Touch the Spirit

“‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’” Genesis 16:13b (NIV)

Touching the Spirit 

Well, it seems to me I’m an odd one. Why not when I think I can touch the Spirit. What you say? We’re used to just basing our faith on things unseen but what is this touching the Spirit?

My dear friend said: “We can lay our hands on spaceships, and books, iPods and plastic bottles, and we cannot touch a Spirit. HE can touch us, but we cannot touch HIM. So there's always that point of disconnect. Always that feeling of being out of step because the God we trust on we cannot touch with our hands, see with our eyes, hear with our ears.”

Gosh, when I read that my mind went exploring! It drifted off to the time I DID touch Him. I touch Him often and I assumed everyone else did also. I know after you read what I say you’ll say, Oh that, that’s not the same. It is very real to me. It is what makes me an oddball in the crowd. It makes me the crimson in a sea of yellow. 

Just so you know, while I can physically touch an iPod, I never have, the same goes for a spaceship, but my heavenly Father, oh yes, I’ve touched Him; my fingers brushed his robe, my hand held his hand, my arms wrapped around Him in an embrace but in Spirit form, it is like hugging liquid.

Ezekiel 1:26-28 “Now above the expanse that was over their heads there was something resembling a throne, like lapis lazuli in appearance; and on that which resembled a throne, high up, was a figure with the appearance of a man. Then I noticed from the appearance of His loins and upward something like glowing metal that looked like fire all around within it, and from the appearance of His loins and downward I saw something like fire; and there was a radiance around Him. As the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the surrounding radiance Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD And when I saw it, I fell on my face and heard a voice speaking.”

I think maybe first you need to understand who and what He is. God is Spirit not a man, not sitting up on the puffy white clouds. God is not hiding from us in the shadows, He is in plain view for all of the world to see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. When you stop seeing Him as ‘up there' sitting on a majestic throne in the icy sky maybe then you can intimately feel that He is within, without, He IS dwelling in every living thing. 

Psalm 139:7-12

"Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, "Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night," Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day Darkness and light are alike to You."

I think what makes me an oddball is that I believe and always have known I have more than five senses. Yeah, that just makes me weird that way. I think when you’ve died twice and then came back to wander among the human species you feel just like the astronaut who has been taken into space then brought back here to live out the duration of your life on earth, except one thing, when you die, you touch the Spirit realm.

When you touch a point of light and it streams through your fingers like liquid in your hand, or when you listen to music and it vibrates through your body like an electrical current surging through you, it is at those moments that spirit is passing through you. 

Take this statement as an example, “He can touch us but we can’t touch Him.” I mean no offense but that doesn’t make sense to me because my reality tells me otherwise. What is touch? Is it a physical, material object?

Acts 17:27-28 “that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.'”

When my mother hugs me, I feel her love wash over me like a waterfall. I live well over a thousand miles away and I can still feel her hug in her voice, I can still feel that love spray over me. It’s no longer physical but I can feel her and know she is there. God is no different in that aspect, He can seem far away but still be within me.

1 Corinthians 3:16 “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

As assuredly as I can touch my arm, run my fingers through my hair, softly scan my face with my fingertips, I can feel Him there. God becomes physical when I allow my very fingertips to caress any material object that He created.

1 John 2:16 ESV “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

The soil in my garden is dry and sandy. I tried many years to grow plants, veggies, food, but rarely did I get anything from my crop. I couldn’t afford to put rich soil in the ground, or fertilizers, so I had to trust the land to provide beauty for me because if the earth doesn’t provide then there is no need to plant. This year I threw my hands in the air and said I’m not planting and whatever comes up will have to be provided by God himself and I will tend the garden when it shows up. As you can see below, God showed up!

You’ll say when I tell you that my annuals come back year after year it’s because of seed drop the year before and you’d be right but still, my annuals sprouted from the ground and put on a display of beauty that I had no hand in except the watering of the garden. God touches us in the most mysterious of ways. The same can be said for us, we TOUCH Him in mysterious ways also but it is still TOUCH! 

When I stroke a leaf, I feel the swell of life surfing through my blood and I connect on levels most would never understand. The veins of a leaf are not much different than the very DNA flowing through the cells of my body. It is the sustenance of LIFE.

I think the problems with people are that they disconnect from God. They don’t see, hear and feel Him in everything. They place Him in a book, they shape Him into molds, and they form Him out of clay. He becomes a material when that was never His intention in ways to be among us. He is a spirit that dwells in us, the temple. When He looks at us, He doesn’t see us from afar, He isn’t out there in the world swirling clouds to make storms strike the earth because we were bad.

Storms form because of man's inability to restrain himself from filling the skies and land with toxins that create a mess in the atmosphere and a terrible storm is in essence, the clouds letting off backed up emissions, to put it simply, the clouds burp! 

2 Chronicles 16:9

"For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His. You have acted foolishly in this. Indeed, from now on you will surely have wars."

Zephaniah 3:17

"The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

When someone says to me that I cannot touch God, there is no way to humanly kiss the Spirit, I have to digress. Contact is in different forms not just by handling. That’s like saying a man with no arms can’t paint a portrait, I’ve seen it done. I wasn’t there for the act but I’ve witnessed the fact. I challenge each of you today to look for the Spirit WITHIN and embrace what has been there all along. He has never left you for one nano second so don't ever give up on Him. Seek and you will find.

Isaiah 52:10 “The LORD has bared His holy arm In the sight of all the nations, That all the ends of the earth may see The salvation of our God.”

Quotation Saturday ~ Communication

Rom. 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

CYBER

“The problem with making a virtual world of oneself is akin to the problem with projecting ourselves onto a cyberworld: there’s no end of virtual spaces in which to seek stimulation, but their very endlessness, the perpetual stimulation without satisfaction, becomes imprisoning.”
~ Jonathan Franzen

“The separation between the cyber and the physical worlds was disappearing. Cyberbullying was just bullying, and cyberwar was just war - the true age of cyber began when we started removing it as a descriptor.”
~ Matthew Mather

“In this world where I sit at my desk writing these words, people die, they pass on, people are mortal. In the cyber world we inhabit they do not.”
~ Aysha Taryam

“I have to remember, the way we were is the way we are no more.”

~ Joni Zipp

COMMUNICATION

“You can talk with someone for years, everyday, and still, it won't mean as much as what you can have when you sit in front of someone, not saying a word, yet you feel that person with your heart, you feel like you have known the person for forever.... connections are made with the heart, not the tongue.”
~ C. JoyBell C.

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”
~ Hermann Hesse

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
~ Fred Rogers

“What’s not so great is that all this technology is destroying our social skills. Not only have we given up on writing letters to each other, we barely even talk to each other. People have become so accustomed to texting that they’re actually startled when the phone rings. It’s like we suddenly all have Batphones. If it rings, there must be danger.
Now we answer, “What happened? Is someone tied up in the old sawmill?”
“No, it’s Becky. I just called to say hi.”
“Well you scared me half to death. You can’t just pick up the phone and try to talk to me like that. Don’t the tips of your fingers work?”
~ Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding

SOCIALIZE

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions."
(Essay to Leo Baeck, 1953)”
~ Albert Einstein

“Why play, lounge or labour in a social wasteland? It's toxicity is contagious, and no respecter of persons. Fall back!”
~ T.F. Hodge

“I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien

“A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.”
~ Criss Jami

DISCONNECT

“I was already at one remove before the Internet came along. I need another remove? Now I have to spend the time that I'm not doing the thing they're doing reading about them doing it? Streaming the clips of them doing it, commenting on how lucky they are to be doing all those things, liking and digging and bookmarking and posting and tweeting all those things, and feeling more disconnected than ever? Where does this idea of greater connection come from? I've never in my life felt more disconnected. It's like how the rich get richer. The connected get more connected while the disconnected get more disconnected. No thanks man, I can't do it. The world was a sufficient trial, Betsy, before Facebook.”
~ Joshua Ferris

“Disconnect yourself from people who cannot add five to your ten words, because, sooner or later, you won't be able to say even a word.”
~ Michael Bassey Johnson

“It seems perverse that we can be more social than anyone would have thought possible when we are at our most anti-social, locked away from the world and silently staring at a computer screen, but that, as psychologists will tell you is the way we operate. When we are at the maximum of our disconnect we also are ready to connect and feel the need for interaction.”
~ David Amerland

“The worlds within and without the Veil of Color are changing, and changing rapidly, but not at the same rate, not in the same way; and this must produce a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment. Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretence or revolt, to hypocrisy or radicalism.”
~ W.E.B. Du Bois