God's not sending angels to watch or guard over people today. Instead, Believers in Jesus Christ have God the Holy Spirit residing inside them.

"Sooner or later it dawns on you that if you're in Christ, Christ is in you and so what do you need an angel for?" says my pastor, Richard Jordan (Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill.), in a study I have on tape. "You're living in an encapsulized environment of God the Holy Spirit."

By illustration, Jordan says to think of a pill capsule. Christ is the seal and we're the granules inside. The Apostle Paul tells us, ". . . Ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise."

"God the Holy Spirit will never dissolve or allow you to escape or anything to get into you," says Jordan. "If you've got God the Holy Ghost as your protector, you've got the identity of being in God the Son, and have the Word of God for instruction, so what do you think an angel is going to do? Oh, he's going to keep you from stumping your toe? Well, doesn't the verse say that's not where your warfare is? It's not in your flesh, it's in your inner man."

Paul writes in II Cor. 10:3, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh."

Because Scripture is to be our sole authority in matters of faith and practice, circumstances are not to be the gauge, even though that's what most Christians end up using to try and determine God's will for their lives.

Preachers will falsely encourage churchgoers, "Read your Bible and then start watching your circumstances because God's going to put road signs out there for you."

As Jordan reasons, "If Scripture is where God reveals His will, then how come He's putting Burma Shave signs out there to tell you things? You already have God's wisdom—it's in the Book. When we believe the Bible's complete, sometimes we understand that doctrinally and yet, practically, we forget the sufficiency that we have in Christ."

Christians are not out on the stage of human history looking for God's will, precisely because God's will is inside us, intended to be lived out through us.

Prayer simply has to do with contemplating what God's Word says about the situations in our lives—our problems, difficulties, temptations, etc.

"Prayer involves going to the Scripture and finding in it the answers to your problems and making the faith application to do what God's Word says so you have victory over them," explains Jordan. "Prayer's not just storming the battlements of heaven and trying to convince God to do something for you He wouldn't otherwise do if you didn't beg Him. I mean, what kind of a God would that be?! Well, it would be the god of the pagans. The god of the heathen. Jesus said they think they will be heard for their much speaking. Beg enough, pray enough, pledge enough, seek enough, put enough coins in the ka-ching machine and pull the handle. Rub the genie enough. That's the pagan idea. That's not the God of the Bible; not in Israel's program or our program."

God intends prayer to be a wonderful feasting and fellowship directly with Him, knowing He loves us and always has our best interest at heart. All He really wants is to have us in His fellowship.