Hebrews 13:1-2 “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Today's episode talks about many examples of when people encountered an angel. Sometimes the angels were sent from Heaven and sometimes the Holy Spirit send regular people like you and me to be an angel to someone else. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Have You Ever Met An Angel?
Hebrews 13:1-2 “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
When I heard this verse this morning on the Big Life podcast is reminded me of a story that a friend of mine told me. One of my friends came on the show to do a witness Wednesday and she was telling me about how she was visited by two angels one day. She did not know they were angels while she was talking to them and she almost didn’t let them in because although they were dressed nicely she was a single mom living alone and you can never be too careful. Something told her to let them in and they sat and talked about Jesus for awhile and then they got up to leave. As they were leaving one of them said thank you for inviting us in and being so hospitable. I think one of them even said, you never know when you could be entertaining an angel. She thought that was a weird thing to say so she closed the door behind them and watched for them to walk away and they didn’t they just vanished. They were there when she closed the door, but then there weren’t there when she looked out the window. There was no where else for them to go.
Another friend told a few angel stories on her Witness Wednesday episode. She was a school bus driver and one time she was driving a field trip full of kids to Boston. She was the second of five buses. Somehow the lead bus took a wrong turn and they ended up on a narrow street and they were doing construction. The first bus drove up to the edge of a ditch and almost went over. She said a prayer that God would help them get out of this safely. She looked out her front window and there was a man in a hard hat directing her on exactly how to get her bus turned around safely. They all got out safely. When she got back to the place they were going she was talking to the other drivers about how amazing the guy in the hard hat was. They said they didn’t see any guy in the hard hat. They saw how she got her bus out and so they did what she did.
Another time she was driving her bus in a snow storm. It was snowing so badly she could hardly see and then her windshield wiper stoped working. She pulled over to the side of the road and just prayed for God to intercede as this was before they had radios or cell phones. Soon after her prayer another bus pulled up behind her. A man got out of that bus climbed on top of her bus and switched the window blades out. They he went back to his bus. When she looked in her rear view mirror the guy and the bus was gone. It just vanished. She assumed it just pulled out ahead of her. When she got back to the bus garage she asked who was driving the bus that pulled in just before her. They said no-one. She was the only bus. God is so good.
These are examples of real angels. Supernatural beings that have been sent here for a mission. There is another kind of angel too and that is you and I. We can be someone’s angel and not even know about it. My mother in law and father in law still talk about how my sister Suzy was their angel one night. Tony & I and his brother and his wife went out to the movies. Leaving our babies with Joanie & Bill to watch. They were both under one, or very close to one. One of them was crying a lot and one of them needed to be changed and yet Joanie couldn’t change the one and console the other at the same time. It felt like chaos and she was not sure what to do and all of the sudden the doorbell rings and it is my sister Suzy. Suzy already had 4 boys of her own at this point and was also number 6 of 11 children in my family. She was well versed at chaos and came right in and changed one baby while calming the other down and she did it all with a smile on her face. She told them it was no problem and she would come over anytime they needed her to. It was something so simple to Suzy, she may not even remember that night and yet it meant the world to Tony’s parents. She was their angel.
When you look back over your life, can you see where God might have put some angel’s in your path? I think if I were to ask my husband he would say that the person that hired him into his job in England was an angel. He was competing for this job against people who had many more years of experience than he did. Yet, when she talked with Tony, she decided he was the right person for that job. She welcomed him into the Mission Support Group with open arms and her and her husband made our family feel so welcome. She was moving just a few months after we got there and so he didn’t get to work for her for very long and yet she made a lasting impression. He will forever be grateful to her giving him a chance right when he needed it the most. That job was probably his favorite job our of all the jobs he had in the military.
Who was there for you when you really needed them? Did you ever have a time when someone said the right thing or did the right thing, just when you needed it most. Did you ever wonder how they knew just what you needed? Did you chalk it up to a coincidence? It is more likely that God sent them because He knows everything we need. I remember one day my neighbor in England said I looked like I needed a hug. I still to this day, over 8 years later, can remember the feel of that hug. I had no idea that was exactly what I needed at that moment, but God did. I just needed to know someone cared and that hug let me know she cared. It let me know I wasn’t alone. It let me know God saw me and that He knew what I needed.
What if you could be that for someone? What if you have been that for someone? What if you said the thing that you wanted to say but didn’t know if you should? What if you did that thing that God put on your heart but you are too afraid to do? I shy away from saying nice things to people. I don’t know why. I guess I worry the reject the compliment or something and I will be embarrassed. That is the enemy telling me lies so that I don’t spread God’s love and joy around. I am getting more and more bold the more I pray for a holy boldness. I want to be able to say all the kind things that come into my head. There are so many who say every unkind thing that comes into their head. What if we were the opposite? What if we said all the kind things? What if, when we get a negative thought, we automatically think of something nice to say instead. What if we all tried to build each other up, even those we don’t agree with, instead of trying to tear them down.
My husband and kids jokingly make fun of me because I am always asking them if that is “build me up” language when they talk to each other. They make fun, and yet think about how different the world would be if we all only used “build me up” language. What if we all got into the mindset that we were only going to spread God’s love. We were only going to say the kind things. Our criticism, our judgement will not change hearts. I know many of us think we have to tell our loved ones when they are making bad choices and yet I don’t know if that is true. Love changes hearts, nagging does not. Jesus changes hearts, not us. We can love our loved ones, we can build up our loved ones, even when they are making bad choices. It doesn’t mean we are supporting those bad choices, it means we are supporting them. Once people feel loved and accepted for who they are they are more open to hearing what you have to say. If we feel judged by someone we don’t listen to what they have to say. Lead with love is what I feel God is telling me over and over again. So, I am going to keep telling you too!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please let each one of us experience the presence of an angel at one time for another. Lord, let each one of us be that experience for someone else at one point or another. Lord, give us the courage to say yes when you call us into that role. Help us say yes, even if we don’t know why we are doing it. Help us make someone else’s prayers come true. Help us to be there for someone when they need us. Help us to do as the verse above says and let mutual love continue and let us show kindness to strangers just as we would our loved ones. Lord, show us how to be your face to all we meet. We love you Lord and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. I want to wish you all a very happy fourth of July! I look forward to bringing you a witness tomorrow. Remember, Jesus loves you and so do I! Have a blessed day!