Dennis Kinlaw Tape Descriptions
DK-100 through DK-127

DK-100 -- Out of the Depths
Psalm 130

There is something very universal about the Psalms.  I’m sure that that is the reason for their continuing appeal over the centuries.  It’s almost unbelievable that the book that was written before there were automobiles or radios or any of the things that we enjoy in our world, would be as apt and as appropriate as the latest book in psychology.  And yet that is exactly what we have when we come to this portion of God’s Word.

The astuteness, the insights that are there, are as realistic as your life situation.  And as you read them, you will find that again and again the Psalmist is speaking for the likes of you.  The author, obviously, was one of us, and God met him in the midst of his situation and gave him an answer that is applicable to the likes of us.

 In this particular Psalm the Psalmist is in trouble.    It is not superficial trouble.    It is the profoundest of existential troubles.  It is a trouble not that comes from being in the shallows of life, but coming from those moments when one is in the depths, when life itself has flowed over him. And out of the depths he cries out from his confusion and his darkness, his instability, his uncertainty and his despair.

DK-101 -- Centrality of the Cross

 “I don’t believe that any man ever comes to Christ without having come by way of the cross, not just Christ’s sacrifice for him, but also his sacrifice for Christ.    Christ died for my sins, and the Scripture indicates that I should die to my sins for Christ. Christ gave up His life for me on that cross, and if I am to be His, I have to give up my life for Him.  The Christian is a person who has turned from his way to Christ’s way and to do that something has to die. There is no future of any hope or joy or fruitfulness except as you reach out and take the cross He has for you.”                                  

DK-102 -- The Gospel of Mark

Dr. Kinlaw walks us through the Gospel of Mark from beginning to end to see how one evangelist developed the concept of discipleship through the life and teachings of Jesus. 

“There is a marvelous unity to the Book of Mark. It belongs together and every part has its own contribution to make to the whole and the single message that is being proclaimed is the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Mark develops the concept of discipleship. It begins with the answer to the most important question, “Who is this man, Jesus? So the first half of discipleship is learning Who He Is.  The second step is just as crucial, and it is to know who we are, our inadequacy; there is no goodness in us; there is no flesh that shall glory in the presence of the Lord.  The glory is in Him and the adequacy of the Holy One, the Spirit who can come in Jesus’ name and fill us.

DK- 103 -- The Foundation of Christ
Mark 8:31-38

We are called to be witnesses.  If the world about us is to know Christ, it will be God working through the likes of you and me. The last word Jesus had for His disciples was, “as the Father has sent me, now I send you.”   But how are we to do that?   We have to know Who He is. He reveals Himself to us, and He does it through our needs. I am convinced that the things that we are most thankful for are the things that are probably the least significant, and the things that we complain about are the ones that we ought to look up, and say “Thank you God, for giving this to me - without it, You couldn’t do Your redemptive work in my life, and make my life significant.”

A Christian is a person who has come in his own heart to believe that Jesus is the answer to every man’s need.  Because you see, if I really believe that Jesus is the answer to every man’s need, I will quit looking for other fountains to drink from. I will quit looking for other means of finding the satisfaction for my soul.   I will quit looking for other means to meet the needs of my life, but I will bow at His feet.  There is no other foundation but Jesus.

DK-104 -- The Wedding of Cana
John 2:1f

“This is the first of the seven signs recorded in the Gospel of John and Jesus’ first miracle.  In an insignificant out-of-the-way place, Jesus began His Messianic ministry and for the most inconsequential of reasons.  Because if He wasn’t interested in anonymous, unknown, insignificant people in out of the way places, He never would have found me.  The person who considers himself the least significant of all human mortals is the kind of person Jesus wanted to begin His ministry with.

God said ‘I will put a husband and wife together in such a way that the whole world can see a human example of the way I love the world, and the way the church loves Me’.  If our homes and our marriages are what they are supposed to be, nobody will ever have to explain to our children what the love of God is like.”

DK-105 -- John 3

This familiar passage contains the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus about being born again. Dr. Kinlaw walks us through these scriptures explaining who Nicodemus was and his relationship to the Sanhedrin. He also reviews Isaiah 56 which talks about the temple being a house of prayer for all nations.

“When God saves a man, one of the reasons is not to just save his skin, but to let him be a part of His redemptive work to reach a whole world.  You have to be born again to see the way God sees, and when you do, you are going to know that He loves a world, and He loves it enough that He will give the most precious thing and the most valuable thing that He has so that the world can be loved and be saved and be redeemed.”

DK-106  --  How Far Will God Go?

There is a universal principle that no life can be fruitful that is self-centered, no life is fruitful until the person loses an interest in gaining his own way and surrenders himself to something bigger and nobler than himself, to God.  It is in the losing of our lives that we really gain.  And that's counter to everything within us because we want to protect our interest.  We want to take care of our concerns and our well being, and our security, and our pleasures.  And Jesus says, "That's the way you lose your life,  but if you'll turn it loose and give it up, then you'll not only gain your own life, but you'll find your own life extremely fruitful."

 Dr. Kinlaw says the thing that impresses him most is that when Jesus was saying this, He was saying, "This is a universal law, and it's so universal that not even God is an exemption to it."  Not even God can be fruitful without self-sacrifice.

DK-107 -- God's Kingdom is Eternal

God's plans for every one of our lives are far bigger than our carnal ambitions could ever imagine.  God's not in little business.  He's in big business.  And do you know what He likes to do?  He likes to take the ordinary and do the extraordinary in their lives.

Dr. Kinlaw describes how God used ordinary people like Moses, Abraham, David, and Mary.

DK-108 -- Living Outside Yourself

The story of the Rich Young Ruler is the backdrop for this message. Dr. Kinlaw explains how God has made us in such a way that our deep hunger for meaning and purpose for our lives can never be satisfied apart from the Eternal. Our fulfillment is in another—Him. Our relationships, our marriages, families, these are the schools God uses to show us His ways, to show us we need Him, and to turn us away from our self-centeredness and toward Him and all that He is.

DK-109 -- Walking With Christ

Is my interest in the Christian life, or in the Christ of the Christian life? Is He at the center of my life? Dr. Kinlaw teaches from Mark Chapter 1 that we must make it our business to learn to walk with Him in the daily routine of life. As it is crucial that first we must find Him, it is just as crucial—perhaps more so—that we learn to walk with Him.

DK-110 -- Christ is Central

When He comes, we begin to sense that our control over our lives is threatened.  And if you want to know how sinful the human heart is, and how deeply seated our sinfulness is, you sense the panic that’s in you and me when we begin to find that He wants to run our lives instead of our running them There’s where we get the true indication of how far we have fallen from or right intended relationship to Him.

But you see it’s safe to trust Him because He is the one for whom we are made.  And His way is our way, and our way the wrong way. And when we find His way, we say, “For heaven’s sake.  That’s the thing for which I was made.”

DK-111 -- Intimacy With God

Dr. Kinlaw discusses the elements that take place in a life and in a heart that walks intimately with God.  He says, "What this country needs is not necessarily more Christians, but those of us who are Christians to be much more Christian than we are."  "I have thought as I'm sure you have about how Jesus said we were to be the salt of the earth and that as salt in the earth we were to be an influence in society to drive back the corruption that's there and to give some help where pollution exists."  "I do not believe that saltiness is something that you and I can get a corner on and own and keep and dispense, but rather I've come to believe that that is something that takes place in us when we live in real intimacy with God."

DK-112 -- “An Old Example”

Sometimes we tend to think that what He wants is obedience, or some extraordinary sacrifices or some great and noble deed.  But basically what He wants is for us to come to the kind of personal relationship with Him to where that relationship will be determinative for everything else within our lives.  And that’s the beauty of the life of Abraham. What did he do? He put his hand in the Lord God’s hand, and let the Lord God lead him for the duration of his life. And he dared to believe what his friend, the Lord God, said to him, and believed it enough that he staked his life on it and let it be determinative for him.

DK-113 -- Power of One Man’s Intercession 

What is an intercessor?  I used to think intercession was going down my prayer list, but the one God was looking for was one in whom the needs of a world that was lost and God in His holiness and His adequacies were one person in whom those two things would meet. It wasn’t what He said, it wasn’t an external act, it was an inner condition of the heart where the need of the lost and the adequacy of God and the holiness of God met inside that person. 

Do you know that when He couldn’t find a person, what He had to do was to become one.  There’s the whole story of the incarnation. Have you ever come to the place where somebody’s salvation was more important to you than your own?  That’s where God got, and that’s the kind of person He’s looking for.

DK-114 -– The Hope of Glory

There is enough in the blood of Christ to cover every one of us in perfect righteousness and perfect holiness.  We tend to want that covering, but we don’t want the heart to match it. We tend to want that dress, but He says He can give us a heart to match the dress.  Now what is the heart that matches the dress?  It is the heart that is like His heart.  And what is that heart?  It is the self-giving heart.  Now it may be painful because when you begin to live for other people, they’re going to hurt you.  Jesus was the strongest person that ever walked, but He lived His life for others.  And when you begin to live your life for others, you’re going to find that it is going to be painful.  Most of us tend to draw away, because we don’t like to be hurt.    If He gives us a pure heart and a clean heart, we’re going to have to be exposed enough that we can hurt and in that hurt will be the redemption for the world that came to us because of His hurt.

DK-115 -- The Secret of Holiness

Isaiah chapters 41, 59, 63 and 5 and Ezekiel chapter 22 describe God’s disbelief that there is not one human who can save mankind from his futility. God can find no man to intercede, to rescue man, so He must do it Himself. In this ultimate act of “intercession” we learn how we too can share in the burden God carries for the world. Jesus says, “follow Me,” and as we learn what this really means we come into the secret of holiness.

DK-116 -- Jesus is Lord
Psalm 16

In this message Dr. Kinlaw explains what it means to make Jesus the Lord of your life.  No man can make that ultimate surrender without divine aid and assistance.  No man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.  That’s what the human heart cries for.  When there is a corner of my being or yours under my control and not under His control, there is all the more potential and probability of wandering.  You and I never get to the place, no matter how long we’ve lived in grace, to where within ourselves we can do His will.  And if we turn to our resources along and separate from Him, we will wander. 

But whenever you come to the place where you have chosen Him and Him alone as your Lord, the deepest excellence that you can know other than communion with Him is the fellowship of those who come to a similar commitment.  There are two classes of people. The people who hasten after Him, and the people who have a hungering and a yearning for something else and hasten after it.  Life is one long drink of water!  Now the question is, are you going to drink from His cup, or one of your own making? 

DK-117 -- The Central Fact of Christianity

The simple symbol of the Christian faith is without any question the cross.  Wherever you go and find Christians, you will find that the cross is used to represent what it is that they really believe, and more than that, what it is that they really are.

Do you think you’ll ever have a regret if you take up your cross?  The only regret you will ever have is if you don’t.  Because, you see, if you take the way of the cross, you find that it is the fruitful, meaningful life. 

DK-118 -- Characteristics of Faith

It is not difficult for a Christian who knows his scripture to build a case for the fact that faith is at the heart of the Christian life.  And if we have faith, we are believers and are Christians.  And if we do not have faith, then we are not among those that belong to God.  The Christian is a person who believes.  But now, it’s one thing to say that we need faith and it’s another thing to understand what God really means by that when He tells us that we are to believe Him. 

There are many of us who would be perfectly willing to go with Christ if we thought He was going where we wanted to go.  But you see, what He’s after is for us to go with Him, where our attachment is not to His will, but our attachment is to Him.  And whatever that will may be, we accept it because we want Him.  He wants us to know Him, to trust Him, to love Him, and to trust Him because He wants us. 

DK-119 -- Being Consumed by Christ

Following Christ means to turn our eyes on him and the path that he walks, and to walk after him.  It’s interesting he says we are to be his body.  He said to the world, “Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood you can have no part in me and you cannot have eternal life.  If you want to live you must eat my flesh and drink my blood.  And so I am willing to be consumed so you can live.”  You know it doesn’t take much intelligence to know that what he was saying was, “You’re my body and if the world out there is to live you’ve got to be willing to be consumed too.”  I’d like to ask if you are willing to be the world’s bread and are you willing to be broken and ground and cooked and consumed.  I’d like to ask if you are willing to be the body of the good shepherd.  Jesus said, “If any man will come after me let him follow me.”  Are you receiving or following?  All of us want to be worth something and useful and we like to think we are in league with him, working with him, not just standing up on our own.

DK-120 -- The Eternal Witness 

If my transgression is offensive to God then my transgression suddenly takes on a transcendent implication.  Because, you see, if I sin against you in the course of history, history is a place of flux and flow and time and change.  But the thing we know about God is that he is the eternal one and he changes not.  And I think that explains a dimension of Biblical teaching on sin that we tend to forget and that is that when I sin against God there are eternal consequences that come from that.  There is something about my problem then that gets out of the realm of time and goes over into the realm of eternity.  That means, then, that sin is not done with the doing, it means that time isn’t going to take it away because my sins have eternal consequences.

You see, personal relationships, personal sins are as permanent as the relationship–personal reality.  And when we sin against God we bring something into existence we cannot take away and there is a there-ness about it that is frightening and the scriptures indicate it is an eternal there-ness.

Do you know the forgiveness of sin?  Do you know freedom from the tyranny of sin?  There is an answer and it’s in Christ and in His atonement for you.  Every sin you’ve ever committed He will bear and carry away and you will be free and the bondage that sin always brings He can break and release you. 

DK-121 -- The Problems Jesus Faced

Have you ever taken the time to try to think your way back into the life of Jesus and understand some of the problems that He faced.  You know, you and I think of Him as the Son of God, God come in the flesh, the miracle worker and because of that He really had no problem.  What could He bump into that He couldn’t handle?  And yet if you go through the Gospels and live with them awhile I think you will find that even Jesus had problems.

DK-122 -- When God Becomes Friend: Assurance

Man moves through his life controlled by what he can see and hear and touch and feel and smell those things that come to his sense and yet deep within him there is an anxiety that maybe there is something you can’t see and feel and touch and smell, maybe there is a world.  We tend to put it at the other end of time but if it’s an eternal world it’s not out that way chronologically it is simply out that way empirically. 

I have no question in my mind about there being two worlds.  And, of course, as a Christian you have no option about that because if you are a Christian you believe that Jesus lives and you believe that He is just as alive today as He was when He fed 5,000 people on the hills in Galilee or when He raised Lazarus from the dead just a few minutes out of Jerusalem or when He let Mary anoint him.  You see we believe that He lives.   And sin in the thing that cut us off from that world and that’s the world where we find the ultimate key to our existence.

DK-123 -- The Fullness of Time

Dr. Kinlaw shares some interesting stories of how when God decides to move he can make the ordinary extraordinarily significant.  In his message he teaches, "We know that time is a gift that comes from Him.  You and I can't produce it.  There is no way you and I can stretch it.  There is no way you and I, except by doing wrong, can shorten our time. Time comes as a gift from God and is given for a purpose.  All of time is not of the same value.  There are some moments that are more significant than others."

DK124 -- What the Spirit is Doing

“We tend to think when we think of the work of the Spirit in terms of revival –renewal, in terms of evangelism – soul winning, in terms of church planting – church growth. We tend to think of positive things. But I want to suggest that it may well be that we need to look at something else because I’ve become convinced that the Spirit does negative work as well as positive work. And if it’s the Spirit that does it, then we ought to accept it as such and give thanks for it and adjust to it.”

In this message Dr. Kinlaw talks about evangelism and some of the evangelists that he has met in his lifetime. Evangelists can inspire, encourage and challenge us in our Christian lives. He also talks about the impact in other countries that is being made by the Spirit of God.

DK-125 -- Totally Committed

In this message from 1989 Dr. Kinlaw shares some personal experiences that made him realize how much the world was changing. He shares about the visions from Zechariah and their meanings. He reminds us that  when we face God, he will ask each of us what we did with our opportunities. The only thing worse than never seeing our opportunities in life is to see them and then back away. 

The question is how to educate today for a world that is instead of one that has ceased to exist.  He reminds us that we need to educate our young people in what historic Christianity is because there are very few of our young people that have the vaguest notion of what classical, historic Christianity is.  They need to be oriented to the world they are going to live in.  “It’s so easy to take a young person who’s graduated from college and theological school and train him for the church the way it was instead of the way God is attempting to lead the church.”

DK-126 -- The Gift of Hunger

What does it take for us to find and to know God in intimacy?  There has to be a desire that comes into the human heart to know Him and to fellowship with Him and to commune with Him.  And if that desire is not there, there is no act that you can perform that will cause you to know Him.  Because He responds to that hunger within our hearts.  The greatest gift God ever saw fit to give to me was a hunger for Himself.  Only the Holy Spirit can cause you to long for God.  It is the best gift, the best possession that you could have. It’s worth more than money, fame, or security to have an inner hunger for God.

DK-127 -- Carrying His Burden

In this message, Dr. Kinlaw shares his insight about what it means for us Christians to help carry God’s burdens.  The Father bore the world in his heart and the Son sensed the heart of the Father and the Son began to bear us in his heart, and as he bore us in his heart he sacrificed himself for us.  What does it mean to bear?  It means to come to the place where somebody else’s well-being is more important than your own.