"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

No Good Thing Will He Withhold

A pastor friend of mine, Gene, proclaimed Psalm 84:11 from a very obvious sacred place in his heart. Yes, he spoke the verse aloud from memory to a group of pastors that I was blessed to be a part of. It encouraged us all in an undeniable way:

For the Lord is our light and protector. He gives us grace and glory. No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who do what is right. (NLT)

Lord, let us be in right relationship with You. That is what it means to truly do what is right.
Grateful

But God Had Listened to Abraham's Request

(23) The sun was rising as Lot reached the village. (24) Then the LORD rained down fire and burning sulfur from the heavens on Sodom and Gomorrah. (25) He utterly destroyed them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, eliminating all life—people, plants, and animals alike. (26) But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following along behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. (27) The next morning Abraham was up early and hurried out to the place where he had stood in the LORD’S presence. (28) He looked out across the plain to Sodom and Gomorrah and saw columns of smoke and fumes, as from a furnace, rising from the cities there. (29) But God had listened to Abraham’s request and (though God did not spare Sodom and Gomorrah, God) kept Lot safe, removing him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plain. -- Genesis 19:23-29 (NLT)

...God remembered Abraham...
-- Genesis 19:29 (NKJV)

God, Who knows the heart...
--Acts 15:8a (NIV)

The earnest prayer of a righteous person (one person in right relationship with God) has great power and wonderful results.
-- James 5:16b (NLT)

Lord, let me be in right relationship with You, especially because my loved ones may be depending on my requests -- both spoken and unspoken -- for Your mercy in their lives. All in the Name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. And Amen.

Grateful

Revival Lifestyle

How to live in revival as a lifestyle:

(1) Align -- Get right and stay right with God and others.
(2) Agonize -- Travail in fervent prayer.
(3) Acknowledge -- Keep God's Word paramount at all times.
(4) Anointing -- Be reliant on the Holy Spirit's presence.

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

It's Time to Get Right With God!

James 5:16 (NLT) Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.

It's time to get right with God!

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

Desire... Granted.

The desire of the righteous will be granted.
-- Proverbs 10:24b (NRSV)

Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.
-- From the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, John 17:3 (NIV)

Lord, I know to be righteous, one must be in right relationship with You. Yes, to know You intimately is to know life eternal both immediately and ultimately. Lord, grant me my heart's desire, for if I know my heart's desire, my heart's desire is wholly for what You desire in Your holy heart. Yes, Lord, I desire what You desire more than I desire anything. I desire what You desire for me. You are my heart's desire. In Your Name, I pray, Jesus. Amen.

John Mandeville's song expresses my heart's deepest desire:

I want what You want,
more than I want anything.
I want what You want for me. (Repeat)

Cause Your faithfulness
is like the ocean and the rain.
Everyday the same.
And Your Word is our Life,
so through the laughter and the pain,
You've taught me how to say... that...

I want what You want,
more than I want anything.
I want what You want for me. (Repeat)

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

Encouraging Others to Sin?

1 Corinthians 8:12 (NLT) --And you are sinning against Christ when you sin against other Christians by encouraging them to do something they believe is wrong.

What a sobering thought, heh?

Lord, forbid that we would sin against You and others by encouraging others to go against their own consciences, coaxing them to choose wrong rebellion over what they believe to be right relationship with You. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

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

"At One" or Aloof?

Lord, give me a desire to be always "at one" with You, and never aloof from You. Let me be aligned with Your blessed words recorded in Matthew 5:6, yes "hungry and thirsty" for a right relationship with You at all times. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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