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.”

Questioning Everything

1 Tim 1:4 “Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.”

When I was little I was always questioning everything from why the earth was round to why trees grow upward toward the heavens. Yeah, my quizzical mind sought God from the very early breaths of living and to this day I still question God about everything relying not on my own understanding.

Some people are a little uneasy with the winds of change, afraid of being put out of their comfort zone. While others embrace the change and actively pursue answers (not via the net mind you) to all of their questions. Some even pretend to be seeking all the while clinging to what they only think to be true when in reality they never sought the REAL truth.

Pastor Mike said, “God uses you to bring people to Him.” That really hit home since the New Year has brought about change, I can see Him working through my delicate words to reach you, my avid reader. I’m not here to judge you or change you; I’m here to reach you in places you might need to be reached. 

God is not on a lot of people’s minds these days and that is understandably so since they’re consumed in the here and now and not what was and always will be. They’re busy wondering what they’ll wear for the day, what shoes look right with that shirt, what’s happening on the net and there you have it, a world being eaten alive by the internet. 

If I had the power, I would obliterate the communications called the internet for at least a year and watch the world scramble with what to eat or what to wear or maybe be forced to read the newspaper to see what politician is doing what. I almost feel as though I time-warped from another century and was placed here and surely don’t fit in anywhere. This finds me questioning everything.

Yes, I USE the internet and I like the speed of finding answers to my questioning. Yes, I blog but do not allow the net to own me. I don’t carry the world in a palm-sized instrument or feel the need to hold one in my hand and tell the outside world what every second of my day consists of.

My niece, who is sixteen, received a $200 dollar phone for Christmas and just this weekend the phone was stolen while at a friend’s party. My sister’s logic is ‘she HAS to have a phone’, and my logic is WHY??? Why do kids NEED these phones when they’re not mature enough to take care of them or handle them responsibly?

We’re living in a generation of at your fingertip technology and it is being abused in more ways than one. While I would miss it for a year, the kids today could not even function without their phones or the net for a year. I wonder how many honestly could. The generation who never had it all of their lives will say they could function without the net for a year but I wonder, could they really?

I question why some people believe the earth is only 6000 years old while others believe it to be millions of years old. Even with the age of scientific proof we’re still uncertain? Truth at our bloody fingertips, literally tapping out the questions to find the truth and believing the answers we receive? Why hasn’t the TRUTH been revealed within you instead of the endless seeking for truth from outside sources? Because life is and always will be a mystery shrouded in our questioning. That is the secret in a nutshell, you can’t find the answers in the cluttered world of information, the truth is found within you and if you can’t physically touch it or read it in your hand, then it must not be true.

Faith is exactly the same way. You rely on what you feel not what you see or read to know what is the truth. It might only be your truth but you found it from within you not from the stirring confusion in the outside world. While that might not make sense to many, it WILL make sense to a few. We’re all given the talents to use but not all use them. Me, I’m forever questioning everything, seeking and finding. Not in the superficial realm, in the spiritual realm where all questions are answered. 

Go with God and may He be with you all!

Pss. 119:59 “I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies.”

Ghost Stories

1 Cor. 2: 13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

Okay, Dayana Knight opened a can of words for me (as opposed to can of worms?) She was writing/blogging about Ghost Stories and as the paranormal freak that I am, I just had to read her blog and tell just one itsy bitsy story of my own.

Can you believe that there are some folks who’ve never had a paranormal experience in their entire life? Well that’s what they claim anyway, I think they are just non-believers and when the paranormal slaps them upside the head, they wouldn’t know it if it jumped out in lightning bolt form shouting, BOO!

As a writer, it is the paranormal genre that keeps me writing. I try to write about non-fiction inspirational tales, but even hidden in those words are the paranormal Holy Ghost. They say Ghost and Spirit numerous times in the Bible and if it means what I think it means, Spiritual happenings even produced by the Holy One, is a paranormal event in Grand Spectrum form.

Paranormal is the realm that we read about, the stories that we talk about, the words that we write about, and apparently the spine-tingling factors behind interest in a Ghost Blog. A Ghost Blog? No friends, this won’t become a Ghost Blog, this is a writing blog and as such, the paranormal is going to come up eventually.

Paranormal is defined by Webster as: ie: of or pertaining to the claimed occurrence of an event or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other purportedly supernatural phenomena.

Supernatural phenomena. That is what this crazy world has built up, and released into the cosmos and minds, fertile minds, link onto it; or the spirit world links on to us as they sense we’re an open door to releasing the energy.

I remember when I first got a computer and it (the living entity called a computer) asked me for a SCREEN NAME. I had many, but most were of the nature, IMNOPEN DOOR, MYMINDSEYE, anything that had people wondering, “Where the heck did this thing come from.” haha. I’ve been called weird, quirky, strange and onto the more colorful synonyms, loony, whacky, cuckoo,demented, deranged, but my favorite, TOUCHED.

Ephesians 1: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

Yes I’m touched. I know by the Grace of God, His hand has touched me and on a level few comprehend.

I came from the realm you wish you knew, want to know, and are afraid to embrace! I am your fantasy, I am your dream but most of all, I am your worst nightmare. But first and foremost... I AM a WRITER! Keep that in mind. *wink*

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.