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.”