How to Recognize His Touch

It Began with a Hunger

When you taste the eternal once, nothing else will ever satisfy.

I began to think to myself about how You work—and who knows, perhaps it was You stirring that very reflection within me. I think our readers will find that the closer we become entwined with You, Father, the less the boundaries between us and You seem corporeal. It’s as if the line that was us has vanished, and even the memory of it has begun to fade, becoming misty and nearly impossible to locate. I gave up looking, if I’m honest, a long time ago—having understood that You must increase, and I decrease, that You might be All in All within my own story.

It began with a hunger.

From my earliest recollection, I have had encounters with the supernatural—and I will not be listing those here—but suffice it to say that at four years old, I knew who He was and recognized His voice. The purity of youth, crystalline in its clarity to me then as it is now, perhaps another of Your many blessings, eh Father, has not diminished in forty-five years. Then as now, He spoke with knowing—like a hidden friend inside you, always guiding, always protecting, always offering those quiet impulses: Give freely. Love with abandon. Count no cost. Love as you have been Loved. Desire the Source.

That foundation—my Source, the Father as seen through the perfection of Yeshua, inhabited and animated in the Body of Christ by the Holy Spirit, Ruach HaKodesh—has formed in me an intrinsic yearning and thirst for You. Not the performative faith they sling in church sermons or the veiled gospels I found early on when I dared to ask the elders and leaders of those buildings back then.

The hunger never went away. It was a thing that, once tasted, could never be gone without. Once I had that first sip at five years old, in that 1983 white Camaro, I was done.

You are so beautiful to me—even still.

That single sip You so graciously gifted me, through the laying on of hands and a heart desperately desirous of You, became in me a raging inferno impossible to satisfy save with one thing: You. Your face. Your feet, Beloved.

Let me pour my fake nard on them and use my short hair with all my being to wash them as a virgin once more. It’s “fake” nard only because I am uncertain where to find it after thousands of years. I am a fool for You.

Anyway, I digress. Forgive me, friends—full disclosure, I cannot help but break out in adoration when thinking about Him. You will understand one day too, I hope.

It progressed with learning how to feed that hunger and thirst for You. That was probably the hardest thing to learn. At Sunday services they told me I had to sing, say a few very specific words to Jesus, and then—bang—I was saved. Walk away, you’re done; go do bad stuff and hide it like the rest of us. They sent me away with a pat on the back and a knowing nod that I was “in the club,” but I felt nothing.

They didn’t tell me how to burn for You. They told me my visions and dreams were absurd. They trembled when You used me to reveal their hidden sins and basest behaviors. They did not tell me how to be fed. That’s when You sent a saint named Pastor Brian. He saw my brokenness through the morphine and gave me his personal copy of John Piper’s Desiring God. At last, I had found non-performative faith in written form.

This is what I learned: praise in secret and in the congregation. Praise for the joy of the act itself, with intent and purpose upon the Father. The joy of the Lord is my strength. When I coupled my joy in worshipping Him with no one around—just for the sake of who He is to me—I felt it: that lessening in my heart, my core. Like a weight shifting, resettling lighter than before. It felt like a cathedral’s support pillar being installed at last. It tasted sweeter than honey and more rewarding than fresh morning dew on a desert-parched tongue.

I learned it is about what we do when no one is looking. The change from performative to interactive faith is one of hiddenness. Once that switch is made, the loneliness recedes a little, but not completely. Eternity is the longing all souls yearn for when we are awake enough to realize the precarious position we all find ourselves in.

The Word of God is essential. Read it. Feed your inner flame with kindling. Pray like God is inside your head. Pray like God is next to you.

Spoiler alert: He is.

So it started with a hunger. Then it progressed with feeding that hunger. It continues with constant refinement, constant pressure, constant urges to say or do a certain thing in line with the Word. It becomes so complete that one day you will follow those holy whispers without a second thought—having learned that the Lord is good. Soon, if you practice mindfulness in prayer, your internal thoughts start to mirror the whispers. And when the Word joins them, it becomes a self-sustaining mirrored loop, reinforcing itself continuously.

You will find yourself becoming—as I am only beginning to become—a fountain overflowing with living water. The water will be so pure that anyone who reads or takes a sip of the words as water will have them well up in themselves and bear witness to the Truth.

It is as it shall ever be, Beloved.

The fool of Dust, your Beloved.

To our family, the newly Beloved.