Seeing angels visit youth group
This week, midweek evening youth group services started up for a church plant that my family is a part of. We had several teens there. An interesting thing happened during the evening... someone reported seeing angels in the room.After the talk, we broke into small group into small groups to discuss the topic. Afterwards, the teens reconvened for some worship and ministry time. "Ministry" time is when we listen to the Holy Spirit and then try to pray for people based on what we think the Holy Spirit is saying (if you're not familiar with the concept, it's not as weird as it sounds. It's pretty low-key).Anyway, during the worship time, I was in the front with some 6th grade boys. After the first song, before the second song, one of the boys came to me, wide-eyed.He said, "I looked at the drum cage, and in the (glass) reflection, I saw a man in the back. A big man." Note, it was a darkened room. We didn't have the stage lights on, and the drum cage wasn't in use (we had music playing through an mp3 player).I knew there wasn't anyone back there, so I asked him, "Is he still there?""Yes.""What does he look like?" I suspected if I looked, I wouldn't see anyone.He glanced back by the doors in the back of the room, and said, "He is tall. Big..." The music muffled something else he said, but then he added louder, "And has this light outlining him."I said, "He's just an angel watching over us. It's ok."He looked at me, and smiled briefly. I turned my attention back to worship. It turned into a really special, quiet, and intimate night with the Holy Spirit.Later, we stood in a circle, and asked the Holy Spirit to give us some direction. This 6th grader again was looking towards the back of the room, and kind of around the room, a little franticly. One of this friends said, "He is seeing guardian angels!"I looked over at Evangeline, who was in the circle, whom I know is a seer, and who has posted here. I asked, "Is there an angel back there?"She has these big eyes, and sort of nodded, and smiled slightly. "A few of them," she added softly. I nodded, reassured, and told the 6th grader it was ok, and to engage the Holy Spirit. He and the boys quieted down.Much later, after the service had ended, I asked Evangeline about what she saw. These sights are so normal for her, she has a hard time explaining them to nonseers. It's like if you were in a forest, and later someone asked you to describe what you saw. "Well, I mean, there were trees."Anyway, she said she had a nervous feeling kind of the entire night about a dark presence entering the building to cause harm. Then she saw a large angel come in to stand guard. She said, "There were other angels in the room, but this one was impressive. I kept thinking, 'wow, you're pretty.'" Recognizing that we were guarded from evil presences, she was put at ease and she engaged with what God was doing.This illustrates why seers are valuable to any body of people engaging in something spiritual. It also illustrates why young people who are seers need training in what they see. I spoke with the 6th grader's dad about it later. He said sometimes it's hard to take what his son says he sees seriously (because he's a bit of a goof ball), but enough odd things have happened that he believes he can see spirits from time to time. He admitted his son needs training on how to express what he is seeing appropriately.I admit when he first mentioned the dark image in the back of the room, I wondered if it was a demon. I felt in my spirit that the presence of God (love, peace, and truth) was so strong there, it seemed unlikely an evil spirit could have invaded, even just to observe. That is why I said it was an angel. To have it confirmed by Evangeline was pretty awesome. I wish I would have actually looked to see if my spirit eyes would have picked up on it now.