The greatest gift of prayer is the touch of God. And when God touches you, it is from the inside. No one but God can do that. It is always the touch of immeasurable love. And as the hymn “He Touched Me” says, God’s touch will heal you and make you whole. Truly, God loves you in your totality, even if you do not.
The best evidence of God’s touch is the fruit of the Spirit, which Paul says includes: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). These all come at once in varying degrees, depending on your readiness to accept, embrace, and live out of these fruit.
God prefers to touch you softly, tenderly, like a mother her child or a lover the beloved. And God wants you to become sensitive to God’s touch, without fear, and to trust God’s touch completely, trust that God will never hurt or reject you. God knows as no one else where and when and how you need to be touched, even if you did not realize it until God’s actual touch.
Here is my attempt to describe if not God’s touch, at least its effects on me:
“You have touched me, more gently than the breeze can caress the tenderest new buds in the forests of the dawning day.
You have touched me, with more love than a mother can feel as she glides her fingers across her newborn’s feeling skin.
You have touched me, with more understanding of my frame than lovers can attain in the hungering unions of the night.
When You touched me, You birthed the lover in me, living now for Your touch, Your nearness, Your breath upon me.
When You touched me, You silenced forever the critic, the cynic in me, silenced the little mind building boxcars instead sitting in them with doors open, beholding the moving scenes of a creation greater than logic can imagine, let alone encompass.”
I suggest you pray this: “Lord touch me in whatever way You chose, in whatever way I am ready to receive. Help me to trust Your touch completely, and to remain open to Your love long enough to be gratefully satisfied with Your way with me. AMEN.” Call it the ultimate “trust fall” into God.
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