Angels: The Servants of God

Daily Truth:  “For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”  Psalms 91:11

 

 

Angels are always an interesting topic.  Kids imagine them with white dresses, wings, and halos floating above their heads.

Did you know that they are mentioned over 108 times in the Old Testament and over 165 times in the New Testament and that 44 of the 66 books of the Bible mention angels. (Yes, I listened in church on Sunday.)

There are weeks that I come to Wednesday morning and I don’t know what to write about.  This week the Lord laid the topic of angels on my heart.

Last week, one of our family devotions dealt with the topic of angels.  It was very interesting to see the kids responses.  Here is what we learned.

1.  There are two angels – Michael and Gabriel.  Michael is the archangel and sometimes has to fight Satan (Jude 1:9).  The boys thought that was pretty cool. Gabriel is the messenger angel.  (Luke 1:19).

2.  The angels were made to serve God.(Psalms 104:4)

3.  Although the angels are God’s servants they do not have God’s powers.  They aren’t omniscient. (Matthew 24:36)

4.  We are each given a guardian angel assigned the task of watching over us.  (Matthew 4:6, Matthew 18:10) The kids were AMAZED by this.

“You mean that there are angels in the room right now watching us?”

“Why can’t we see them?”

“You mean their job is to take care of us?”

“If they don’t know everything, how do they know not to protect us?  For instance when it is time for us to go to Heaven, how do they know to stop doing their job?”  (Hate those hard questions.)

The last question we answered like this:  Angels are told to take care of us and protect us.  Yet, God is all knowing.  When it is time for us to go to Heaven, they are still protecting us, but God is telling those angels that their job is now to bring us to Heaven because God knows it is time for us to be with Him.

“Why can’t we see them?” We told the kids we can’t always see them but the Bible indicates that there are times that we see them and don’t know it. (Hebrews 13:2)

There are many incidents in the Bible where people saw angels.  We focused on two stories.

The first story was about Peter being in prison and how the angel walked him right out of prison. (Acts 12:5-17) The kids thought that was pretty amazing that Peter was able to just walk right past all the guards and they didn’t even see him!

Then there was the story of Elisha who was being chased by a king.  The king sent an army to the city where Elisha was to take him prisoner.  (Side note:  Why in the world did the king think he needed a whole army to capture Elisha?  Just a thought.)

Elisha’s servant turns to him in panic and asks what are they supposed to do.

Elisha prays and asks God to open his servant’s eyes.  When God does, the servant sees the hillside full of angels in chariots of fire surrounding the king’s army.  (II Kings 2:16-18)

“WOW!” was the kids response and somehow I think that might have been the servant’s response as well.

There are many other stories in the Bible that talk about angels (Genesis 28:11-13Daniel 6:16-22. Daniel 3:19-25).

Despite all the amazing things angels can do, we learned the most amazing thing yet.  Angels will never experience the joy of salvation. In fact, they rejoice when a soul is saved. (Luke 15:10)

The angels are servants of God, we can become the children of God.  How much better is it to be God’s child!!

I have always loved the words to this chorus:

“Holy, holy is what the angels sing, And I expect to help them make the courts of heaven ring: But when I sing redemption’s story, they will fold their wings, For angels never felt the joys that our salvation brings.”   Holy, Holy is What the Angels Sing by Rev. Johnson Oatman

So, as we teach our children about angels focus on the fact that we can become the children of God.

Until next week,

Rebekah

klink

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.