Tag: angels

His Dwelling Place

April 18, 2019 by ChristianHolinessDaily

My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Before God set the earth spinning on her axis / Before He hung the stars up in the sky / Before the angels in heaven sang His praises / It is with mortal man He would reside.

God is perfect; He lacks nothing. Because He is perfect, He never changes. He has never lacked a thing and never will. Never lacking, always perfect, He cannot be lonely. Why, then, craft a family of spirit beings to share the heavenly realm? Why, then, create a physical realm and fill it with weak and pathetic mortal beings?

Since He is perfect, then He is all-knowing, which means He knew that both the spirit beings and the mortal beings would rebel. Why, then, create beings who will rebel?

It was His plan from the beginning of time (which has no beginning) to share His Dwelling Place with His families. He would dwell in heavenly realm with the spirit beings. He would walk in the cool of the day with the mortal beings.

Because God is spirit, He and the spirit beings could pass back and forth from the heavenly realm to the physical world. Because the mortal beings are physical, they could not pass back and forth to the heavenly realm, God made His home both in the heavenly realm and the physical world.

It has always been God’s plan to dwell with us, His creation, imperfect though we be. He and His sprit beings lived with us, mortal beings, in Eden. He visited us on Mt. Sanai. He dwelt in the tabernacle. He sat on the throne in the Temple. He visited Joseph, Daniel, and John in their dreams. He became a mortal being, was born, lived, died, was resurrected, and ascended back into the heavenly realm in His physical body.

Why? Not because He was lonely, but because it was always His plan to have children to love.

Today, His Spirit dwells within the hearts and minds of mortal beings… Us. Because He dwells in us, we know His love.

He inspired 66 perfect books so that we could know Him better. Within those 66 books is the promise that, someday soon, He and the sprit beings and the mortal beings will reside together in a new heaven and a new earth.

For that, I anxiously wait.

Fear Not 365 – For I have come because of you words…

March 8, 2017 by ChristianHolinessDaily Leave a Comment

Little Joe hadn’t seen his dad in some months, a long time for any child, but a lifetime for a kid of six. When the phone rang notifying his mother of his dad’s death, he was devastated. He didn’t really understand death, but He knew enough to realize he would never see his dad again.

The next few days were tough. He was inconsolable, and withdrew into himself. He had three older brothers and a sister at home, but he preferred to be alone. At school, he wouldn’t talk to the other kids. He chose to play alone at the far end of the playground, away from the swings and merry-go-round.

Only the discovery of a box turtle in his back yard seemed to cheer him. He and his brother painted the turtle. Within a few days, though, it had disappeared. A few more days, and they found it dead on the highway in front of their home.

Little Joe hid in back of the house and cried. He prayed. He desperately wanted the turtle to live and couldn’t understand why God wouldn’t bring the turtle back to life. That’s what he thought he was praying for, but he was overwhelmed with emotions.

Now, what happened next may sound insane to some. To others, it may sound like the overactive imagination of a grieving child. To this day, it is as real to Little Joe as the memory of that box turtle or any other childhood memory.

All cried out, Little Joe sat down on the grass and wiped his eyes to see two glowing men. He immediately knew they were angels. They were there, they said, to let him know that his dad was okay. They told him that he would see him again some day.

“What’s your names?” asked Little Joe.

They told him, but he couldn’t pronounce them.

“I’ll just call you Pinky and Bluey,” he said. One Angel glowed with a pinkish hue and the other glowed with a blue.

They laughed. Little Joe had two guardian angels, at least for a while. He is not sure when they stopped visiting, but within a few weeks, winter set in. His grief began to subside. The angels stopped coming around.

The Bible indicates that angels work behind the scenes in this world. They fight battles against demons. They deliver messages. They protect nations. Maybe they comfort children.

The passage in Daniel 10 is one of many examples. In this case, the angel tells Daniel that God had heard his prayers and sent the angel to answer them.

Ask Little Joe, and he will tell you the same thing about Pinky and Bluey.

Fear Not, for God sends angels to watch over His children.

Devotion for 14 August 16 – Angels Watching Over Me

August 14, 2016 by ChristianHolinessDaily Leave a Comment

I like the Apostle Peter. He’s smart as a whip and a simple fisherman. He’s seems fearless but scares easily. He swore to God that he would never turn his back on Jesus, and, that same night, denied Him three times. I like him because he is flawed. He’s human. I can relate.

About 15 years after the resurrection of Christ, Peter is thrown in prison in Jerusalem. Herod is afraid Peter will miraculously escape, and so assigns four squads of soldiers to guard him.

Peter could care less. Whatever happens will happen, so he turns in for the night. Herod was right. Sometime in the middle of the night, an angel is sent by God to deliver Peter, who nearly slept through it. As Luke tells it, the angel had to strike Peter in the side to wake him.

I imagine the angel turning on the lights, whispering his name, nudging his shoulder, and shaking him, before finally, smacking him in the side.

For 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.

– Psalm 91:11

When Peter sat up, his chains fell from his hands.
“Get dressed, and follow me,” says the angel.

“Sure. Whatever,” says Peter with a laugh, believing it to be a dream. It wasn’t until Peter was completely out of the prison, past the guards, and down the street that the angel disappeared and Peter finally came to his senses.

For a split second, he didn’t know what to do. “Wow,” he said. “Christ really did send an angel to free me.” Immediately he ran to the house of John Mark and his mother. This is, more or less, his center of operations. When he arrived, he found a prayer meeting in session. EVERYONE was praying that Peter would be saved from the prison… Everyone but Peter, that is. Peter had not been praying. He had been asleep.

You see, many times, we don’t realize just how deep of a predicament we have fallen. Sometimes, the danger is more real than we can imagine. Often, we don’t pray for ourselves because we don’t quite get it. Thank God for a praying family, and a praying church family.

God knows what we need even before we ask it. It was no accident that the angel was there when Peter needed help. God knew that Peter would sleep through this, for, afterall, he had slept through Christ’s prayer and suffering on the Mount of Olives. Yet, he sent divine help to Peter.

How many times has God sent us divine help when we didn’t even ask. How many times have we had ANGELS watching over us, and we didn’t know it. How often do others lift us up in prayer, when we are totally unaware?

Hmmmm… I wonder…