Angel Warriors Respond to Desperate Prayers

Our son’s addiction was quickly making our all-too-common parental denial a non-option. Our heart grieved to see our sensitive, talented, and humorous son become distant, elusive, and peculiar. We no longer knew this boy falling asleep at our dinner table.

We felt powerless and paralyzed as though watching our son drown in quicksand. We were like other parents in this position who can’t bear to see their children hurting. Denial morphs into enabling as we become desperate to fix them. We enable the very behavior we attempt to end and prevent any chance for them to learn from consequences. Addicted to fixing them, we soon don’t know ourselves anymore.

One day, as I combed his room for any clue to what he was using, I discovered a hole in the wallboard inside his closet. I inserted my hand to see what might be inside and sliced my finger on a razor blade. My bleeding finger was no match for my bleeding heart.  

Despair mounted one night with a call from the sheriff’s department. They had followed him and a known drug dealer who had used my son to drive him to pick up drugs in another city (in my car). They were ambushed as they exited the highway. Shaken and crushed, we bailed him out. But that, along with letting him use the car in the first place, was just more enabling.

During this time, my daughter was at college. She was troubled about her brother and asked for prayer for him at her small group. They gathered around her to lay hands on her on his behalf. Afterwards, one of her friends described a vision she experienced as they prayed – angels fighting with swords for him. What comfort and hope that provided as I wondered if my prayers were being heard. 

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 ESV

After years of drug-related incidents and sorrow, we finally gave our son an ultimatum. The addicted will stop at nothing for the next fix, and he had stolen from us. We challenged him to go to a year-long program or we would file charges against him.

No parent wants to risk such tough love. We fear it will backfire and hurt them or they’ll think we don’t love them. But parents must pray for wisdom and consider, how has enabling helped so far? What if we don’t intervene with tough love? Will they be sucked deeper into the quicksand? 

The choice seemed obvious to us as we thought about several kids we knew who had already sunk to their drug-related deaths. The enemy of these kids’ souls is at war to thwart the future God has planned for them.

Our agonizing decision to prosecute our son is what led him back to jail where he entered a Bible program. Later, he was sentenced to a ten-month Christian rehabilitation program (a miracle in itself). 

After my son’s grave, 13-year addiction, I realized the significance of my daughter’s friend’s vision: Unable to find words to pray anymore, I had begun praying scripture, the Sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). God’s powerful words became as swords, which the angels used as weapons to fight for my son.

Before knowing about the vision, my son told his story this way: “While taking one drug after another, angels were around God’s throne pleading for me, ‘Now, God. We have to save him now!’ God repeatedly replied, ‘Wait.’ But as soon as I fell to my knees and asked for God’s help, God declared, ‘It’s go time,’ and my life changed from that moment.”  

I think back to when my older son came home on leave from the Marines around the time his brother’s drug-use was becoming suspicious to us. The tattoo he showed us was no coincidence – an angel with a sword!  

While in rehab our recovering son felt led to go to Bible college. He is now fulfilling his destiny as a pastor and has a beautiful godly wife and adorable son.

I can’t say enough about the victorious power of praying scripture! 

And those angels, they sure know how to fight.

The LORD has made the heavens his throne; from there he rules over everything.

Praise the LORD, you angels, you mighty ones who carry out his plans, listening for each of his commands.

Yes, Praise the LORD, you armies of angels who serve him and do his will!

Praise the LORD, everything he has created, everything in all his kingdom.

Let all that I am praise the LORD. Psalm 103:19-11 NLT

Copyright © 2017 Penny Cooke. Used by permission.

Current teen drug statistics may be obtained from www.teenrehabcenter.org.