Table of Contents Dedication Acknowledgments Introduction Part One 1. The Touch of God 2. Growing Up 3. Cemetery--Oops! I Mean Seminary! 4. A Jealous God Part Two 5. The Facts as We Know Them 6. "Meet Me Tonight" 7. "I Will Ask Her Tonight" 8. "I Have a Surprise" 9. "I Am Furious!" 10. A Man of Sorrows 11. The Mystery Is His Story 12. Hope for the Future
Excerpt:	Chapter 1 He Touched Me! Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Genesis 2:7 We begin the story with the beginning of man. The Bible tells us clearly that God created man for His glory (Isaiah 43:7) and that "all things have been created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16). There is no doubt that He created man out of love. God, the all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-at-once God who sits high and looks low (Psalm 33:13-15), created everything by the power of His words alone. We read in Psalm 33:6, "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host." Unlike man, who has to create with building materials, God created all that exists out of absolutely nothing. For man there must be some kind of raw substance from which things are made. But when God creates, He simply speaks things into existence. He speaks, and atoms are created, and at the same time those atoms are blended together with other atoms to form molecules. Those molecules are bonded to other molecules to form components that are the building blocks of life. Everything that exists contains these components. The wonder of God¿s creation is that He can speak and the resulting creation is without error the first time, every time. He needs no structural engineer to approve His design. He doesn¿t consult a designer to discover whether blue and green are compatible colors. He speaks, and the wonder of creation appears. He speaks, and a brown cow begins to eat green grass and give white milk. He speaks, and there is water to drink. This odorless and tasteless liquid is consumed and reported to be good, for everything that God created is good. (See Genesis 1:31.) All of God¿s creation except humanity owes its existence to this phenomenon of the creative spoken word of God. Human beings are not the products of God¿s spoken word. God radically departed from His previous method of creation when He decided to make people. When God decided to make man, He did so not only as an artist but also as a passionate lover. I imagine Him taking on a visible form, perhaps like His appearances in the Old Testament, His theophanies, when He appeared to people as a man or as "the angel of the Lord." I see Him stepping on the earth that He had created and bending over some dirt. He could have, in a nanosecond, spoken a man-form into existence. He had spoken giraffes, aardvarks, and orangutans into existence in a moment, but this would be a different process of creation. I imagine God using His hands like a sculptor to form man out of the dust of the ground. Reading the biblical account, one can almost feel the tender care with which He fashioned the human body. Carefully molding the head, placing eye sockets forward in the skull, He ensured that this creature would have three-dimensional sight. God most likely thought, "I want him to see Me, face to face. He will not only know by sight that something is out there, he will also be able to know the depth and distance of that something just by looking." Notice the order of God¿s creation. He made the majestic mountains, the lush valleys, the sparkling rivers, and the cascading waterfalls before He made man. He created graceful birds of the air and powerful beasts of the field before He made man. God did so because He wanted man to be impressed and to say so. It was and is a dazzling display of design. God fashioned ears designed to capture distinct sounds from the air. These ears can distinguish between the vibrations of melody and danger. One can imagine God thinking, "I want him to hear the sound of My voice. The symphony of sound produced by My birds and other animals will be for his enjoyment. He will hear and bless Me for it." God created a brain for man. This is not simply a network of nerve endings, but a complex computer capable of performing extraordinary tasks. The power to conceive, to develop procedures, to have independent thought, to reason, to solve problems, to analyze, to express ideas, and to invent things was invested in this brain. No other earthly creature has this capability. Everything else God made is compelled to praise Him in one way or another. God programmed everything except man to produce certain responses,it was part of His design. God gave to humanity the ability to have contrary thoughts. Human beings can think thoughts and express ideas that may or may not glorify their Creator. Why? Because God wanted love! What a thought! God, who is self-sufficient, all-knowing, and everywhere at once, wants love? Being loved is the essence of life. It is the purest gift anyone can give another individual. God knew it and wanted it. It is easy for the animals, the wind, the waves, and the atmosphere to obey God. No other alternatives exist for them. But man can bless God or curse Him, honor Him or blaspheme Him, adore Him or despise Him; and he can live to tell the story. Was this a flaw in God¿s design? No! It was a display of His passion for love. God was willing to risk the pain of rejection for the pleasure of real love. Love cannot come to those who are unwilling to be hurt. The expression of real love cannot be forced; it must be freely given. You cannot make a person love you and speak soothing words of devotion. You can force people to recite a script or to repeat phrases, but that is not love. It cannot move God emotionally to hear a dog bark when He knows that the dog is doing what its nature requires. But when a person, equipped to discover, analyze, evaluate, and decide, reaches out for God as though reaching for a father and says to God, "I love you," that moves God. It was the thought of having someone to appreciate Him for who He is and what He does that caused God to create man in the first place. The most impressive expression of God¿s love while forming man came at the end. It was when He gave life to the man He had formed. The hand of God molded and fashioned the body of that first man. I imagine that, as His hands went over the skeletal form, they caused skin to fall into place. When God finished, He undoubtedly paused to look at His creation. It was flawless in design and unique in its features, but it was lifeless. Then He did something so awesome that the angels must have taken note. The Scriptures report that God made man in His image and after His likeness and breathed into man the breath of life. How did He do it? Theologians believe that God lay out on that sculptured clay model, eye to eye, mouth to mouth, chest to chest, legs to legs, almost as if to make a copy of Himself. He covered the still body of man and blew into him the breath of life. When that man opened his eyes to life, the first thing he beheld was God. Imagine waking up and seeing God before your eyes! With that one act, the great God of heaven demonstrated His special love for man. The love of God abides with us even now because of the Holy Spirit. It has never been the attitude of God to be distant, cold, or uncaring, not to us. One of the best gifts love brings is the act of touching. It is sometimes called caressing or stroking. A touch speaks without words. A touch from God tells us that He cannot be far if He can touch us. Sometimes a baby cries, not because of hunger or distress, but because of the need to be held. Young children will run up to their parents with uplifted hands, reaching for them. They are saying, essentially, "Pick me up and hold me. I feel safe in your arms." God loves us so much that His creative, soothing hands still touch us in all our situations. He wants us to reach for Him, to cry until He picks us up. He doesn¿t merely speak life to us; He breathes it into every fiber of our beings. He comforts and reassures us by His touch. In a word, He is there for us. Consider one of the Bible stories of people with leprosy coming to the Master. We find the story in the eighth chapter of Matthew: And when [Jesus] had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, a leper came to Him, and bowed down to Him, saying, "Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean." And He stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, "I am willing; be cleansed." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:1-3) Most of the time when Jesus would heal, He did so by speaking to the condition. But when the man with leprosy came to Him, Jesus did not simply speak healing to him. Instead, Jesus touched him. This is an intense example of love, because leprosy is a highly contagious and incurable disease. Even today, lepers in many countries have to keep away from the general population. In the days of Christ, lepers were required to announce their arrival when they did come around other people. This would give people an opportunity to keep their distance. Contracting leprosy is like having a death sentence handed to you physically and emotionally. Jesus showed His love to the leper in Matthew 8 not only by healing him, but also by saying with His touch, "Your condition is not too bad for Me." Jesus was saying, "I love you enough to risk contracting what you have in order to give you what I have. I love you enough to care about your feelings and to cover your shame." This is real love. When that healed leper left his encounter with Jesus and was asked what happened, he must have replied, "He touched me." God¿s Personal Involvement Sprinkled throughout the Scriptures are examples of this kind of personal involvement on the part of God. Such an example of His touch of love is found in the story of the Shunammite woman. (See 2 Kings 4:8-37.) The Shunammite was a woman of some prominence in her community. Known and respected where business was conducted in the city, she still had something missing in her life that made it incomplete: she was childless. This was a terrible disgrace for women during her time. She made the best of it, though, by busying herself with the family business and church work. Her faithfulness was rewarded with a promise from God, given through the prophet Elisha: "You shall have a son." (See verse 16.) Could she truly have joy after all these years of disappointment? Could she now hold her head high and give a gift to her husband? She had accepted her condition; she had not asked for a son. But God¿s love is so precious. He considers all of our needs. He gave her what she wanted but would not ask for. And just as God had promised, she gave birth to a son. The Bible offers no information about the child until he was almost grown. One day he was working in the field with his father. It was an ordinary day. Suddenly, without warning, the boy began to complain of a pain in his head. The father ordered another boy to carry the son home. The son was brought to his mother, but it was only a few hours before he died on his mother¿s lap. One can easily imagine the mother crying out, "How could this happen? Lord, You promised me this child. Now my son has preceded me to the grave. What do we do now? This is horrible!" The boy represented the hope and future of her family. He was the source of their joy. Now, like a cruel joke, his life was snuffed out. To have what you have always hoped for taken away is much harder to deal with than never having it at all. How many times in our experiences have we faced bewildering situations that shook our foundations? We wondered, "Could life be any more difficult?" Yes, death makes life more difficult. Nothing is more final than death; unless love stands in the way. The Shunammite woman knew that real love would find a way. When the boy died on her lap, she put the lifeless child in the room that had been prepared for Elisha. She then went searching for the prophet. When she found him, she fell at his feet and reminded him that he had promised her a son. He promised her before she had asked, and now she needed his help. Elisha, who in this story represents the care of God, first sent his servant, Gehazi, to deal with the situation. Gehazi came back and reported that he was unsuccessful. Then Elisha went to her house. He found the boy in the room reserved for him. While praying to God, Elisha lay on that child and covered him from head to toe. Life came back into that boy¿s body. He was restored to his family. Love found a way. The first lesson to be learned from this story is that God will go to great lengths to show His love. There are some situations in our lives in which a word from God will suffice. Then there are times when we need Him to lay all over our situations. We need His personal involvement, His touch; we need the hand of the Lord upon us. Secondly, this story teaches us that if death cannot stop the love of God, our other problems are not too great, either. If the love of God can bring life out of death, His love can also bring joy out of sorrow, peace out of confusion, and laughter out of sadness. If death cannot stop God, then a wayward child, a financial mountain, a confused mind, or a hopeless cause cannot stop Him. Reach for Him, and you, too, will be able to say, "He touched me." As a foundation for this book, we have seen how God created man and loves him in a passionate way. We have seen how God touches man at his point of need. The greatest manifestation of God¿s love and personal commitment to us is Christ coming to the earth to live and to suffer and die for us. It is His incredible love in dying for us that is the main focus of this book. In the following pages, we will explore the depths of this love. A PRAYER Dear Lord, I pray for the precious soul who reads this chapter. Maybe he, too, is looking for love and needs a touch from you. Maybe his situation seems hopeless or his condition untouchable. But I know, Lord, that You care for him and love him. Touch him now. Let Your hands of compassion soothe him right where he is. Lay Yourself upon his problems if You have to. Most of all let him rest in Your love. In Jesus¿ name I pray. Let it be so.
Blurb:	Using a unique blend of personal experiences, reflections on human love, and allegorical drama, author Clifford Frazier delves deeply into the mystery of God's love for His wayward people. Frazier's captivating story of a jealous lover and his bride portrays the immense love Christ has for us and His ultimate self-sacrifice so that we may be forgiven and live with Him forever. In these fascinating pages, you will come to know Jesus as the great Love of your life. Your relationship with God can start to be much closer right now as you enter into His promised peace and joy.

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