Whenever the Bible records a person’s meeting an angel of God, they typically have the same response. They are terrified! The first words out of the angel’s mouth are usually, “Peace! Don’t be afraid!” Why? It is because it is a fearful thing to be in the presence of a heavenly angel. It is far more unsettling to enter the presence of almighty God.<\/p>\n
Interestingly, even after the angel burned up the offering with fire, the biblical writer did not assume it would be obvious to Gideon he was standing in a holy place. Gideon still had to “perceive” he was in God’s presence.<\/p>\n
Sadly we often do not perceive when we are in the divine presence. People often pray: “God be with us!” This is not because God is not<\/em> with them, but because they do not perceive<\/em> how very present He actually is.<\/p>\n How can you tell which people at your church recognize God’s presence in their midst? They are the ones with a holy trembling. They are the worshipers who come away from the encounter changed.<\/p>\n How are you leaving your place of worship? Do you recognize the heavenly realities taking place all around you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Now Gideon perceived that he was the Angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.” Then the Lord said to him, “Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die.” Judges 6:22-23<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotionals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5830"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13985,"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5830\/revisions\/13985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackabyleadership.org\/app\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}