Click to watch video “Do You Know Him?”

An Australian evangelist went to India to meet Mother Theresa. He was not expecting a lengthy audience with her, but he did anticipate it would be significant.

He volunteered in her hospice for a period of time and then had the opportunity for a brief encounter. She greeted him, then asked a simple question:

“Do you know Jesus?”

“Well of course, I am an evangelist.”, he replied.

“Do you know Him?”, she repeated.

“Well, yes. As I said, I am an evangelist and I tell people about Jesus all the time.”, he explained with a hint of impatience in his response.

“Do you know Him?”, she asked one more time.

Wisdom then got the best of him and he simply nodded to affirm that he had heard her question. He thanked her for her time.

Her question resonated in his heart over the next number of weeks as he continued to ask himself, “Do I know Him? Do I really know Him?”

This soul searching led him to go deeper in his communion with Jesus; deeper in his desire to know Him in all aspects of Jesus’ heart for him and through him in his ministry to others. His preaching began to take on a different flavor as he passed on the question Mother Theresa had so generously passed onto him.

Through his outreach a biker met Jesus and subsequently surrendered his life to Christ. The biker, based on his new-found experience with Jesus, wrote the following poem:

Do You Really Know Him? By Norm Briddock

“Oh, you say that you know Him, but you don’t know Him at all.

The one that you tell me about lives in a picture on the wall.

He comes from a plastic country where the sun shines all the time.

I don’t know who you worship kid, but He ain’t no friend of mine.

My friend’s eyes are gentle, but they are often filled with pain,

He’s no stranger to the back-street baby, the alley and the lane.

He’s often found at parties with prostitutes and thieves,

He’s always there when you are there, and always last to leave.

When you put your arms around Him you feel the scars beneath His shirt,

And you wonder why He loves you when you give Him so much hurt.

He’s often tired and dirty, but you know that he’s the Boss.

‘Cos when you take His hand you feel the nail marks of the cross.

He knocked around with criminals, He’d give everyone the time.

Women and kids would flock to Him, you know they’d stand in line.

But the churchy types they hated Him, so they hanged him on the cross,

But they hadn’t figured one thing, you just can’t sack the Boss.

I knew as soon as He talked to me He had been where I had been,

He’d seen the knife and felt the wound of every lonely scene.

He had been right alongside of me when I was sleeping on the ground

And when I ride my Harley I know that He’s around.

So don’t say that you know Him When you don’t know Him at all,

The one I love would never live in a picture on the wall.

There is nothing false about Him, there simply is no plastic tack,

You know, this friend I love so well has been to hell and back.”

May Mother Theresa’s question and Norm’s poetic exhortation serve as an encouragement for us to ensure we cultivate a real relationship with Jesus. May we be men marked by an authentic, honest and deep relationship with Christ. May we be men who have journeyed through the difficult and trying times with Jesus in a fashion that drives the roots of our relationship deep into the soil of trust and commitment.

Real relationships are forged in the valleys of life and celebrated on the mountain tops. May we walk with Jesus in the depths and the heights, in the courage and the frights; in the glory and the shame; in wholeness and when we’re lame.

May we really know Him. Because when we do, it changes everything.

Philippians 3:10-11

“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Ephesians 1:17

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.”

Ephesians 3:16-19

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Acts 4:13

”When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.”

“It’s always better when we’re together.”, sings Jack Johnson

Is that what you believe about your marriage?

Marriage is a true partnership – partners in life. It has been said that if two partners always agree then someone is redundant. That is the sentiment in business, and I think it is somewhat true in marriage too. We don’t always agree in marriage, and that’s a good thing.

We are better together.

We are better together because we complement each other. My wife’s strengths are my weaknesses. My strengths are her weaknesses. I need her perspective, she needs mine.

We all know that opposites attract. That is certainly the case in our marriage. Anne and I seem to be opposites in so many areas. We now synergize – the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. However, it wasn’t always that way…

In the early years I used to think anyone who disagreed with me was wrong, and then I would do my best to convince whoever disagreed with me that they needed to change. Sadly this was most pronounced in our marriage. If Anne disagreed with me she must be wrong. She needed to change. She needed to become more like me.

She wasn’t bold enough, she wasn’t social enough, she wasn’t brave enough, she wasn’t…enough like me. She was too quiet, too introverted, too analytical, too planned, too safe…too different from me. Something needed to change.

That something was me.

We were not true partners. I was the ‘majority’ partner and Anne was here to do what I wanted. She did not have an equal voice. We were total opposites and she needed to change to be like me – that was clearly the error in my thinking.

The Lord had mercy on Anne, and on me, by not-so-gently helping me to realize how wrong I was. “Wrong” can also be substituted with “arrogant”, “selfish”, “self-centered”, “sinful”, “stubborn” and “idiotic”. I was an idiot.

You see, one of the key roles of a husband is to be a “partner” to his wife. A true partner.

True partnerships are founded on mutual respect. True partners respect each other for who they are and the differences they bring. I needed to see Anne, not as being totally opposite to me, but perfectly complementary. I need her perspective. I need the balance she brings to me. And, strangely enough, she needs my perspective and the balance I bring to her.

Anne now jokingly describes our relationship in this way: She is the brake and I am the gas pedal.

Would you like to drive a car with no brakes? I have done it, believe me, it’s no fun! A car with no brakes crashes. Would you like to drive a car with no gas pedal? You can’t, it won’t go anywhere. A car is only useful if it has a gas pedal and brakes. The two complement each other. They can be seen as being in opposition to each other, or being complementary. We all know that we need them both to get anywhere worthwhile.

Likewise in marriage, a great partnership is built on mutual respect. What is seen as opposition, when viewed through the lens of mutual respect, can be seen as complementary. We need each other.

I now recognize how incredibly unbalanced I would be without Anne. I recognize what an incredible gift her ‘difference’ is to me. I need her God-given ‘brakes’ so I don’t crash. Thankfully she loved me enough and trusted God enough to see me through my journey out of independence into interdependence.

The reality is, unless we are partnering with our wives in life we will not apprehend all that for which God apprehended us. Together we become one in Him in a fashion that enables us to love Him, love each other and love others in a way that is impossible if we were not partners in life and love.

Men, your wife is not here to serve you. You are actually called to lay down your life for her. We are called together to become one in Jesus: to partner together in the adventure of journeying with Him in life and love.

We are definitely better together.

Genesis 2:24

“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”

Ephesians 5:25 (The Message)

“Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church – a love marked by giving, not getting.”

Ephesians 5:21

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”