My Testimony

God Touched Me: My Personal Encounters with Jesus

Jesus came to save those who are lost. Many find him in times of struggle or in lonely places. It was no different for me.

One of my first profound encounter with Jesus physically came during my late teens, a period marked by intense searching.

During this time I felt very autistic and I felt as if everything around me was communicating the reality of God to me in an almost supernatural way. 

Normal voices on the radio had depth in meaning, whispers in nature – it all felt like an underlying thread of something greater was trying to get my on Him. 

In the midst of this time where God’s voice was like a waterfall, I found solace in the Word of God and stillness, seeking clarity and comfort.

Desperate to communicate with God in a tangible way, I went to hear the word of God at church.

On one particular day attending a mid week service, I was met with a cold reception. 

Dressed in sweats, and very unkept I overheard two women behind me, despising my presence. Their words stung, hateful, demonic, deepening my autistic feelings and sense of alienation. 

I began to cry my head in my hands I just started to weep.

It was then that I felt a hand on my shoulder. The touch was gentle, the words that followed were sweet yet very masculine, peaceful and comforting: “They said the same thing to the guy I healed.”

I had flashes of memory about a blind man being healed by Jesus and told he wasn't welcome in the Jewish Synagogue.

John 9:34-35:

"They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us?

And they cast him out.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out;

and when he had found him,

he said unto him,

Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"

In that moment, the words were so sweet and kind and I was crying so hard I didn't realize what the speaker said, you see I thought it was my dad offering comfort.

He was a distance away from me and I just thought he had walked over and was consoling me. 

But then during the sermon, the pastor said something unusual, "Some of you are seeing and hearing things others aren't."

Jesus was near and I missed it in the moment. I even missed it when the pastor told me.

Later I thanked my dad for putting his hand on me and the comforting prayer.

But he said no one came near me and as I reflected on His words, their otherworldly unusual quality became apparent. 

It was then I realized that I had encountered Jesus Himself.

This revelation of Jesus Christ was my first profound encounter with Jesus, a moment that reassured me of His physical presence in my life.

But life goes on and so as I grew in God and so did my struggles in the flesh. 

Many battle the shame of doing things they know they shouldn’t and walk around in condemnation. Feeling just icky and wrong inside.

My second encounter with Jesus came during an even darker chapter of my life.

Entrenched in the shame and guilt accompanied by a pornography addiction, I felt lost and unworthy of acceptance or love. 

My faith in God’s love for me wavered, and I even began to question my identity as a Christian, ultimately I wondered about my own salvation. 

One night, in the depths of despair, I cried out to God from my bed, “I don’t know if I am a Christian anymore and I need to know. I need to know like Dad knows. I need to know my name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

My father’s testimony and radical conversion experience had always been a beacon of hope for me. 

My dad as a teen was a drug addict, his deliverance from the behavior or desire to take drugs, demonic spirits of paranoia fear and suicide, coupled with his personal encounter with Jesus the God man was nothing short of miraculous. 

The way he has described it was being knocked across the room crumpled on the floor, and a youth pastor inviting him to pray a prayer.

My dad thought, "Oh no not the prayer.", You see my dad had prayed the prayer before.

It goes something like this: Jesus - Jesus. Come into my heart- Come into my heart. I believe you died and rose again. - I believe you died and rose again

You see my dad had prayed that prayer before with a few people and it kinda helped.

He felt a little peace during the prayer but the peace never landed in his heart.

That is why my dad found himself calling on Jesus with all his being and boldly cried out, "JESUS!"

That is when something special happened he said a light came from heaven down in front of him and he said, "I want it."

After which he was carried up into a river of light which he floated down three times.

He said it was like angles were carrying him and then he had a vision.

He got to see the end of the crucifixion of Jesus’ on the cross as if he was inside of Jesus.

He said he saw the whole thing through Christs eyes as He hung on the cross. 

He felt the feeling of love Jesus had for the whole world.

This profound tanglible understanding of God’s love was the kind of certainty I desperately sought.

Two days later, I found myself in the church I grew up in, a 20 something college student invited to my own church by a man I was in accountability with arms crossed and with a heavy heart.

I was very uncomfortable and unsettled but hindsight it was probably the devils that I had unwittingly accepted from looking at so much porn had taken residence in my body and they knew what was coming.

Judgement day.

The pastor’s sermon was the usual fare – and there was a little drama about a homeless guy that was quite uninteresting.

That's when the last call started. You know the one the come to Jesus speech at the end of a service. Jesus loves you, Jesus died for your sins – but I needed more. 

I yearned for the miraculous power we read about in the good book, something that would shake my very being out of this funk.

I was sick of words.

As the pastor reached the end of his message, he said something that pierced through the fog of doubt, discontent, and skepticism: 

“Somebody in here is a Christian and you  prayed this prayer, 

God, I don’t know if I’m a Christian anymore and I need to know like Dad knows. I need to know my name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

Those words were a direct quote from my lips the other night. 

This had to be a response from God to my desperate prayer because the man preaching didn't know me and prayer was very private. 

I had just been given a personal miracle a word of knowledge from a stranger.

Then he said “And you need to come up here!” he stated it emphatically. 

Filled with a mix of hope and doubt, I immediately made my way to the front of the church and stood there with my arms crossed. 

There, I was approached by two tall men who had been sitting kind of off to the back right behind me during the service. 

One had blonde hair, a brown leather jacket, and a warm smile.

The other wore a black leather jacket and had a very stern or grave security guard kind of look. 

The first man, with a calm authority, held out his hands as if saying, “Let’s pray.”

But he didn't actually say anything.

As I stood there, hesitant and vulnerable, I had a stream of two thoughts. 

“Where are the elders you aren’t one of them. You aren't supposed to be here. I used to do this. I used to be you. You'll see someone is coming to take you away.”

And another stream of thought as if someone was whispering, “You know how this works. Grab his hands. He'll start praying. What are you, chicken? You can always let go. ”

So I did. I grabbed the hands in front of me.

The moment I did...BOOM!

I was blind. Blinded by light.

It was as if a divine grenade of warm brilliant light, love, power, and DNA cellular electricity exploded into the space and within me.

It was all around me. 

I was translated into heaven, but my feet remained planted on the ground, kinda. 

You see my bodily strength vanished, and I began to crumble to the floor. 

But the being in front of me somehow let go of my hands and reached out and grabbed me and held me up.

So now I'm being hugged resting my head very comfortably against his shoulder his soft lamb skin brown leather jacket against my cheek, as light, joy, peace, love and power emanated from this source into my very soul. 

My whole body was shaken with the intensity of the acceptance of the experience.

You see I’d never felt such acceptance in my life.

Not only from the man but from this light as brilliant as the Sun in its' strength. 

Everything about me seemed to be exposed before this loving light, the Spirit knew every detail of my life all my positives and yes even my mistakes.

Yet the light assured me I was accepted. The brilliance of the love was overwhelming.

This love was and is the source of all love, I knew it.

I felt a shift within my soul. The weight of shame and condemnation was being sucked out of me like a vacuum and what replaced it was overwhelming and good.

A complete knowing and sense of God’s glorious all powerful loving presence, peace and joy.

It was as if Jesus Himself had stepped into my Spirit and Soul and we were one.

I was in a state of assurance about myself, my current state forgiven, I knew I was not God and God was with me.

I knew my present was in forever.

In that moment, all doubts about my faith vanished.

I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that my name was written in the Lamb’s Boom of Life.

I was having a Damascus moment literally blinded by a brilliant warm yellow-orange golden bright light, as bright as the sun but without the pain. 

I remember thinking to myself, “If this is heaven. Sign me up forever.”

I wondered if everyone around me was experiencing the same thing. 

I was just so glad to be present.

It was seriously like I connected to a spiritual vacuum sucking out all the evil and hurt and pain.

And a filling machine of the Spirit infilling me with love and light and God's goodness.

I could physically feel it in my being it felt like warmth, tingly goodness, liquid love or oil.

Human english words don't do it justice.

As I lay there slumped on the mans shoulder, my body was responding too.

There were deep weeping sobs of emotion, coughing or an exorcism like experience, and joyous laughing.

I was weeping and snotting all over this shoulder, but the tall guy just held me. 

The presence I was feeling from the inside out gradually waved itself away and dissipated and I received my sight back and my physical strength. 

But I would gladly give up seeing and walking to remain in that presence forever.

The love reassured me that I was loved.

But so I could share this with you I was brought back to our present reality.

When my sight returned, the man in the brown leather jacket somehow clean and not snotted on turned to fill out a church welcome card.

I told him, “You don’t have to do that. I know where I’m going.” I thought, "I’m a Christian and I’ve been going here my whole life and my name is in the Lamb's Book of Life."

He stayed silent and put the card down and looked at me.

Neither of these two guys had said one word this entire time.

Wanting to break the awkwardness and full of questions about what just happened I spoke first. 

I asked, “Who are you?” I knew all the pastors, and he wasn’t one of them. 

That encounter was so real that I wanted to attend whatever church he came from.

His response was short and simple. 

“I’m a minister.” But the way it came out the way he said it had another quality to it. The word minister sounded meant something else to him.

“Where do you minister?” I asked.

“I minister in the foothills area,” he replied.

"What a weird answer." I thought to myself.

I thought, “Who has an area? A territory?”

A little exacerbated with his elusive answers, I said, “Who do you minister to?”

That is when he looked at me and then the other guy and said,

“We minister to the heirs of God.”

Then they both turned together and walked out.

Today, I seriously think they were angels. 

Hebrews 1:14

“Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?”

Reflecting on these experiences, I realize that my journey with Jesus is not about being perfect or never making mistakes He makes us perfect by with saving power and love. 

It’s about hastening to the day of the Lord.

It is an awakening to the reality in His timing that His constant presence is in my life.

His angels are all around me and trusting in His unwavering Love, Grace, and Truth is my only Resource. 

When I need him most Jesus was there, ready to extend His hand and pull me back into the light.

Why?

Because He is God with us!

These experiences have shaped my understanding of the Faith, reminding me that it’s a deeply personal experiential journey. 

It’s about encountering Jesus in the midst of our struggles, feeling His touch, and hearing His voice. 

It’s about knowing that we are never alone, that God is always with us, guiding us carrying us through every trial and tribulation.

Forgiving every miss step because of His great love.

In sharing my true history, I hope to encourage others who may be facing their own addictions or battles. 

Know that Jesus is always near, and loves you.

He is ready to save and offer His hand and guide you.

No matter how lost or unworthy you may feel, His Love and Grace are say you are worthy of Love. 

Trust in Him.

Sincerely and with all your heart seek Him.

You too will experience Him.

He promised.

One More Thing

My encounters with Jesus have taught me invaluable lessons about God, grace, and the transformative power of divine love. 

They have reassured me of my place in God’s kingdom and strengthened my resolve to walk in His light.

As I continue on this journey, I remain grateful for these experiences and the unwavering presence of Jesus in my life.

I often get homesick, because I know to Him we are going.

In moments of doubt or despair, I remember the gentle touch on my shoulder and the comforting words that followed. 

I recall the miraculous response to my desperate prayer, affirming my identity as a child of God. 

If you need more of God get in His Word and get around His people.

These memories serve as a constant reminder that I have indeed been touched by God, and that His love and grace will always guide me.

As God guides you, may you find more grace, peace, comfort and strength in knowing that Jesus is always with you.

Jesus is God.

Jesus loves you. 

Seek God and His presence, trust in His Love, and you too will experience the profound peace and assurance that comes from calling on the name of God.