For He will give His angels charge concerning you, To guard you in all your ways.
Psalm 91:11 (NASB)
Today’s familiar verse came to me in my devotional time yesterday, allbeit indirectly as a cross reference to Charles Spurgeon’s “Morning And Evening.” It occurred to me that we speak and write of many subjects to encourage one another in our daily time with God, but very little is said about angels. I confess that in four years of devotional posts, I have only written twice regarding angels.
Today’s verse is most familiar as being misquoted by Satan to our Lord during His temptation in the wilderness, in the gospel of Matthew 4:6. As he often does, Satan uses this scripture out of context. On reading the whole of Psalm 91 we find that the verse really applies to the faithful children of God, rather than specifically about our Lord. The promise of this verse applies to us today who are faithful to God; what an encouragement!
Now when the attendant of the man of God had risen early and gone out, behold, an army with horses and chariots was circling the city. And his servant said to him, “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” So he answered, “Do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O LORD, I pray, open his eyes that he may see.” And the LORD opened the servant’s eyes and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.
2 Kings 6:15-17
I was reminded of the above story of Elisha and his servant in a town called Dothan, where the forces of the king of Syria had come to seize them. Elisha had been guiding the king of Israel in how to avoid capture/defeat by the king of Syria through God-fearing prayer – the Syrians wanted to put a stop to this. The angelic army was invisible to Elisha’s servant until God opened his eyes – what a sight that must have been. From this story, we learn that generally, we cannot see angels sent by God, but there are exceptions when it is necessary for them to be seen – either to encourage us or to discourage those who would harm us. Let me share two stories from my previous post to illustrate this point.
The first story is about a remote missionary station in Africa, in a province beset by rebellion, violence, and bloodshed. The fighting reached a peak one night around the mission station, but no attack came against the isolated and terrified missionaries. It was sometime after the rebellion had passed that a missionary asked a former rebel why the mission station had not been attacked, “we were afraid of the heavy military guard surrounding your compound” came the reply to the shock of the listening missionary.
The second story is about a young Christian lady who lived in a city, money was tight and she had to walk home from work each night. She prayed often about the danger of the dark streets on the way home. One night in an alley close to home, she saw a man standing in the shadows looking at her. She prayed silently, walking past the man she made it safely home. The next morning, she was shocked to hear on the local news that a young lady had been raped in that alley not long after her being there. She contacted the police and gave a description of the man she had seen, but the police already had him in custody for the crime. In his statement, the rapist mentioned seeing the other girl earlier, but he had left her alone because she had two large bodyguards as an escort, one on each shoulder.
Dear Reader, I pray that this post encourages you in your daily life – there really are angels by your side each day. We can not see them – therefore we should be careful how we treat those kindly strangers that we meet occasionally.
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Hebrews 13:2
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Devotional Treasures
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