Derek Prince - God Wants To Send Us His Angels
This is an excerpt from: Father God
Then Jesus continues, and I love these words and they are familiar and famous to many people: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Oh, those words in Greek are so vivid. All you who are carrying burdens. Who are struggling. Who find it hard going. Who sometimes wonder if you will ever make it through. Jesus says, Come to Me. And I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.
What was His yoke and His burden? To do the Father’s will. It was His relationship with the Father. And He said, If you’re struggling, if you’re perplexed, if you’re anxious, if you’re frustrated, if you’re not satisfied with the way your life is going, come to Me. And I can reveal the Father to you and that will be a life-changing revelation. It will give you a new sense of belonging. It will bring you into true rest. How many of you are really enjoying rest? There’s not much rest in our contemporary culture. You can look there for it in vain. So do you know what rest is? Do you know what it is to relax? There’s only one place you can find rest, in the bosom of the Father. Jesus will reveal Him to you. I can’t do it. I can tell you about it, I can pray for you, but only Jesus can do it.
Now I want to speak briefly about four important results that come from knowing the Father. Number one, it gives you a sense of personal identity. You know who you really are. You see, all through the Bible, every person is identified by his father or her father. You read the genealogies, the father, the son of so-and-so, the son of so-and-so. What gives a person identity is knowing, he's having a father. And even in our English language today, though much has changed, many people’s surnames are the names of their fathers, like Williamson, or Johnson, or Thompson. All they are saying is the son of William, the son of John, the son of Thomas. And we have basically, all around us, an identity-less generation. A generation that has no sense of identity. They’re sometimes called the X Generation.
What does X stand for? The unknown quantity. They don’t know who they are. I believe, myself, if we could transmit them, transmit this to them, there would be a tremendous response. I believe there are millions of young people just milling around, lost, confused, perplexed, because they don’t know the Father. I don’t believe anything will really ever change them sufficiently, until they come to know the Father. So, if you’re here this evening and you don’t really know who you are, you’re a kind of faceless person, a rootless person. You’re not counted anywhere. You don’t have a real identity. You may have an identity that you put on, you can go to the mirror, and put it on with makeup, or in other ways, but it’s not a genuine identity. It comes through the Father. The second thing you have when you know the Father, is a home in heaven. From the day I was saved I always believed that if I continued in the faith, faithful, I would end up in heaven. Heaven was my destination. But I never thought about heaven as my home, until I came to know the Father.
You see, what makes a home a home is a father. After I had this experience I said to Ruth, Ruth, I don’t care whether you put up a tombstone over me after I die or not, but if you do put up a tombstone, I just want you to put two words: GONE HOME. I think of a precious Hawaiian sister that we knew that was there this time when we were in Hawaii. She’d served the Lord faithfully many years. She was dying of cancer and the fellowship she belonged to made sure that there was always a sister by her bed every hour of every day. And she said to people quite often, You know, I’ve never seen an angel. I’d love to see an angel. And then, as she was about to die she sat up in the bed, stretched out her hands, and said: I see them. I see the angels. And the next moment she was gone. The angels had come to take her home. How do you expect to go home? There was a beggar outside a rich man’s door in the time of Jesus. He was called Lazarus. And he was there sick, full of sores. But he was a believer. The dogs came and licked his sores in compassion.
Then it says, It came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. What impressed me was it was not just an angel, it was the angels. I think one strong angel could easily have transported that emaciated frame, but God sent an escort of angels to that poor beggar lying in the street. It says of the rich man, He died, and being in hell he lifted up his eyes… What a different destiny. I am persuaded that God really wants to send angels to His believing sons and daughters. Why should we go home lonely? Why shouldn’t we have an escort? God has got enough angels. I think it’s important the way a person dies.
As a young preacher I was so impressed by the journals of John Wesley. And one day, a report was brought to him that a certain Methodist sister whom he knew had died. And his comment was this, Did she go in glory or only in peace? Which way are you going to go? Only in peace? Or do you think you’re going to have a glorious entry into the Father’s mansion carried there by an escort of angels? See, it makes a difference when you have God as your Father. You have a home. You’re not a stray. You’re not a wanderer. You’re on a pathway that’s leading home.