Core Identity

As I was growing up, it never dawned on me to think about my core identity—the deepest part of me that defines who I am. When puberty hit and my sexual identity became more solidified toward attraction to those of the same sex, I began to question a bit. Why was I attracted to other males? How do I fix this? It led me to beg God to change me. When nothing changed, I became disillusioned in my faith, concluding this was simply the way God made me. But the older I became, the less happy I was in a homosexual identity. This lack of happiness led me to question on a deeper level. Is this all there is?
 As I became involved with other men who believed they were homosexual, I became more confused. I was constantly told that this was just the way God made me. I was constantly encouraged that I had no choice in the matter at all. Mulling such thoughts over in my mind, I could never quite reconcile these simple answers with the way I felt. This led me to the constant questioning of my homosexuality. Was this truly my nature or was there more to the story? The more I questioned my homosexual identity, the more desperate those questions became. Desperation led me to wonder whether or not I might just have a choice in the matter after all.

I will not detail my story here. If you want to know more about how I came to the place of belief I now walk, read my autobiography, Sing Over Me. Suffice it to say, I came ultimately to the conclusion that I did not have a choice as to what would tempt me (same sex attraction), but I always had the choice as to how I would respond to it. After coming to faith in Christ, my worldview became Christ-centered. This new focus became the bedrock from which I launched the journey of renewing my mind, completely altering the way I would think from that point on!

Where is core identity found? In our body? In our genitals? In our feelings? In our heart? In our mind? Is identity found in our culture—the way we were raised? Is it found in our ethnicity or our nationality? Is it found in our personality type or in our profession? Is it to be found in the way others perceive us? Does our sexuality define us? How about our religion? How about our language? Are we defined by our genetic code? Are we defined by our convictions or causes (pacifist, environmentalist, Black Lives Matter, conservative, liberal, etc.)? Are we defined by our looks? Some would say it is a combination of all these things that make us who we are. The scientific community would sum it up like this: identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks, and/or expressions that make a person who they are. Identity is conscious awareness.

But let’s think logically about where all these various defining things emanate from. Do they not all begin and end with the way we think? Could it be our identity begins and ends with the mind? Could it be that in order to alter our undesired habits and ways of thinking about ourselves we need but change the way we think? I know this is easier said than done, but isn’t our well-being worth the work required to obtain it? Identity is conscious awareness as received in our thoughts. It is our human mind!

We are constantly thinking about ourselves. How does that person view me? What do I want to eat? What shall I wear today? Do I like hanging around that person? How will spending time with them benefit my life? Will this job pay enough to finance my vision for my life? Will that vaccination hurt me? How will this election affect me? Even in our sleep we never stop talking to ourselves. Never. The way we think about ourselves has a direct affect upon the way we live our life. The way we think affects our view of reality. My reality was forever altered the day I decided to live and think about myself according to the way my Maker designed me. Of course, this flew directly in the face of the way I felt. The best decision I ever made was to stop defining myself by the way I felt and start living according to the Truth as defined by God and His Word. This began the most incredible journey of my life!

What does it mean to know something in one’s heart? This can be confusing, yet we hear such questions all the time. How many times have you heard a question such as, How do I get that knowledge from my head to my heart? And that is a perfectly good question, especially when we hear of scientific studies proving that the heart does indeed have brain-like cells, giving it the ability to think independently of the brain!4 Simply put, science is coming to the place of thinking that the thoughts produced by the heart act as a communication between the various cells and organs of the body, acting as a sort of synchronizing signal for the entire body! The way I think about this news is that the mind defines us in our core and the heart carries this information to the rest of our body!

While this is fascinating to know, for our intents and purposes I will conclude that identity begins and ends with the way we think about ourselves in our mind. What does it mean to know something in one’s mind? Could it be said that one is defined by what one thinks of him/herself? Could it be that, ultimately, we should define ourselves according to the way our Maker designed us? If we have as our thought-foundation a Christ-centric worldview, then we must come to this conclusion found in God’s Word:

For as he thinks within himself, so he is. (Proverbs 23:7)

In order to renew one’s mind, one must operate from some point of view. My freedom and new identity came from allowing God to define me—came from seeking to know His, the Maker’s, point of view concerning Dennis Jernigan. The following are some of the questions

He confronted me with accompanied by the answers He showed me according to His Word:

1. Why did God make man and woman?

From my own experience with and study of God’s Word, I believe there is a two-fold reason God made man and woman. This is what the Word of God says:

Be fruitful and multiply... (Genesis 35:11)

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her... (Ephesians 5:25)

My conclusion after reading the Word and viewing my life from God’s point of view? Man and woman were created by God and commanded to make babies! If He created me to be a man, it was for the purpose of making more people! That cannot be accomplished according to God’s design by having sex with another man. Cannot be done. God desired more of us because He created us for fellowship with Him. The sin of mankind was the problem. Where does sin derive from? Man thinking it’s all about him! Sin comes from stinkin’ thinin’!

2. What is the primary purpose of sex?

God made sex for the purpose of procreation. He made it pleasurable so we would want to experience it. Pure and simple, without sex there would be no more humans. There is nothing wrong with pleasure as long as it is derived within the confines of God’s ultimate design. After settling that God was God and that His design would define me, the questions became even more specific.

3. Did God give you a penis and testicles or did He give you a vagina and ovaries?

Having a penis and testicles defined me as being physically male. Being physically male made me wonder why I did not have feelings of attraction to the opposite sex. Concluding that I had been lied to was the first step in putting off the lies about the way I felt—or did not feel! Although I initially did not feel attracted to women, I did have the desire for a family. This led me to the conclusion that if that desire was there, then it must be part of my design to feel attracted to a woman. From that conclusion, I came to the place of realizing that my feelings of attraction to other men was simply as a result of wrong thinking. The reality became simple to me at that point. Whenever I felt attraction to another man, I renounced it as a result of wrong thinking and replaced that wrong thinking with simple thoughts like, God made me physically a man; therefore he made me to think like a man. I want to see a woman in the way God designed me to see her. Father God, please replace the wrong thoughts with right thoughts and replace the wrong feelings with right feelings.

The more I changed the way I thought, the more my true needs and desires were met. My despair over my feelings was slowly but surely being replaced with right feelings due to the way I was now thinking! God’s Word says in Psalm 37:4,

Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart.

The more I sought relationship with Him through the ways I thought about Him and His Word and how it applied to my life, the more my feelings changed. Even my sexual attractions toward men began to be replaced by attractions to women. So much mental healing had taken place in my life from 1981 to 1983 that I was able to realize a dream I never thought possible due to my homosexual feelings. I was able to marry Melinda, and as of this writing, I have been married for over thirty-three years, have nine awesome children, and nine incredible grandchildren...so far!

The changing of the way I thought about myself actually began much more simplistically than that. To renew the way I thought about myself as a man, I asked the Lord to reveal any wrong thinking I had about myself. In order to do this, I realized that I had been listening to the liar for far too long in my existence. But how would I cut off the voice of the liar? I went on what would become a twelve year fast from all the other voices of influence that were not God centered. From 1981 until 1993, I did not listen to pop/secular music. I did not watch TV. I listened to only voices that built me up according to God’s design for my life. In the process, I learned to discern the voice and will of God more clearly.

As I silenced the other voices, I gave God the freedom to speak to me in any form He chose for me. His Word became alive to me. From reading God’s Word, I discovered how loving and for me He was! I discovered He was never disgusted with me but was disgusted with my sin. I discovered that I no longer had to perform for His love and acceptance. It had always been my choice to receive or reject! That Truth alone changed everything! Gone were the days of trying to prove my worth by my performance. This meant I performed because He loved me rather than so He would love me!

The more I discovered about Who He said He was, the more I discovered who He designed me to be. He is holy. I am set apart for His purposes in this life. He is righteous. I am to walk righteously. He is peace. He has planted a heart of peace in me and set my mind at peace. He is Healer. I am here to be an agent of His healing power. He is Provider. I am here to be an agent of His provision. He is Shepherd. I am here to guide others to Him. He is always there. I am never alone. He is victorious over sin. I am no longer a victim of my own sin but am victor over it because of Him!

Even though my circumstances did not change, the way I viewed them did! I could choose to think what thoughts I wanted to think. That was incredible news and incredibly freeing. Rather than overthinking everything about myself from a man-centric point of view, I could simplify my thought processes to such a degree that freedom was the result simply by allowing the Word and intended design of God for me as the filter through which I viewed reality.

So much healing has come to my mind to this point that it is difficult for me to believe I ever thought I was gay in the first place. Let that sink in. Freedom comes from the way we choose to think about ourselves. Will you allow stinkin’ thinkin’ to define you? Will you let past failure define you? Will you allow other people to define you? Will you allow feelings to define you? Will you allow temptation to define you? Will you allow bad habits to define you?

If there is something that you habitually think about yourself that you do not desire, could it be said you are allowing that thought to define you? Why put up with that way of thinking? Does your desire for drugs define you or do they reveal a deeper need for thinking about your circumstances in a new way? Will you be content with being a victim of your own stinkin’ thinkin’ or will you choose to seek victory over that way of thinking? The choice really is yours.

One of the best things I ever did to facilitate right thinking about myself as a man was to enlist the help of others in my life. I felt guilty about the failures of my life, especially in regard to my sexual failure. I felt so much shame that I believed the lie that I was not worthy of someone else’s time or effort or love. Guilt is the awareness that I did something wrong. Shame is the belief that I am something wrong. We kick shame to the curb by getting to the Truth of God’s Word and the reality of His design for us as new creations. When I dealt with my shame in honesty and came to the mental conclusion that Jesus Christ had born all my shame on the cross, I took the first step toward Truth and freedom: I got honest with myself. I got honest with God. I got honest with others.

One of my choices was to surround myself with people who would help me walk in the Truth of my God-designed identity. To this day, I practice this in my life. My wife and my children have the freedom to remind me who and Whose I am. One of my personal rules is that Dennis Jernigan does not get to call himself something his Father does not call him. I cannot even get away with little slip-ups like saying to myself, “Stupid idiot” when I do something boneheaded! My wife and my children automatically say to me, “Is that who you really are?” or, “Is that who God says you are?” And I love it because I know they absolutely love me and want nothing but what is best for me. Stinkin’ thinkin’ is recognized in the moment. I put it off and replace it with the Truth...and move on down the road to my whole identity in Christ!

No longer do I define myself as ex-gay. No longer do I define myself as a recovering or formal homosexual. No longer do I define myself. My Father has that place in my life, and He uses other people to help me. I am what and who His Word says I am. And so are you.

Would you be willing to consider seeing yourself from a whole new point of view? If so, read on (in next week’s installment)!

Dennis Jernigan

Excerpt from the Dennis Jernigan book, Renewing Your Mind: Identity and the Matter of Choice

Photo courtesy of https://pixabay.com/static/frontend/3623f49a093c354a.svg

4. Rollin McCraty, Raymond Trevor Bradley, Dana Tomasino, “The Heart Has its Own ‘Brain’ and Consciousness,” (January, 2015). http://in5d.com/the-heart-has- its-own-brain-and-consciousness/.