Touch: The Power of Touch in Transforming Lives

Here is the thrust of Touch in Rudy Rasmus’ own words:

“Before I could be a channel for the grace of God, I had to experience it first. Nobody on God’s green earth expected Rudy Rasmus to be touched by the love of God, but I was. Jesus didn’t appear to me in a vision or dream, but He showed Himself to me through the strong love of a few people … They were God’s grace with skin on.”

Appropriately, the book’s cover is a black and white photograph of a pair of large, male hands soiled with dirt. The palms are outstretched and open. As I read Touch, it became painfully clear how symbolic those dirty hands were in the telling of Pastor Rasmus’ story and in the points he illustrates throughout the book. On one level those filthy hands represent the hands of Christ who touched and transformed the lives of people like me – people whose lives were deemed dirty and untouchable by the religious and self-righteous.

In simpler terms, those hands represented the risk we take whenever we present ourselves as God’s grace with skin on – we risk getting dirty, not abandoning our holiness, but rather shedding the pristine image of a Christian to sometimes meet people where they are like our Savior did and does.

Transforming lives can be dirty work.

Touch is a brilliant book, to say the least. It is Pastor Rudy’s testimony, in part, and a chronicle of the spiritual lessons he’s learned over his years as a Christian and in ministry. It is a sly teaching device, a discipleship tool, that both comforts and challenges. Much of what Pastor Rudy teaches snuck up on me, rolled up on me, and caught me unaware. Just as I was lulled into a false sense of security reading about his journey in Christ, I was challenged with re-evaluating my own journey, and for that alone, Touch is a treasure.

At the end of each chapter is a section, Going Deeper, that serves as part Bible study guide and part probing mechanism. The questions Pastor Rudy poses are simple enough, but so profoundly illustrative of his point that before anyone can function as a transformer, they must be first transformed.