"Let's Start With Jesus" -- Kinlaw's Thoughts

In His book, "Let's Start With Jesus", Dennis Kinlaw describes the design of human beings to be in relationship. He makes a direct correlation between the design of human beings and the grand theme of voluntarily yielding our independence so that we can know God in a right relationship.

“The key to understanding Jesus did not lie in Jesus. It lay beyond him. He lived joyously from Another, through Another, and for Another. Jesus was the divine son of God and a perfect human being, yet he did not find himself complete within himself. He was not the center of his own chosen existence. Since Jesus is the original pattern for the human person, it is safe to say that to be a person, even a perfect person, is to be incomplete, that no person is ever complete in himself or herself. The person’s completeness lies in an other. The Son is not complete in himself. He draws life from the Father and lives life to please his Father. Like the Son, who is named the first born among many brothers, we find our completeness in relation to our Source and our Sustainer.

The secular world has a different plan for and definition of fulfillment. That self-contained, self-directed life is looked to as providing the “center” and focal point of meaning, values, and even existence itself. The elevation of the self to the center of the world leads to the well-being of the self as the goal of living itself in this misdirected view of reality. Understanding Jesus illuminates personhood’s original meaning, to be expressed in relationship and mutuality. Modern social science’s concept of the self is at the polar opposite – promoting the notion of the capacity either to mold or actualize oneself. Like the eternal Son, we find our completeness in relation to our Source and our Sustainer. The person who is alone is not a whole person, because no person is ever supposed to be completely alone.

When Jesus begins to speak to his disciples about the cross, he insists that to find true life one must lose oneself. Self-protection, the refusal to give away oneself, he says, is self-loss and death. A person as a person, human or divine, finds fullness of life only in one beyond oneself. Christ came, died, and was raised again to make possible the reestablishment of fullness of personhood in people like you and me. That Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, wants to raise us from the death of living in and out of ourselves. The Spirit begets the very life of Christ within us.”

Holiness Unto The LORD!
Grateful

God's Own Special Treasure

God takes more pleasure in you than you will ever find in Him.
-- Dennis Kinlaw

(4) You know how I brought you to Myself and carried you on eagle’s wings. (5) Now if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure... -- Exodus 19:4-5 (NLT)

ALL JOY TO YOUR WORLD!
Grateful

You Encourage Me

This week I was blessed to hear Dr. Dennis Kinlaw speak at a conversation gathering for pastors and evangelists in Wilmore, Kentucky. Because he is advancing well into his eighties, he was wheeled in a chair to the front of the lecture hall where he greeted us in His encouraging Christlike manner and delivered one of the most wonderful messages I have ever heard from the book of Genesis on the topic of God wanting us to be His conversation partners for life and eternity. He spoke well over an hour but it seemed like a few fleeting moments to me.

After the sacred session, I walked to the front to thank Dr. Kinlaw and to ask him to personalize a copy of his newest book to me. He graciously did. Then I handed the book and pen to his precious granddaughter, "Cricket", who serves as his personal research assistant and who was his caretaker for the day and asked her to also personalize the book on the same page that her grandfather had just written. Humbly, underneath her grandfather's gracious words, she signed her name and referenced what is probably her life's verse -- Psalm 138:3.

The Lord sure encouraged me through Dr. Dennis Kinlaw and his precious granddaughter, "Cricket".

When I pray, you answer me; You encourage me by giving me the strength I need. -- Psalm 138:3 (NLT)

IF MY PEOPLE... WILL? I WILL! God's Promise in 2 Chron. 7:14.
Grateful

Biblical Roots of Revival & Renewal

I heard Dr. Dennis Kinlaw beautifully share this New Testament passage as one of the Biblical roots from which we understand revival and renewal in our own lives and revival and renewal within the community of the local church and then beyond:

Like sheep you wandered away from God, but now you have returned to your Shepherd, the Guardian of your souls who keeps you safe from all attacks. -- 1 Peter 2:25 (NLT)

IF MY PEOPLE... WILL? I WILL! God's Promise in 2 Chron. 7:14.

Intensify My Hunger

Lord, intensify my hunger for You. Amen.
-- Dennis Kinlaw's prayer recorded in his book, The Mind of Christ

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they will be filled. Matthew 5:6 (NIV)
-- Words of Chrst recorded in His Sermon on the Mount

IF MY PEOPLE... WILL? I WILL! God's Promise in 2 Chron. 7:14.
Grateful