The Angels Carry Bowls of Incense-Prayers

Now that we’ve looked at angels in the Bible, and specifically in the life of Jesus, I wanted to start sharing a few of my own experiences regarding angels.

I’ve written before about how the Holy Spirit gives me… pictures… impressions…. visions… parables… stories… visually meditating on Scripture verses or stories… whatever you want to call it! He is always willing to share His perspective on me and my day. He loves to show me how He sees me or bring to mind an impression of how Jesus is with me, holding me, carrying me, walking beside me. Sometimes He tells me stories or gives me a picture of what Jesus is doing in my life or somebody else’s. And sometimes those pictures involve Jesus’ angel servants, too.

For example, in a recent season I had the privilege of living with one of my spiritual heroes in a small apartment in a foreign country. I had visited her before, and one of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound of her loud prayers in the Spirit early every morning. My life was forever changed when she laid her hands on me and prayed for me.

However, when you are trying to sleep, a sound is a sound, even when it is one of your favorite sounds in the world. I was on a different sleep schedule, and for a while, I was really struggling because of being woken up by her early prayer time coming through the paper-thin wall between her bedroom and the living room where I slept. And then one day, as I was trying (and failing) to tune out the noise and go back to sleep, I “saw” in one of those vision-story-pictures that the angel Jesus had assigned to take good care of me (Hebrews 1:14; Matthew 18:10) was sitting on the side of my bed, and the angel said:  “She’s praying for you.”

I wanted that to be true, but I wasn’t convinced. I thought my hostess must be praying for the scores of other people she was teaching and discipling and serving every day, not just me! My angel said, “Well, you don’t think her prayers just disappear after she prays them, do you? Don’t you remember in the Bible that the prayers of the saints became incense in bowls in heaven?”

That’s true. In Revelation 5:8, golden bowls of prayer-incense appear in God’s heavenly throne room. But some of the prayers in the heavenly throne room had originated in the bedroom on the other side of the wall. My angel concluded, “That room is full of prayers for you! Here, I’ll send some of my servants to go get some for you.”

The angel sitting on the edge of my bed snapped her angelic fingers and some of the other angels that I was vaguely aware were hanging out in other places around the room jumped to attention as she gave her command to go get the bowl of prayers that had accumulated for me.

Now, when I go from the living room into the bedroom, of course I have to go through the door, but the angels didn’t bother. They just walked right through the wall and disappeared. Then they came back through the wall carrying a big bowl full of good-smelling stuff. My angel dipped her hands into the bowl and started massaging it into my skin. I wondered if some of the prayers had been asking God for me to sleep better! I felt so safe and loved, and I went back to sleep.

Ever after that I usually slept right through my mentor’s prayers, but if I did hear her, I would picture her filling that bowl with prayers for me and the angels applying them to me like lotion and I would feel so happy and go right back to sleep. It was never a problem again.

Sometime later, my heart was hurting for a woman I had met whose parents told her throughout her childhood that they didn’t want her. Now, she knew that Jesus loved her, but in her 50’s, she still cried when she talked about it and struggled with depression. I took out my prayer journal and wrote the prayer to my Abba Father that was on my heart:

“Oh Daddy, this woman suffered SO much rejection for SO long, it looks hopeless to me that she could ever be as healed and whole and strong and happy and healthy as she would have been if her parents had loved and accepted and wanted her and told her so. But they didn’t. They did such horrible things to her heart. And I’m glad if that drove her to You, Lord, but it still affects her. Please do the impossible for her Lord, as only You can.”

And then I also wrote down what I felt Him saying to me in response:

“I am pleased with your prayer. I hear you, and I will answer you. The angels will take the bowl to her and massage it into her hurting heart, I promise.”

Wow! I was so excited that I could picture MY prayers too as emerging from my mouth like a precious substance and pouring into a bowl held by an angel. I too could picture, see, and believe those angels were carrying that bowl of my prayers around the world in an instant, applying them to the people I had prayed for with gentle hands. And that picture made my heart instantly start believing that my prayers actually made a difference in a way that I didn’t believe before.

Who is on your heart to fill a bowl of prayer for? What kind of blessing would you like to send God’s angels to take to them? You have the authority to make a difference in Jesus’ name!