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

A Blessing for 2015

Image by Jean-Michel Guisiano via Flickr In the Kingdom, there is no waiting. There is only now. The time to be fully awake and fully alive is now. The time to abide in Christ and to live passionately in love is now. The time to live in God’s presence and let God be “all in all” is…

Grieving with the God who Pulled the Trigger?

Lawrence Krauss recently wrote a thought-provoking, soul-searching essay for CNN Opinion entitled, “Why must a nation grieve with God?” Krauss was disturbed by a comment made by President Obama at a memorial service for the victims of the tragedy at Newtown CT.  Commenting on Jesus’ statement to “Let the little children come to me,” Obama opined:…

The Easiest (and Hardest) Spiritual Discipline

The glory of God surrounds you every second of every day. What a profound truth! But most of the time—like a dark cloud blocking the sun—the mental chatter about the past and the future keeps us from seeing it. We are absorbed in the past—with all the regrets and pain—or the future—shaped by both hopes…

The Earth is a Spiritual Battlefield

The early Church Fathers uniformly believed that angels, like humans, were created free and given a sphere of influence and responsibility over creation. As with humans, angels could use this influence for good, as God intended, or they could choose to use it for evil. They understood that this is simply what it means for…

Theology and Imagination

The human brain is by far the most amazing, complex, and mysterious aspect of the physical world. Our brains continually interpret our world, and the way we interpret it is mostly determined by the way aspects of our world trigger our imagination. Our imagination encodes messages and creates feelings, and thus motivates behavior. And most…

Prayer When You’re Anxious

The following is adapted from a prayer exercise that Greg wrote for his book, Present Perfect. If you’re feeling anxious today (or even if you’re not anxious at all) we encourage you to spend a little time with it.  As you read this, remind yourself that the only thing that ultimately matters is that you are submerged…