Commanding Angels Order Printed Copy

Author: Ntando Msomi
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About the Book

"Commanding Angels" is a spiritual guide that explores the role of angels in the lives of believers and offers practical advice on how to connect with and communicate with these celestial beings. It delves into various aspects of angelic presence, protection, and guidance, encouraging readers to cultivate a closer relationship with angels for spiritual growth and peace.

Lilias Trotter

Long before the concept of the 10-40 window was invented or became a popular term in missions circles, a thirty-four-year-old promising artist named Isabella Lilias Trotter (1853–1928) landed in North Africa in 1888 along with two of her friends. They had neither mission agency support nor training but immediately began studying the Arabic language with the intention of sharing the gospel as widely as they could for as long as they could. For the next forty years, this creative, dynamic woman poured out her life, her artistic abilities, and her linguistic skills to make the gospel known amid many difficulties. Her journals tell of her daily experience of desperately depending on the divine resources of the Holy Spirit.[1] “The life of Lilias Trotter challenges the world’s meaning of success, potential, and fulfillment.” The life of Lilias Trotter challenges the world’s meaning of success, potential, and fulfillment. Through Trotter’s art, writings, and life story come glimpses of Christ’s power in the prayers of his child and faithful witness. Her day-by-day, decade-by-decade journals reveal a life characterized by trust in her Savior and inward rest in his power for victory over sin and darkness. Her success should not be measured numerically, but rather in the fact that Lilias succeeded in learning about prayer and love for Muslims. Her life attests to the exceeding value of knowing and preferring Christ above all else. Her personal devotion to Jesus Christ is exemplary and instructive not only for aspiring missionaries but for all who desire to live wholeheartedly for the glory of God. Laying down Her Life Lilias was born into a wealthy Victorian family, and they considered the value of walking humbly before God to be of first importance. A talented artist, she attracted the attention of John Ruskin, the noted Victorian art critic and Oxford lecturer. Some of her paintings and leaves from her sketchbook can be found in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England. In 1874, Lilias attended a six-day convention that emphasized the importance of the daily application of Scripture in her quest for deeper intimacy with God. She experienced a renewed vitality in personal and corporate worship. Her call to wholeheartedly follow Christ in obedience came during a call to prayer. She wrote of this in her journal: “To bear His name with all that is wrapped up in it of fragrance and healing and power, to enter into His eternal purpose, is the calling for which it is well worth counting all things as loss.” [2] From then on, rather than invest her extraordinary life in the things of this world, Lilias was compelled by a strong yearning for her Savior and the world he loves. In radical obedience, she left the promising artistic career that Ruskin offered her and the comforts of England for a life of missionary service in Algeria. “In radical obedience, she left a promising artistic career and the comforts of England for a life of missionary service in Algeria.” Praying with Passion Trotter’s intercession for Algerians provides inspiration to those who desire to see all peoples worship God. She spent lengthy, frequent sessions of retreat in the hills overlooking the city of Algiers. She prayed and turned her eyes on Jesus, his Word, and his revelation in creation. As she watched the broken waves pushed by the heart of the ocean crashing on the shore of the bay, she waited with faith to see “God’s high tide” sweep across the Muslim world. Lilias was a contemporary of the great missionary to Muslims, Samuel Zwemer. She learned much from him about the power of prayer to pierce the veil of darkness shrouding the Muslim hearts and to engage in the spiritual battle for souls of those held captive by the adversary. Her example of perseverance in prayer is an encouragement for those today who are interceding for God’s high tide to fill the earth and sweep away the veil of darkness. The writings of Lilias Trotter recognize the work of the adversary to hold nonbelievers captive through their unbelief and his power to keep the life-giving truth from reaching them. She pled for Christians to ask God to do a new work among “hard-bound peoples and to generate a fire of the Holy Spirit to melt away though icy barriers and set a host free!” [3] Proclaiming God’s Word in Power Courageous and innovative in her witness to the Algerians, Lilias observed and learned to witness effectively to her neighbors. In 1919, Trotter began writing tracts for Nile Mission Press. She assisted a Swedish missionary in translation and editing the gospels of Luke and John in colloquial Arabic, “into a language that the Arab mother could read to her child.”[4] She also wrote stories in parable form that appealed to her audience, and she creatively illustrated them in Eastern style, the results of which gained wide circulation. The story of Lilias Trotter continues to inspire and mobilize those who long to worship around the throne of Christ with all peoples. She laid down her life and talents and allowed Christ to use her in creative and innovative ways. Her life was one of passionate prayer, dependence on God’s overcoming power, and confidence in proclaiming the life-giving Word of God. Her story encourages others to follow in her footsteps and consecrate their life to the “hardest work and the darkest sinners.” [5] Paula Hemphill and her husband, Ken, have shared fifty years of ministry together. The stories of missionary pioneers in North Africa captured Paula’s heart as a young pastor’s wife, calling her to a lifetime of prayer for Muslim peoples. The Hemphills have three married daughters and twelve grandchildren. Endnotes: For more on Lilias Trotter, see Many Beautiful Things: the Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter (Oxvision Films, 2016) or read the excellent biography by Miriam Huffman Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible (Discovery House, 2003). [1] One journal entry later became the inspiration for “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus,” a popular hymn written by Helen H. Lemmel: “Turn your soul’s full vision on Jesus and look and look at Him, and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him and the divine attributes by which God’s saints are made, even in the twentieth century, will lay hold of you.” (I.R. Stewart, The Love that Was Stronger: Lilias Trotter of Algiers (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958), 54.)

you don’t have to get married to be happy

You don’t have to get married to be happy. In fact, until we realize that we don’t have to get married to be happy, we’re really not ready to marry. Disclaimer: I am now happily married. If you’re single, you may be ready to click away, and I can understand why. Too many married people have too much to say about singleness. To be sure, not every married person knows your particular pain and circumstances, but some do. And they may have a perspective on singleness, dating, and marriage that none of your single friends have. I was drunk in love more than once, infatuated in dating, mesmerized by marriage. I started dating in middle school, followed by one long serious relationship after another through high school and college. I thought I would be married by 22, and instead I got married almost a decade later. I said things I wish I could unsay, and crossed boundaries I wish I could go back and rebuild. I’m not some married guy writing to single you. I’m writing to single me. I know him better than I know my wife — his weaknesses, his blind spots, his impatience — and I have so much good news for him. And for you. When I say that you don’t have to be married to be happy, I say that as someone who devoured romance looking desperately for lasting joy — and who knows what it feels like to end up further from it after each breakup. Does Marriage Mean Happiness? One of the greatest hurdles to getting married is our obsession with getting married. We too easily believe the lie that life will never be as good as it could have been if we never get married. The Bible actually says the opposite of that, even though it has many good things to say about marriage. “To be truly happy in marriage, it cannot be the ultimate source of our happiness.” The apostle Paul celebrates singleness over marriage: “I wish that all were as I myself am. . . . To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am” (1 Corinthians 7:7–8). According to him, we don’t ever have to be married to be truly and deeply happy. In fact, marriage may actually threaten the only thing that will make us happy (1 Corinthians 7:32–35). It’s not a command (1 Corinthians 7:6), he says, but counsel from someone who wrote half of the books in the New Testament. Elsewhere, he also celebrates love and marriage as much as anyone in Scripture (Ephesians 5:25–33). But what he wrote about singleness has everything to do with our desires to be married. You don’t have to get married to be happy, but to be truly happy in marriage — and in life — marriage cannot be the ultimate source of your significance or happiness. To be truly happy with a husband or wife, you must be happier in Someone else first. You must be most satisfied in Him. Lonely Hunt for Happiness Romantic love is a heart terrorist unless it is anchored in a higher love. Jesus warns the not-yet-married, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). Whoever loves future husband or wife more than me is not worthy of me. Jesus, why would you pit my love for you against my love for my parents, or my spouse, or my children? Because even the best love here pales in comparison to that love, and any love that competes with our love for him jeopardizes our joy. Elisabeth Elliot writes, “The cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart’s truth. My heart, I knew, would be forever a lonely hunter unless settled ‘where true joys are to be found’” ( Passion and Purity , 41). “The happier you are in God before you are married, the happier you’ll be with someone else when you get married.” Don’t recklessly chase marriage for things you will only fully find in God. Fullness of joy is not found at that altar, and pleasures forevermore are not lying in the marriage bed. No, Scripture sings about a higher love and greater joy, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalms 16:11). A Lamp to My Heart Jesus tells a story about ten women waiting for the bridegroom, each carrying a lamp while they wait (Matthew 25:1). Five brought extra oil to keep their lamps lit, while the other five brought lamps, but no oil. Both sets of lamps burned brightly for a while, but as the bridegroom finally arrived — when the women needed the lamps most — five were left in the dark and out of the marriage feast (Matthew 25:10). The lamps illustrate, among other things, the difference between falling in love and staying in love. It doesn’t take much at all to start a romantic flame, but it is much harder to sustain it through suffering, disappointment, and conflict. The happiest marriages have storehouses of spiritual oil other marriages have never known. Their love isn’t fueled by physical attraction or relational chemistry, but by a mutual affection for and devotion to Christ. The happier you are with God before you’re married, the happier you will be with someone else if and when you’re married. The only people who will make you truly happy in marriage will love Jesus more than you. And the only people whom you will make truly happy in marriage are people you love less than you love Jesus. That’s true for every single person. You Need to Fall in Love You don’t have to get married to be happy, but you do need to fall in love. When Jesus was asked about the most important command in the Bible, he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27). To find the love your soul longs for, you give your heart first to God, not to a husband or wife. The best way to pursue the marriage you want today is to pursue God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Again, Elliot writes, “When obedience to God contradicts what I think will give me pleasure, let me ask myself if I love Him. If I can say yes to that question, can’t I say yes to pleasing Him? Can’t I say yes even if it means a sacrifice? A little quiet reflection will remind me that yes to God always leads in the end to joy. We can absolutely bank on that” ( Passion and Purity , 90). “The best way to pursue the marriage you want today is to pursue God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” Ten thousand years from now, your marriage may be just a sweet, but short sticky note in the massive filing cabinet of our happy marriage with Jesus. On our ten-thousandth anniversary with Christ, how will you think about your earthly marriage? How will you think about your current boyfriend or girlfriend (or crush)? After centuries without any confusion or fear or sadness, how will you reflect on your days of heartache and loneliness here? The painful desires and waiting will still have been very real, but now small and insignificant compared with the perfect, seamless love and happiness we will enjoy forever. Don’t wait to figure out the source of your happiness until you find a husband or wife. Wait to find a spouse until you’ve figured out the true source of happiness. If we knew just how happy Jesus would make us, we would stop looking so desperately for that happiness in a husband or wife. And then we just might be truly happy with that husband or wife one day.