Who Can Satisfy My Soul Like You? – Dennis Jernigan

Dennis Jernigan says this is one of his favorite songs, though it’s phrased as a question. “Who Can Satisfy My Soul Like You?” may sound like a searcher’s uncertainty to some, like someone who hasn’t found in his world the key to contentment. That might be true if the person vocalizing these feelings were brooding over a mortal being with whom he had just lost touch. But Dennis was actually thinking vertically about the personal Creator in 1988, a year when so much happened for Dennis and his wife and family. He made a decision to share something very personal, a risky proposition that someone else might have balked at. But, plunging ahead, Jernigan was really making this rhetorical question-song contain an answer that he wanted his hearers to know is unequivocal. He had the equivalent of a Smiley Face (see it here), a satisfaction that others in our cultural landscape haven’t found (a la the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger’s outlook on ‘Satisfaction’).

Dennis Jernigan’s story had really become known widely only in the late 1980s, though some of the people closest to him knew of his previous lifestyle and his turning from that. Why should he need to confess his homosexuality to others who weren’t directly impacted by this? He shares that in mid-1988 his sense that God had big plans for him, by confessing this. And so he told the church where he was ministering in Oklahoma the bare facts of his life less than 10 years earlier – that he’d been living as a homosexual, even though he’d grown up knowing and feeling convicted that this was wrong. His Christian upbringing and education must have shouted in his ears at times ‘Dennis, how can you do this?’. A series of events - -a music concert, an in-your-face friend’s confrontation (in a heartfelt, unconditional way), among others – allowed Dennis to accept he could turn from this episode, that God and others would not smite him. But by 1988, Dennis was feeling that Evil’s force was still trying to debilitate him with his own personal history. ‘Unburden yourself’, and even more so, ‘let others know there’s a God that fills up the space that the chief Demon once occupied’. There’s freedom and relief in confession. That’s what you can read of Dennis’ mindset in mid-1988 on his website. And, Dennis discovered something more. Others identified with his situation, a phenomenon that continues today. God had more than just Dennis in mind, but others too who needed the answer he’d found.      

Dennis doesn’t sound like someone who doubted sharing his story in 1988 was the right thing to do. No, from his song’s words, you get the feeling that he was very secure in this. That says something about Christian fellowship that is genuine. There’s no condemnation, since everyone stumbles, even thrashes about with behavioral and attitudinal junk. Dennis had discovered where to unload his refuse, and how to get beyond its stench, even after he’d dumped it years before. Just admit to others that you’ve got B. O., a body odor that asserts itself, unless you take a shower and clean up. Dennis shares that his 1988 experience was like having Mary Magdalene’s perfume poured out. The people at the scene disparaged her for this, but she made dirty feet and an entire room smell beautiful. Dennis did something our world today says is foolish too – turning from inner feelings, and offering Him his broken vessel-life. What brings satisfaction? Is Mick Jagger all wrong in his words…satisfaction is not here in our world? How about in another world?   

Composer’s rendition of song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc0_9kKZq0c

Testimony by composer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCs7Weu6pp0

Bio on composer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Jernigan

And, see this book:  Giant Killers: Crushing Strongholds , Securing Freedom in Your Life, by Dennis Jernigan. WaterBrook Press, 2005.

I Am a Sheep -- Dennis Jernigan

He’d begun a new life five years previously, but was still at the beginning of his music ministry life. The 29-year Dennis Jernigan was sorting through a past that still brought back memories, and as he pondered his next steps while living in Oklahoma, “I Am a Sheep” flowed from his spirit in 1988. It was a sense of his relationship to the Creator-Protector that he still remembered over two decades later, as he testified in a video to help his own children who were apparently heartbroken over something. That microcosm of Dennis’ life tells us something – incidents and feelings that are decades old can still be used by Him to salve hurts. Is that part of why we so often have difficult experiences?

Dennis Jernigan had plenty of experiences to draw upon, even as a 29-year old, which you can read from his own pen at his website (see below). His past homosexuality is something he shares openly, as he seeks to help others see how he was transformed—or rather, WHO transformed him. By 1988, he and his wife Melinda had been married five years and had children, so all his past was forgotten and buried, right? No way, Dennis would say. In fact, in mid-1988 he felt the great need to confess all of his life to the church where he was ministering. His compulsion to do so was probably reflected in what we can see in “I Am a Sheep”, in that he felt He was with him to cover his guilt and permit him to share what he had not shared before. Dennis’ use of words like ‘watching’, ‘guarding’, ‘shelter’, ‘rescue’, and ‘victory’ indicate how he felt at the time, though still reminded of his past. A great protection was available to him. The Protector in fact had been with him even during his ‘dark’ years, Dennis will tell you. Jernigan also writes that there were new vistas he gained after he opened up about his life in July 1988. His example coaxed others to also expose the dark areas of their lives. The next year he also learned that God had begun this great work on him while he was still a child, as his grandmother watched and prayed over him. So, it was with a deep sense of personal gratitude and reflection across decades of his life when Dennis first sang ‘He is my shepherd’, learning of the various ways this relationship had been  manifested in his experience, and the new ways it was developing too.

He shepherds me, not just to shield me from my past, but to use that to transform and reenergize my existence today. You can hear this in Dennis’ words – the sheltering, guarding scope of God’s role leads to ‘victory’ in the culmination of “I Am a Sheep”.  The experience of Dennis Jernigan in 1988 tells me that he found his shepherd is not only a protector, but also a propeller.  He knew that God had watched over him, but this 29-year old composer also felt He was urging him to acknowledge his experiences openly. He had more in His plans for Dennis and those He could touch. In 2010, Dennis still knew that, as he drew upon the song’s message for his own children’s struggle. Do you think Dennis and Melinda Jernigan knew how to guard and help their kids in 2010? They had a pretty good idea, don’t you think?

 Some biographical information on Dennis Jernigan:

websites:

What Dennis says about this song in a U-Tube video in 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP7BxLcJRSQ

 http://www.dennisjernigan.com/djtestimony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Jernigan

And, see this book:  Giant Killers: Crushing Strongholds , Securing Freedom in Your Life, by Dennis Jernigan. WaterBrook Press, 2005.

At the Name of Jesus -- Dennis Jernigan

Someone might have asked him ‘Are you having a mid-life crisis?’ After all, he was turning 30, and he’d just shared something with a crowd of people, something that most of us would feel ashamed to say in public. But, hearing what he wrote later, and recognizing the source of the words makes one see in a different light what he must have been thinking. Dennis Jernigan knew how to excise the guilt from his consciousness, and it meant being totally transparent, and trusting in the foundation of Him about whom another wrote centuries earlier. Jernigan’s words in “At the Name of Jesus” are so similar to an ancient passage, that we can be certain what he was doing when he was inspired to write a contemporary version of that same text.

Jernigan’s story is so well-known today that we might forget there was a time when he had not shared it, but had kept it hidden. He “came out” in 1988 from behind the veil of homosexuality that had haunted his life, even after his marriage to his wife Melinda some five years earlier. His testimony and the songs he’s written carry a consistent theme about freedom for the wrongdoer – ‘sinner’, in biblical terms, a word that our culture doesn’t want us to acknowledge.  Dennis seems to say that he had taken our culture’s advice for too long, even while being a believer and knowing that God is omniscient. Eventually, he knew he needed to take away the ammunition of the Enemy (‘Satan’ – another term our pop culture does not take seriously). So by mid-1988, Dennis was standing before his spiritual family and confessing his previous life’s perversity. We can know from the words in his song “At the Name of Jesus” that he must have been an avid bible reader at about that same time, perhaps as he sought freedom from his conscience-stricken condition.  What made him apparently draw upon the great apostle Paul’s words (Philippians 2:10-11) for this song? Was he longing for the time in the hereafter, when his mistakes would no longer dog him? Don’t we all? It must have been some moment when he was reading this letter from a spiritual brother 2,000 years old, and he understood ‘I don’t have to wait.’ Was he intrigued that someone could write something so full of joy from a prison? Dennis wrote his song to say ‘praise Him’ now, for what he knew would one day be true, despite the mess that was still trying to cling to him in the 1980’s.  

Did it occur to Dennis Jernigan that Paul and he were both prisoners, at least at one time? Jernigan’s a smart, sensitive guy, so it’s not much of a stretch to suggest that he adopted Paul’s method for prison-life management on purpose, in order to seek his own cure. Read the apostle’s words about civilization’s destiny, call upon His name, and usher his kingship into your life, Jernigan says with his renewal of the ancient words. Are you in prison? Think about the future, Dennis and Paul might say. Count on the time when He will overwhelm every evil deed and thought, every injustice. His name and its owner will be all that matters then. Do you hear the call of His name?   

                

Some biographical information on Dennis Jernigan:

websites: 

http://www.dennisjernigan.com/djtestimony

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Jernigan

And, see this book:  Giant Killers: Crushing Strongholds , Securing Freedom in Your Life, by Dennis Jernigan. WaterBrook Press, 2005.

I Belong to Jesus – Dennis Jernigan

If someone told you one of his favorite “Christian” songs was similar in some ways to Chuck Berry’s rock-n-roll classic “Johnny B. Goode”, or maybe to a jazz\boogie-woogie or swing tune, what would you think? Rock-n-Roll and Christianity? Jazz and God? Time was when they were considered mutually exclusive, right? Hrrrumph…God doesn’t boogie – isn’t that what grandma said? Dennis Jernigan composed something in “I Belong to Jesus” that tests that presumption, although his real message is in the song’s words. The message is potent, overflowing with energy, one that can turn a life on its head. So, what kind of revolutionary music would be appropriate for such a song? Jernigan must have been wondering the same thing when he composed it.

Jernigan has a lot of life to tell in his music – maybe that’s why he’s written over 2,000 songs. His story of delivery from the gay (homosexual) lifestyle is stirring (one can read about it in many places – see them listed below). He tells the story readily, including a brief segment on a video in which he calls the song his personal declaration of what Christ has done for him. The Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians about becoming a new creation ring in Dennis Jernigan’s ears. He shares that he’s been ‘signed, sealed, and delivered…His’. There’s few issues in human culture that are as powerful as those surrounding sex, agreed? You can hear how dangerous sexual sin is in Jernigan’s words that he borrows from another Apostle (Peter) in the song’s first verse…Satan is a roaring lion, hungry to devour me and you (1 Peter 5:8). You can sense he knows the risk, given his former lifestyle. And, grace is not a license for a return to sin, but a gift that should make us want to not sin all the more, he says. Though Satan is to be feared, I just need to believe in ‘the truth’ that God has communicated to me – I belong to Him, not Satan. And, He was tempted by Satan, just as I am (see the picture above).

The magnet that draws my physical being toward evil is overpowered by Jesus. That’s the song’s theme. If that tension between the world of right (Jesus) and of evil (Satan) suggests a conflict is ongoing, maybe that’s what Jernigan’s musical accompaniment in the song intends to convey. It’s jumpy, exciting stuff. It reminds me that the Christian life is not for docile, couch potato-types. Jesus could not be tamed. When you hear the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection, set to Jernigan’s music, who wouldn’t want to join Him? Begin 2011 knowing and being confident in what Dennis Jernigan has you sing in “I Belong to Jesus” – you’re free !

Some biographical information on Dennis Jernigan: websites: http://www.dennisjernigan.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Jernigan

A video and testimony for the song “I Belong to Jesus”, by the composer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-JUa0Ux0mU

And, see this book: Giant Killers: Crushing Strongholds , Securing Freedom in Your Life, by Dennis Jernigan. WaterBrook Press, 2005.

Nobody Fills My Heart Like Jesus – Dennis Jernigan

Dennis Jernigan is a living example of a fresh start. He willingly lives, composes, sings, and retells his story for literally thousands and even millions of people. If you haven’t heard his testimony, find one of the websites or a book listed at the end of this entry…they tell it much better than I can write about it here. Look at one of his songs, “Nobody Fills My Heart Like Jesus”, with me for a few minutes, and his life experience and how he has reacted to God’s influence jumps, and even dances right off the music score.
He cannot help celebrating God’s mercy and grace. It’s a message that we can take to others whom our culture misleads, to people trapped in lifestyles that our holy and compassionate God can help them escape. Do you know someone, maybe even several people, who need that, people who feel hopeless? Read just a little of Jernigan’s story here, and pass it along.

Dennis Jernigan came out of a life of homosexuality in 1981 when he graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU), a graduation in his life in more than one way. Although raised as a churchgoer , and schooled by his grandmother to play the piano – a skill which he honed at the church – Jernigan says he had became unbalanced in trying to please everyone, including his own father. He felt rejected by his father, which Jernigan says was the root of his gay lifestyle, even though his father’s (and his mother’s also) actions were not unlike most other parents of the time. Jernigan’s escape from homosexuality began shortly after his OBU graduation, when he went to a concert by the group Second Chapter of Acts. Jernigan was attracted to the group’s message, which he says was more genuine than what he had seen in other Christian entertainers. The group’s message was that God is real, and that He can lift burdens, even those we haven’t shared with another soul. Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised Jernigan – after all, he was a musician - but the music’s words articulated something that he wanted deeply - - God’s love and hope. Other events turned Jernigan’s life around, in fact 180 degrees around (see the websites or books below), so that today Dennis and Melinda (his wife) have been married for 26 years and have nine children.

Dennis Jernigan could have believed our culture’s lie, that homosexuality is OK, that God made him that way. Instead, Jernigan is now one of the most vivid examples of God’s power to change a distorted life into a fruitful, exuberant existence. “Nobody Fills My Heart Like Jesus”, written in 1991, was one of Jernigan’s first songs in a recording career that was launched the same year with his first two albums. The song’s first few words ‘..from the start…’ hint that Jernigan was still celebrating his emergence into a new life. Although the precise origin of the song is not known, its words underscore his feelings of redemption about which he writes and speaks freely. His book Giant Killers echoes what we sing in the chorus-refrain, when he writes ‘Relationship with God fills our hearts and precludes relationship with any evil…’ (p. 134). It’s a very personal statement Jernigan makes in the song’s 2nd verse, which he also expresses in Giant Killers, proclaiming that God loves us even when we’re wrong, and that we can cry out to him, calling upon him and asking to hear what he says about us (p. 111).

 Other Jernigan songs communicate the message about his life reversal, and now celebration, too, so there may be other stories are out there to discover. Looking back, it might seem that even while Dennis Jernigan was in bondage, the Lord was preparing him to spread a message. That’s hope for even the hopeless, a place where Dennis Jernigan saw himself once.


Information on Dennis Jernigan obtained from the following: websites: http://www.dennisjernigan.com/

http://www.okbu.edu/news/2006-10-27/dennis-jernigan-speaks-at-obu-beyond-the-hill-chapel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Jernigan


books: Giant Killers: Crushing Strongholds , Securing Freedom in Your Life, by Dennis Jernigan. WaterBrook Press, 2005. The Complete Book of Hymns: Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2006.