I don't know much about activating angels, but I can vouch for praying the Word of God. The Holy Spirit taught me to do so, and ever since I've begun to do it, my prayers have been swiftly answered. It's because praying the Word is the same thing as praying God's will, and according to 1 John 5:14-15, if we pray according to God's will, we know we have what we asked of Him.
Forgive me for being self-indulgent and taking this thread a bit off-topic.
I first heard the "Feathers! Feathers! Feathers!" story from my mother, who heard it from a woman in her Bible study. It was sometime between 1962 or 1963 and mid-1965, when we were living in Fremont and then Menlo Park, California.
The way my mother told it, the woman in the story was a friend -- or at least an acquaintance -- of the woman in her Bible study. My impression was of an older woman: the standard "little old lady."
Anyway, this particular little old lady was very firm in her faith, and had always planned that if she was ever threatened in any way, she would quote the verse from Psalm 91: "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust." She firmly believed that verse would protect her from harm.
Well, one day she was walking somewhere, and a man grabbed her purse. She held on tightly. He tried to jerk it away from her. In the midst of the struggle, she opened her mouth to quote her well-known Bible verse -- but to her dismay, the verse had vanished from her memory! All she could remember was that it had something to do with a bird. In desperation she cried out, "Feathers! Feathers! Feathers!"
The would-be purse snatcher stared at the woman in horror. "Lady," he informed her earnestly, "you're crazy."
And then he ran away, leaving her still in possession of her purse ...
and feeling decidedly foolish. But the Lord had indeed protected her -- though not quite as she'd expected!
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I've told this story many times, in different parts of the country, and there are probably one or two of my posts online, as well. This is the first time I've seen it from another source.
