Our daughter-in-law Julie was teaching her girls–Abby and Erin, twins, they were 8 at the time–about childbirth. Abby did not like what she was hearing.
“I’m not going to have children, Grandpa,” she said. “It hurts too bad.”
I could not argue with that. I’ve been in the hospital numerous times over the years when my wife or my daughter or my two daughters-in-law were in labor. Nothing about it was easy on them or fun for them. They bring us into the world at great personal cost.
I said to Abby, “Yes, it does hurt. But the pain goes away and you’re left with this beautiful child. And you decide that it was worth it.”
This child looked me in the eye and said, “You’re a man. What do you know?”
When I picked myself up off the ground, we had a good laugh over that.
“You’re exactly right,” I told her. “I don’t know a thing about childbirth other than what the women in my life have told me.”
You’re a man. What do you know?
What do you really, really know? What do you know for dead certain? Not, what do you think or believe somewhat. Not, what is your opinion or even your conviction. Not, where is your membership or what is your affiliation.
What do you know?
The Apostle Paul answered that this way. “Yet I am not ashamed, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day.” (II Timothy 1:12)
Paul says, “I know the Lord Jesus Christ. I have total confidence in Him. I am dead sure that I have not believed in vain.”
When the Apostle John wrote about knowing Jesus, he said, “We know that we know him” (I John 2:3).
I know Jesus. And I know that I know Him.
Can you say that?
Where is the evidence that you know Jesus? I want to suggest three evidences or proofs that any of us know the Lord.
Now, if you were raised in a Baptist church, you were probably taught that the correct answer to the question, “Do you know Jesus?” is your testimony. You give the details of the time and place you were saved. I’m going to suggest that that is not enough. There has to be more than that.
I was saved in the summer of 1951 in a revival meeting in a rural Alabama church. I remember it like it was last month. But that was nearly 60 years ago. If I’m counting on my memory of an event when I was a child to take me to heaven, I may be on shaky ground. There has to be something more substantial than that to prove that I know the Lord Jesus Christ.
Suppose you asked me if I know Billy Graham. I could tell you that I have met him on several occasions. I have sat in hospital waiting rooms on more than one occasion with Billy and Ruth Graham while we were waiting on a member of my church and their good friend, Dr. Grady Wilson, to come through surgery. Billy Graham and George Beverly Shea sat in my office for an hour one time. Then, we did the funeral for Dr. Wilson in the church I was pastoring. My part in the service was broadcast world-wide on “The Hour of Decision” radio program.
But in no way can we say that I know Billy Graham. And even less could we say that he knows me.
To meet someone is not to know them. It’s the first step, of course, but thereafter a relationship has to take place and grow.
If you asked how I know Margaret Ann Henderson, I would not answer that I met her sometime in the fall of 1959. That’s correct, of course, but a better answer would be that we have been married for 48 years. It was necessary to meet her before anything else could occur, but if that’s all that happened, in no way could one say we “know” each other.
As well as the Apostle Paul felt he knew the Lord Jesus, he wanted to get to know him better and better. He outlined the process for us when he said, “Whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him….I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings….” (Philippians 3:7-10)
The point is simple: Come to know Jesus Christ at the moment of salvation. Get to know him better every day of your life. You ought to know him better and love him more today than you did last year. And a year from now, far more than you do today.
That said, what are the evidences that you and I know the Lord in the first place? I suggest three.
These are to answer the question: “How do you know that you know Jesus?”
(Click HERE to finish reading Joe McKeever's Father's Day blog)
