"What my husband was trying to say"

We all need help from other people at points in our lives. The writer of Proverbs 11:14 reminds us that “in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (ESV). Many people in business have partners, and that term is now used of marriages and also of those living with “significant others”.

I remember my first Sunday service at the second church we pastored, in Cottesloe, Western Australia. We had been married about 16 months and even during ministerial training we had said that we sure hoped we would not be appointed to Cottesloe. We had been guest preachers there previously and knew its history and ruling family. Be careful what you say! After a brief stint at our first church, on Easter Sunday 1959 we conducted our first services at Cottesloe.

I do not recall what the morning sermon was about, but I remember that it was a hot day. It may surprise some who know me to learn that I was an absolute introvert and it was an ordeal to stand up in front of people and have to say something. Even in the church where I met my wife Vivien, at one notable Wednesday night prayer meeting when we were imploring God to work in our midst, the pastor asked me to pray and you could hear a pin drop for many minutes. I did not pray publicly.

As I was preaching my well-constructed Easter sermon, I started to feel faint and knew that if I stayed behind the pulpit I would finish up on the floor. So I said something like “You’ll have to excuse me”, and walked out the side door and left the congregation wondering what was happening.

My wife Vivien, my partner and fellow minister, realized she had to take over, and instead of rushing out to see if I was alright she walked up to the pulpit, where I had left my outline notes and my Bible. She opened her mouth and said, “What my husband was trying to say was… ” and finished the sermon from my notes on my behalf!

We all need partners, and our number one partner is the Christ within us. Paul wrote, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain” (II Corinthians 6:1). We graduate from ambassadors (5:20) to partners (6:1). Paul had previously written, “For we are God’s fellow workers” (I Corinthians 3:9). The NLT paraphrases it, “We work together as partners who belong to God.”

One final verse: “For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end” (Hebrews 3:14). Rotherhams’s Emphasized Bible renders it, “For partners of the Christ we have become” (see also CLV and NET). “I have Christ within, so I’m tapped into all of his wisdom, all his guidance, all his power, all his peace, all his ability to relate to people, all his ability to cut through the chaff and get to the basic issues that need to be handled. I have a partner who has all the expertise I will ever need and has all the capital I’m ever going to need. It’s a thrilling partnership to be ‘partners of the Christ'” (from chapter 4 of my book, Outdo, Outwit & Outperform).

Count on Christ as your partner, talk to him about your plans and problems, share with him your portion of the profits, and “the world is your oyster” (Shakespeare).