(Ver 1.0)  This is now Part 5 of a series of studies about the spiritual reality of angels found in the Bible.   We have covered a lot of information that is not all going to be repeated, so if you have not read these lessons from the beginning, I would recommend that you go back and start with “Part 1”.   What are angels good for?  What do they do for us?  Do they have specific jobs and assignments?  Who gives them these assignments, God or Us?  Does everybody have a personal guardian angel?  If so why do bad things happen to so many people?  There are just so many hard questions to try to answer.  I definitely will not answer all of these today.  We can certainly find some of the answers to some of our questions and still not understand that there are many other factors involved in what we get in life.  The Bible is a book full of highly complex issues and even if we learn one of these factors completely, that does not mean we can explain everything that controls what happens to us in life.  Many of these spiritual laws of God have been revealed to us in the Bible, but yet we still do not fully understand them all and how each one works, interacts and reacts with the other given spiritual laws.  What do we do?  I believe that we just do the best that we can and continue to learn as much as we can as we trust God to show us and teach us what else we need to learn.   God certainly has hidden a vast amount of spiritual wisdom and knowledge in this book that contains His Truth, so let’s study it today and see what He says us.  Today we will explore some more accounts of what angels have done for people in the Bible and thus see what they can possibly do for us.  You see the Bible says that God shows no favoritism and that He is no respecter of persons.  Meaning what He has done for one He must do for all.  Of course it is more complicated than trying to make everything totally up to God.  Sometimes God does things for people only because they have done the right things to allow God to bless them.   In order to obtain the same blessing that they got, you must do what they did and that is not as easy as you might think.  You might not know everything that did and thus it is impossible for you to do what they did.  So do not put everything that happens to you in the world entirely in the hands of God’s responsibility, you also have a part to play in what happens to you and you are required to make right choices as we will learn more about in these lessons.

Heb 1:14  Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

If you read the context of this verse found in Hebrews you will clearly see that God is talking about angels.  God calls angels “spirit” beings that minister.  These angels as we have seen have the capability of manifesting into the natural realm and becoming physically seen by humans.  But, also note the qualification for the angel’s service being given to us.  These angels are only sent for those “who are heirs of salvation”.  Wow, that really narrows the scope doesn’t it?  Do you qualify as one of these people?  If you do then you have angels that are sent to minster for you.  Did you notice that it did not say minister “TO” you but that it says “FOR” you?  There is a big difference between those two words.  It is like saying I have someone working “ON” me vs. someone working “FOR” me.  If you look up the word translated as “ministering” it has a great definition.  It means “attendance” as a servant.  Angels are you spiritual “attendant”.  It can also mean “aid” or “official service”.  So what is it that angels are supposed to be doing for those that are heirs of salvation?  That is of course a trick question.  Did you know if you do not tell your “servants” what you want them to do, that it is Ok for them to do nothing and think that is what you want?   Only by giving your servants some specific assignments, tasks and jobs do you ever get servants that will know they are doing something that pleases you.  God is telling us to put our angels to work for us and you need to learn how to do that.  It is very much like owning a large company and hiring people but you not telling anyone what you hired them for.  They come to work every day and sit and just wait for something to do.  They take home a pay check for doing nothing.  I’ve seen many people who I have worked with before who do this.  Let’s look at an example in the Bible of how to put your angel to work for you.

What did angels do for people in the Old Testament and why did they do it?  By studying the Bible and asking these two questions we are about to find some of these answers.  We will find some examples and see how they ministered for these Old Testament saints.  We will start by looking at a verse in Genesis 24.  By reading the context you will see that this is the story of Abraham when he is very old and he sends out a servant to find a wife for his son Isaac.  Abraham makes the servant take an oath and swore that he will fulfill his last request.  Let’s start with a verse near the end of the chapter where Abraham makes a statement that is very relevant to my subject today:

Gen 24:40  And he said unto me, The LORD, before whom I walk, will send his angel with thee, and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred, and of my father’s house:

Abraham declares that the angel of the Lord will be sent with this servant to help him find a wife for his son Isaac.  How does Abraham know this?  Reading this chapter I did not see Abraham pray to God and ask for an angel.  Did God tell Him that an angel would go with his servant?  I couldn’t find that in the Bible either.  You should really ask more questions when you study the Bible.  You see I do not think Abraham did anything but declare what his angel was going to do and thus he put his angel to work for him by faith.  The servant takes camels and gifts and goes on his journey to look for a wife for Isaac.  But, there is no mention of an angel going with him like Abraham said.  It appears that the servant went alone.  What happened?  What we can see in this verse is a great statement of how angels minister “FOR” those of the heirs of salvation.  Abraham certainly qualifies for a “heir of salvation”.  We can read in verse 11, that the servant goes to a city of Abraham’s relatives where he sits by a well and prays.  As you continue to read in this chapter you find that a woman appears at the well.  How is it that just the right woman comes to the exact well that the servant is sitting by at just the right time and no others come first?  Have you ever thought about that? 

The first verse that we read in Genesis said that the angel will “prosper” your way.  In other words you do something and the angel will do something to make it successful.  Did you see that this is a partnership arrangement?  If God and the angel were only responsible for getting a wife for Isaac, it would have been best for Abraham and his servant to do nothing and let the angel do his job.  However, this was not how it worked was it?   The servant went forth to a land and sat by the well waiting and knew what to pray and say and suddenly the right woman appears first before any others could come.  Do you understand that angels can influence people to do things and even say things?  Angels do this most of the time by simply putting thoughts and suggestions into your head (mind).  It does not say the angel appeared to Rebecca and told her anything.  You can assume that the angel came to Rebecca and suggested that she needed to go to the well and Rebecca agreed in her mind and went.  You can also see that the angel must have told her what to do and say when she got there to the well in order for everything to work out the way that it did.  You can also assume that since every other woman who was usually sent to the well to get water also did not show up first because these other women were given suggestions to wait and they did.  It is a fascinating concept being given to us.  Angels can affect what people do and when they do it.  Did you know that many of the people on September 11, 2001who should have normally been in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were not there for some strange reason?  These two buildings normally contained over 35,000 people on an average day by 9 AM.  This does not account for the number of tourists and others who could visit on any given day to reach way beyond that number.  All of these people who would have normally been there were not there the day that the planes flew into them and less than 3000 died that day.  When the terrorist struck the Towers, the buildings were amazingly not full to capacity like they normally were.  Was this a chance accident or were there angels trying to suggest that these people needed to be somewhere else this morning?  I heard many people say that for some reason they had to run an errand and do something else and fortunately for them it saved them.  I find that just too amazing to be a coincidence or a chance accidental occurrence.  I completely believe that angels of God were at work trying to save as many people as they could from what Satan was trying to do.  You of course can believe whatever you want to about it.

What we discover in reading chapter 24 of Genesis is that Abraham said some very specific words and instructions for his angel to follow in faith and things worked out for his servant in an incredibly orchestrated non-accidental fashion.  The odds for going to anywhere and being in the right place at the exact right time to meet a someone that you do know who says and does exactly what you expect is mathematically impossible to say the least.  So I believe that Abraham’s words put the angel of God to work for him to cause these things to occur.

Num 20:16  And when we cried unto the LORD, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt: and, behold, we are in Kadesh, a city in the uttermost of thy border:

When this verse says that people cried unto the Lord, they are said to be praying to God.  If you are praying then you are saying words, yes?  Apparently angels are sent and respond to words that are spoken by people on the earth.  We have actually already seen this fact in the story of Zacharias in Luke and Daniel from an earlier lesson on angels.  Here is a key verse that I gave you before:

Dan 10:12  Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words.

The angel was sent by God in response to the words/prayers of someone on the earth.  Daniel spoke words and the angels responded to those words.  If Daniel doesn’t speak words, guess what no angels are going to show up and do anything.  This is a revealed Bible principle of how you put your angels to work for you.  What we are seeing is a definitive pattern that informs us that angels respond to our words.  So let’s go back to what I said earlier, that Hebrews said angels are servants sent for the heirs of salvation?  How would you put someone to work for you in a company on the earth?  You hire them with your words and then tell them what you want them to do for you with more words.  I believe that this is very simple concept of how angels work for us.  You can choose not to believe it and it will not affect me one bit, however it might affect what your angels do for you.

Psa 103:20  Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.

The angels of God do things based upon spoken words.  Clearly when God speaks they are attentive and listen to what is being said.  You can again see in this verse that angels are extremely “strong” beings and definitely not to be taken for granted.   So what other factors cause angels to work on our behalf?  I’m not sure if we can fully say the answer to that question.  I can see that the words that we speak and pray to God have definite effects on what they do.  If you have read my other lessons on spoken words, you should already understand and know what we say matters.  God clearly tells us that our words affect our outcomes in life.  There are certainly more instances in the Bible that I believe I could discuss today.  For example, David when he slew Goliath was he that good of a shot by David’s ability or was there an angel from God helping him?  You see it does not say there was any angel present, but there was certainly something supernatural taking place that we are not clearly informed of.  David certainly said all of the right words before his angel and God so I believe that this allowed them to help defeat the giant Goliath.  If God told us everything about every story in the Bible there would be no secrets and no hidden information to learn from the Bible; everything would be obviously right in front of us.  God obviously did not do this and conceals information in almost every story found in the Bible.  So we are forced to put the puzzle pieces together correctly to see what is revealed to us and what is hidden from us.   I believe that God purposely hides information about angels from us so that we do not worship them as gods.  So God balances the information in the Bible so that there is just enough to inform us and not too much too exalt angels higher than where they should be.

So I believe very strongly that our words affect our angels and what they do “FOR” us.  Only by choosing right words like David, Abraham and Daniel do they respond in ways that are positive to us.  I’ll try to show you in my next lesson how what we can say and do can cause a negative outcome on what angles do for us.  If you know of other stories in the Bible about angels I would be happy to hear about them.  If you have personal experiences with angels I would also be happy to hear about them.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading this series of lessons you can go to “Part 6“.