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.

God of This City - Bluetree

Urban blight…crime…drug gangs…slums…prostitution. Could you ever imagine feeling positive about this kind of existence? Would you have dared to live in Sodom and Gomorrah, or maybe Nineveh? The characters we read about in the Old Testament who visited those diseased places were repulsed too …after all, who wants a mob pounding on your door, demanding you hand over your guests for gang rape (Lot’s quandary in Genesis 19) ? I’d have run away, wouldn’t any sane person? Who willingly goes to such places, especially after seeing the pictures of squalor? But, hold on! If you see the pictures of a contemporary Sodom-like city, it does look rather enticing. The travel guides know how to dress up a place like Pattaya Beach, Thailand (see the picture above). I wonder if the members of the Irish band Bluetree knew what awaited them when they prepared to visit Pattaya a few years ago. Bluetree -- the band’s name tells Christians to stand out from the crowd, like blue trees in a green forest – is from Belfast, Ireland. That was how the group’s lead singer Aaron Boyd says they must have appeared to a crowd in the “Climax Bar” – basically a brothel -- in Pattaya. After all, why would a group of Christians sing for two hours in such a place, and in a city of such infamous reputation, considered to be a world-renowned hub of the sex industry? Boyd admits he and his bandmates were leery of this proposition at first, but their powerful witness in the song “God of This City” came to them as they considered the city’s lifestyle and its poverty, afflicting the spirit as well as the daily life of its residents. You can read about their story and even see a video by Boyd, who tells of the experience in Pattaya, with these links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetree http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXh_tgjnYJw http://www.experiencingworship.com/articles/reviews/2009-2-Bluetree-God-Of.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattaya Bluetree has not forgotten Pattaya. They are preparing to begin a charity in May 2009 called "Stand Out International", an effort to save kids from the sex industry. Boyd relates their attitude about themselves and the world about them, in an age when morbid news can desensitize even Christians …"you eventually grow so numb that when you hear that a car bomb killed 10 people, you immediately go on with the mundane business of the day without as much as giving it a second thought." Boyd doesn’t want his Christian message to stop at the stage, and Bluetree’s charity raises the bar for all of us. I can be like Lot, and try to live in my own cocoon inside an evil that will eventually claw at me. Or, will I be like Jonah, angry and dismissive of the depraved, wishing for their destruction? It's tough to be a lonely blue tree, but with others we might persuade to paint themselves this garish color, maybe we can turn the green forest into a brilliant sapphire.