We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Q&A

Are angels involved in answering prayer?

READER: In Daniel 10 we read of an angel telling Daniel that he was delayed from giving him the answer to his prayer because of spiritual warfare going on. My question is, are angels always involved in answering our prayers?

GREG: It’s impossible to answer this question with any degree of certainty. Having said that, it is clear throughout the Bible that, though he is sovereign, God wants to do things in partnership with created beings. As the Trinitarian God is a social God, it makes sense that he would create a world in which everything is “hard-wired,” if you will, to work socially. So while God sometimes operates completely on his own, it seems that most of the time he works to accomplish his will through others. And for this reason, I’m inclined to believe that God often—if not always—responds to prayer by means of angels.

This means, of course, that the response to prayer depends, to some degree, on the effectiveness of the angel, as well as whether or not there is interference from other angels (as in Daniel 10). The extent to which God makes the accomplishing of his will dependent upon created agents—whether human or angelic—is the extent to which it is uncertain that it will actually be accomplished. Even still, God apparently deems a world with free agents who have genuine “say-so” valuable enough to be worth the risk.

This view also helps us make sense of why God seems to respond to prayer so arbitrarily. For example, why does one parent’s prayer for their child to be healed have miraculous results while another parent’s prayer accomplish nothing? Many Christians would say it was simply God’s will to heal one child but not the other, thereby making God appear arbitrary and unloving. Other Christians would say that the first parent must have prayed with more faith than the second, making the second parent responsible for their child’s death! But we should notice that the delay in Daniel’s prayer had nothing to do either with God’s will or Daniel’s faith. It was rather due to angelic interference. When we accept that there is an invisible society of angelic beings that affect the outcome of prayer, we can appreciate why the answer to prayer seems so arbitrary without blaming God or people.

 


Image by OpenSource.com. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr

 

Related Reading

Hearing and Responding to God: Part 7 (Final)

Here’s Greg’s final installment of this series (for real). Today he discusses our default settings when taking action. Do you generally do what is reasonable and seems right unless God says no, or do you wait and not act until you sense that God says yes? Hear what Greg has to say about that. You…

The Spiritual Value of Doing Nothing

It is only when we cease from our striving and rest in the unconditional love of Christ that our soul begins to be nourished and restored. It is only then that we can experience a worth that attaches to our being and not simply our doing. It is only as we experience God’s acceptance of us as we are that…

When Prayers Go Unanswered

Recently Frank Viola published a free e-book where 21 Christian leaders responded to the following question: Why is it that God doesn’t often answer the desperate prayers of His people for deliverance, protection, healing, etc.? You can download the free ebook by clicking here. The following excerpt is Greg’s contribution to this book: _____________________ Two very ill children are…

Analogies For Understanding Prayer

God is all-powerful, which means he owns all the “say-so” there is. But when he decided to populate the creation with free agents, he gave each human various units of “say-so.” [Click here for yesterday’s post on “say-so.”] We each have a certain amount of power to affect what comes to pass by our choices.…

Storming the Gates of Hell

Jesus said: “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” (Mt 16:18) To understand Jesus’ teaching here, there are a few things you should know. First, “Hades” was the standard term for the underworld, which means that Jesus was probably referring to the whole of the Satanic kingdom.…

Reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer

Jesus begins the instruction on prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) by telling his disciples to pray for the Father’s name to be “hallowed,” for his kingdom to come, and for his will to be established on earth as it is in heaven. He is, in effect, telling them to pray for the fulfillment of everything his ministry,…