The word angel ccomes from the Greek word angelos, which means messenger. In the Bible we read of messengers sent by God (Michael and Gabriel, etc.) who brought messages from God to people. Messengers may be divine or human.
Friends are always with you throughout the time you spend on earth. Friends are around when you are struggling in life. Some will pray for you even when you do not know that they are doing so.Those who pray may or may not tell you that they are praying for you. Some may also not pray for you. Some will care and some may not care. But be assured that the ones that God added for you will always care and pray for you even if they are not able to support you physically or financially.
And surely, God will always select some of your friends as angels for you. They are sensitive to God’s promptings and guidance. God uses them as channels to bless you when He provides or grants the answers to your requests. So, do not disregard any of your friends. God may use any to provide His blessings upon you.
Some will want to help but may not have the capacity. And so, not every friend will be able to assist you as you expect. But God will surely make a way for assistance to be available at His appointed time.
You may be the one choosing your friends. But some of them will include the ones whose spirits align with God’s Spirit towards you in areas of your dealings with God. These are the ones God will use when granting your needs in the form of answered prayers. For God does not send assistance (or the answers to our prayer requests) direct from heaven to us. He uses friends (and sometimes, strangers) when granting answers. So, do not lose hope. Do not disregard your friends. And have faith in God.
Some friends feel urged by the Holy Spirit to pray for you. Some will encourage you to continue moving forward when you are overwhelmed by challenges.
Friends are the angels that God uses when He answers our prayers or when He grants our prayer requests. They carry God’s gifts or answers to us.
Friends are with you throughout the years of your struggles. Some share your sadness, sorrows, pains, and also your joys and happiness. They celebrate with you when you achieve your goals. They feel the pains that you feel, and they feel the joy and the happiness you feel.
Every good friend that comes into our lives is chosen by God for good reasons and good purposes.
Friends contributed to what you have been able to achieve. They are the channels or the instruments that God used to help you reach your goal in life. Therefore, we must be grateful for the friends we have. And we must pray for them.
Do not forsake your friend and your father’s friend, and do not go to your brother’s house in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away, (Proverbs 27:10; ESV).
Human friends who stay with you during challenging times are the angels that God, in His wisdom, selected and added to the friends you were making.
While you were getting acquainted with people and making some of them your friends, God was also choosing those He would be using as special channels or as His angels. They are the ones who are always there with you when you do not know how to deal with a situation. They are the ones who are sensitive to God’s promptings and miraculously respond to your needs even when you do not tell them directly to do that. They always respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
My friends have walked with me throughout the years of my struggles in the ministry. They stayed with me in trying times, prayed with me, supported and encouraged me to continue moving forward whenever I was overwhelmed by challenges.
These friends are the angels that God added to the group of friends I made. I cannot, and will not, forsake them.
Without my friends I would not have achieved most of my goals. Therefore, I see them as the angels that God sends to me whenever He answers my prayers.
God does not come down Himself to help us. God helps us through people. And mostly through our friends, though He sometimes uses strangers.
As I look back, I see how God has granted my prayer requests by using friends. Sometimes, when the situation looked so gloomy or frightening that I could not see how I could climb out of the pit, then a friend would stretch forth a helping hand and pull me out of the pit.
Ninety (90) per cent of these assistances happen spontaneously without me telling them myself. God somehow speaks to their hearts, and they know in that instant that I need assistance.
Friends like that are chosen by God for us, and we must do well to keep them very close.
Our union with God, by His Spirit, gives us direct access to God. The individual is connected to God by God’s Spirit. “He that is joined (kollao – to join oneself to, to glue together, etc.,) unto the Lord is one spirit with Him,” (1 Corinthians 6:17). He communicates to the individual through His Spirit. We relate to God and worship Him by the Spirit, (John 4:24; Philippians 3:3). And God gives us dominion (radah, to rule – to dominate) over His creation (Genesis 1:26).
This is not so in other religions. In Christ Jesus, we have a better and direct way to God. The Old Testament covenant contained faults (Hebrews 8:6-9). So, the new was given which made the old obsolete, (Hebrews 8:13).
The Bible advises us to acquaint ourselves with God (Job 22:21). Therefore, cultivate the habit of reading and learning the truth to empower yourself. People who study accumulate knowledge and become enlightened.
The Holy Spirit should have free access to the spirit of the believer. As mentioned earlier, (in Part 1), the human being is a spirit living in the body of flesh. And so, God, in pouring His Spirit upon an individual, is pouring His Spirit upon (into) that individual’s spirit. The human body is, therefore, the temple for both the human spirit and God’s Spirit.
But the person must be open to receiving the Holy Spirit into his or her spirit. Because the Holy Spirit will not force His operation on an individual. The Holy Spirit will work in the person’s spirit if the individual opens and receives the Spirit of God.
Belief (faith) enables us to accept or receive God’s Spirit into our spirit. The 120 disciples first believed, accepted the Holy Spirit, and then prepared themselves as they waited for the actuation of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-5). On the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit fell upon them. The Spirit actuated the Power of God and enabled them to speak in tongues, (Acts 2:1-4).
The Holy Spirit Himself actuates His power in our spirits. But we must first prepare ourselves and allow for the actuation.
Miracles are manifestations of the Power of the Holy Spirit (God). God’s Spirit, working together with your spirit, (1 Corinthians 6:17) makes them happen. God’s Spirit makes them possible because of your faith in Him. As illustrated earlier, the milk transforms the water. The water does not transform itself. The transforming power, in our case, is the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, Paul asserts categorically that if you connect your spirit to God’s Spirit, you become one spirit with God. God, by His Spirit, indwells you, and your spirit and God’s Spirit become one, (1 Corinthians 6:17).
As stated earlier, this is a hard saying. But delving deeper into the Bible enables us to understand this mystery and truth. Remember that even many of the disciples of Jesus could not accept some of His statements.
When we pray, God’s Spirit synchronizes events and our declarations to make realities occur, (Job 22:28). Your desires become realities (Mark 11:24) because God’s Spirit turns them into realities, (John 14:10).
Being co-workers with God, (and his Spirit indwelling us), we must also live holy lives.
The Transformation
We are transformed by the Holy Spirit working in our spirits, as I illustrated earlier using water and milk. Transformation does not automatically happen just because an individual believes. You must first initiate the process by renewing your mind, changing your mental attitude, and allowing your thoughts and actions to align with God’s will, (Romans 12:1-2; Ephesians 4:22). Discard your former behavior or conduct and be not conformed to the world. If you do not yield your body as an instrument of unrighteousness, (Romans 6:13), the Spirit will work with you to reshape your thoughts and perspectives to align with God’s ways.
The desire and the plan start with you, and God directs your steps, (Proverbs 16:9). So, God helps you to complete what you started, if it agrees with God’s will.
If we believe, but do not allow the actuation of the Spirit, the Holy spirit will not actively be involved in our lives or in our spirits in what we do. We will be acting in the flesh and not in the spirit. Though we may not lose our salvation yet. Even though we are God’s spiritual children, if we do not allow for the actuation of the power of the Spirit in our lives, we will be powerless Christians. We may still be God’s children but spiritually powerless. However,we may drift away from God and eventually may lose our salvation. (Detailed discussion on this in Part 3).
We read in Job 22:21-23 that we will know God, and know how we relate to Him, if we acquaint ourselves with Him. For those who know their God are strong and they accomplish great things, (Daniel 11:32).
The Christian is a member of a holy priesthood offering acceptable spiritual sacrifice to God through Jesus Christ, (1 Peter 2:5). The Christian is an instrument or a channel God uses to perform miracles or answer prayers.
God Works Miracles Through Us.
A church in Accra invited me to hold a spiritual revival for them. Three days into the five-day revival service, the leaders of the church told me about a woman who used to be one of their staunch members but backslid because of an unfortunate occurrence.
Her son was critically ill and at the point of death. She ran to her pastor who lived about five kilometers away only to learn that the pastor had traveled to the northern part of the country.
So, she took her dying child to a prophetess who lived close by her pastor’s home. As the prophetess held the boy praying, the child died.
The woman was angry that God had failed her despite her faith in God and all that she had done for God. She did not understand why God would forsake her and let her son die. She vowed not to go to church again. He faith in Jesus and Christianity died.
I explained to her how God had given her the power in the name of Jesus. I made her understand that while she was running and seeking for someone to pray for her son, she could also have used the name of Jesus to pray and Jesus would have saved her son from dying.
I took her through the pages of the Bible and made her know why and how God had not failed her. The Pastor feeds the congregation the Word and prays for them. The individual must take in the Word and digest it to actualize his or her miracles.
Your faith remains dormant or dead if you do not activate it. When a mother feeds her child, and the child eats and digests what the mother feeds him or her, the child will live and grow. If the child does not eat what the mother feeds him or her, the child will not grow well and may even die.
To help actuate the faith of the individual, Jesus would ask, “You believe that I am able to do this?” And they answered, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it unto you,” (Matthew 9:28). In Mark 9:23-28, Jesus said, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes.” The father of the child cried, and said with tears, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” Jesus rebuked the foul spirit and cast it out of the child.
I taught her to actuate faith and actualize miracles. The woman’s faith was restored, and she became a strong believer in Christ again.
While we seek the help of people who are spiritually elevated, we should also know that God is with us and will hear us when we cry to Him, (Jeremiah 33:3). Godhas made it possible for the Christian to call upon Him any time in the name of Jesus Christ, (John 14:13-14).
At the time I was visiting her, she had another son, who was about six years old, also sick. I told her that, though she could seek help from me and others, if she also prayed and exercised her faith, God would answer. I taught her to exercise her faith and pray. Miracles started happening in her life. She became more committed to Jesus and resumed her good works for the church.
One day, her other son went into a crisis and collapsed. The boy collapsed in the same manner as the other one had years earlier. But this time, she determined she was not going to let that son go. She remembered that I said God has given us power in the name of Jesus Christ to help us in times of need. She put her hand on the boy and prayed. Afterwards she rushed the boy to the Hospital.
They took the boy to the emergency ward. The doctor and nurses worked to revive him. But the boy was not responding. Then the doctor and the nurses had to rush to a new emergency.
The woman refused to yield. She went to a corner in the ward, kneeled and prayed to God to let her son live. She told God that she was not ready to let that son go.
She felt a hand touch her shoulder. She turned and saw a nurse telling her the doctor had returned to her son. They were hoping the boy would now respond. She stood up and walked with the nurse to the bed, still praying and asking God for the life of her son.
A while later, the boy responded and moved a little. Eventually, he regained full consciousness and opened his eyes. Some hours later the boy was strong and told the mother he wanted to go home. But the doctor said they had to monitor him for at least a day. The following day the boy was discharged from the hospital and his mother took him home.
The woman, like Jabez, (1 Chronicles 4:9-10) realized that she could change the situation by calling upon God to save her son. She prayed like King Hezekiah prayed and asked God to heal him and reverse the death that God had pronounced upon him. God heard him and granted him fifteen years more to live, (2 Kings 20:1-7). The boy grew up and became a young man.
God has given us the power, in the name of Jesus Christ, to change our situations.
Do not say your church is not spiritual. You are a living stone, adding to other living stones building up into God’s spiritual house. Collectively the members are a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God, through Jesus Christ. If your Church is not spiritual it is because you are not spiritual.
