (but not daily anymore). They are still actively mentoring me.
I am starting to learn a bit about them and about how to cooperate with them and with the Lord in order to accomplish the Lord's agenda. I began to realize that they are God's servants, just like I am, and that God gives them specific jobs to do. So I have been asking God to teach me how to cooperate with Him and His angels. I want to learn how to do my job in a way that makes it easier for them to do their job. I want to learn how to cooperate with them so that God's perfect will is accomplished. In some ways it is like learning to work together effectively with other human team members when you are part of a ministry team--except, of course, that angels are not human.
The Lord has begun speaking to me on this question. I don't claim to know it all, but I am learning thing I need to know. Sometimes God speaks to me directly, in that still small voice. Other times He has the angels address my questions with me. Other times He gives me the pieces of the answer in prophetic words. I still feel like a beginner and I have to much to learn about how to serve God in my destiny, and at the same time to cooperate effectively with His servants, the angels. I want to learn how to work effectively with them and cooperate with them so it is easier for them to do their God-appointed job. But at the same time, I don't want to ever start depending angels instead of depending on God.
God has already told me some things about angels. He told me not to anthropomorphize them--not to assign human characteristics and human motivations to them. He said that they are created for his purposes and they think differently than we think. They live in deep intimacy with Him and they delight in serving Him. There are things that angels can ever experience because they are holy and have never been touched by sin. For instance, they can't know fear, worry or anxiety; and they are not easily offended. They can never misrepresent God and they cannot lie. He also told me that He knows each angel well and gives them assignments that each is well suited for.
I am learning a bit about angels, and God is sending angels to have a more active role in my life and ministry. All the same, I can't control when they come--God is in control of that. And when they do come, I don't control the agenda--they are the ones who decide what we are going to talk about. I do ask them questions, and sometimes they answer my questions. Other times they have a different agenda, and we always end up following their agenda, because it is God's agenda.
So let me go back to your question: "How can I get God to send me an angel?"
I think the answer is to press into God, grow closer to Him, and ask Him a lot of sincere questions. The more you seek and pursue Him, the more He is likely to give you more of Himself, and that could easily include angelic encounters.
Also, you have to be aware of one important thing: the higher you go in relationship with God, the more He will require of you. He will hold you accountable to a higher set of standards and He will require more costly obedience from you. You really will have to learn to pray (and mean), "Not My will be done, but Yours." You will have to stop doing carnal things and start learning to do only what the Father is doing.
You can't have greater intimacy with God--the type that produces open visions and Heavenly encounters--unless you give Him more of yourself. You must be prepared to obey Him in whatever He asks you to do--obeying Him because you love Him. You must be prepared to make Him Lord and Master in every area of your life.