There really is always more. Since my initial healing, life has become less of a burden and more of an adventure. I have learned to stop seeing life through the lens of the world—or through the lens of the enemy of God—and learned to see each and every situation and circumstance through the lens of the kingdom of God. What does that mean? I want to see life from God’s perspective rather than solely from my human perspective. From a human point of view, I see a lot of hurt and failure and death and destruction, but from God’s point of view, I see a lot of healing and triumph and life and restoration! I can either see what God sees and respond with hope, or I can see what the enemy wants me to see and walk in despair.

How did I learn this? While still at the church in Oklahoma City, Pastor Jerry taught us to pray using the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern.

Pray, then, in this way: “Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” —Jesus (Matthew 6:9-13)

For eight years we gathered at 6 a.m. Monday through Friday to pray, and I helped lead that prayer time. As we asked the Lord to bring His kingdom into our lives in a tangible way, we began to experience freedom and insight to successful living that I had never experienced or seen before. During that time, it began to dawn on me the reality of the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:33 that says, "But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” To seek to know the kingdom, I reasoned, I had better be seeking to know the King of that kingdom, Jesus Christ! So my journey became even more intimate and even more liberating in those days. Overcoming same sex attraction became such a small portion of my life because I began to discover that the true needs of my life were more basic than the sexual temptations I experienced that even those fleeting temptations would wane if I met my needs through Jesus.

As the years went on and I deepened my walk with God, the freedom I experienced went to places I had only dreamed of being possible. It was as if what I had experienced on the night of November 7, 1981, was merely the beginning of my liberation. That night the doors were blown off of my personal hell and prison. What transpired in the years to come has been nothing less than Father tearing down the prison walls in ways I did not even know I needed.

Even though I had been walking in freedom since 1981, the realization of the massive extent of that freedom was yet to dawn on me. During the years of 1989 and 1990, I was telling my story more and more in public forums. With each sharing of that story, I felt a bit freer than the previous time. It was amazing to experience...yet I still had moments of despair and depression and anxiety.

This was somewhat bewildering to me because I considered myself free. If I was so free, why did I still battle such things? After all, I knew who I was in Christ, and I knew whose I was as His child!

By this time, I had become fully aware that my battleground was not my physical body, but rather my mind. For this reason, I had come to trust the Lord in faith even when my feelings did not match up to what I knew to be truth. As I sought the Lord about this one day, I heard Him say, “Son, what are you thinking about when despairing, depressing, anxious thoughts come?”

That was an easy one to answer. “Lord, why did you allow homosexuality in my life? Where were you when I was five years old and that man exposed himself to me? You say in your Word that you will never leave me and never forsake me...but it seems like you did. And how about when my grandmother died? You left me utterly alone. And why did my dad never tell me he loved me until after I was married? And that incident with my college mentor? Where were you in that?”

Every depressing and despairing anxious thought was attached to a memory of wounding in my past. “What do I do with those thoughts, Father?”

“You give them to Me, son. Make a list of all the times you feel I have forsaken or forgotten you and I will show you my point of view when the time is right. Just make your list...and trust Me.”

So I did. That list became several pages long. Single line memories. Single moments of hurt. Moments of betrayal. Moments of humiliation. Moments of shame. Moments I had carried since childhood. After my list was complete, I felt exhausted yet one step closer to God in honest intimacy. Lighter. Freer. Yet still lost in a fog of wondering how and when God would reveal His Truth to me. After I made my list and felt I had gotten everything out in the open, I gave the list to Father and asked Him to show me His point of view whenever He would. I did not have to wait long.

Two weeks passed and I had honestly not thought much about the list. Just making it had taken away some of the feelings I had been dealing with. In addition, I had been invited to come to Boynton, Oklahoma—my hometown—and lead out in a community-wide night of praise. Full of anticipation at getting to share my music with the people I had grown up with, yet slightly apprehensive in knowing full well I might have to see face to face some of the people who had hurt me in the past, I prepared for the night.

I should have known that once I got there things would be fine, but once again I had allowed the subtle lies of the enemy to invade my mind to a certain degree. As I had learned by that time, though, I battled through the lies with the Truth, and faced the giants of fear and shame and past hurts with grace and favor of the Lord. The night went so well. With only about fifty people in attendance and knowing most of the people personally, the night was at once intimate and healing for me. Soaking in the triumph of having faced those giants, I was very refreshed after the concert of worship. But God had something more refreshing for me than I had bargained for.

After the concert, a little gray-haired lady, June Smith, approached me and said, “Isn’t it wonderful how your grandmother Jernigan’s prayers have been answered?”

Somewhat dumbfounded, I asked her what she was talking about. She said, “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?” I replied.

“Remember when you were a little boy and would go to your grandmother's house and play the piano?”

“Yes,” I said. “Those are some of my most precious memories.”
Going on, she asked, “And did you know she would stand behind you and pray for you?” “How do you know that?” was all I could say.


“Every week for years, son, she would come to our weekly women’s prayer meetings at church and tell us how she would ask the Lord to use you in the area of worship and music for His kingdom and for His glory...and she would ask us to agree with her in prayer. And, Dennis, we still do!” As of this writing, two of those little ladies are still alive and continue to pray for me...and I am fifty-four years old. Grandma died when I was fourteen!

Instantly all I could think of was the list I had just made two weeks earlier, and how I had asked God to show me where He had been when my grandmother had died; why He had abandoned me in that way. Suddenly my mind was flooded with Truth as I heard Father say, “Son, you will see your grandmother again. And you thought I had forgotten you? Son, I’ve had you covered in prayer since day one. I multiplied your grandmother’s prayers. I never forsook you...even for a moment.”

Each memory that I had placed on that list began to come into what I call a kingdom perspective. When I was five, someone had protected me from that man’s touch. All the teasing and humiliation I went through in high school was not in vain...I began to see those things as opportunities for growth rather than for being beaten down. The shame I felt due to my willful disobedience of God suddenly washed away by the Truth of God’s love for me. Even the wounding at the hand of my college mentor came into a different light as I allowed Father to show me how He could take even my greatest pain and sorrow and bring from them my greatest healing and joy. And then it hit me. I would never understand nor appreciate the sweetness of the rain had I never gone through the desert episodes of my life. But He was still not through...

As Father would have it, He began to nudge me into talking with my dad about things that had happened when I was a boy, like why he could not talk with me about sex, and the biggy—why he could never verbally tell me he loved me. Because I was traveling more and more by this time, sharing my story and my music, I had the opportunity to take my dad on one of these ministry trips. Having him all to myself in my truck, I asked the Lord for grace, and I asked Daddy all the questions I had been so afraid to ask when I was younger.

“Daddy, why did you never tell me you loved me when I was growing up?” I asked, my voice shaking and my heart thumping, afraid of what he might say. But I had to know.

“Well, my dad never told me...so...I didn’t know how to tell you.”

With one simple honest question and one simple honest answer, my dad and I healed a generational wound in our family. My dad now has no trouble telling me how he feels about me. A man of few words to this day, all I needed to hear were those three little words. I would have been forever happy to have heard them only one time, having lived a lifetime without them to that point!

Another thing God began to do? Forgive those who had hurt me. I found that easier to do when I realized that not forgiving them was not punishing them one iota, but to not forgive them was keeping me locked away in the prison of my own mind. I was the only one being punished. What freedom I found in simply releasing those who had hurt me. Yet Father was still not through. He simply said, “There’s one more person you need to forgive, son.”

“Who is that, Father?” I asked.


 “Yourself,” was all He said.


 Part of my feelings of despair and depression had stemmed not only from past hurts but from how I still held myself responsible for my past choices. And, indeed, I am responsible for my choices...but I had continued punishing myself from time to time, not realizing I had received God’s forgiveness but had not forgiven myself! In a sense, my standards were somehow higher than God’s! What a liberation day it was when I simply forgave myself—and moved on.

I discovered that day that there is one thing a believer should give up all hope on. You want to know what that is? A believer should give up the hope of ever changing their past. It cannot be done. I discovered I had been wasting far too much of my time consumed with the “what ifs” rather than moving on into the journey God calls this life. I am not alone; never have been, never will be. He has been with me each and every step of the way on this incredible journey, and I feel as if I am just beginning.

I am who my Father says I am. My past does not define me. The gay community does not define me. The government does not define me. My feelings do not define me. My circumstances do not define me. People do not define me. Even I do not define me. Only One has that honor, and He calls me His own.

I have been utterly, irrevocably, changed...signed, sealed, delivered, a child of the King who has decided to stop sitting beneath the table of life and settling for the crumbs that fall beneath. I am a child of the King of Kings and my Father has set a table before me—in this life—in the midst of even my enemies and welcomes me to sit and dine fully with Him; anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. I am His. This is my life, and it speaks for itself.

Dennis Jernigan

This is an excerpt from the Dennis Jernigan book, Renewing Your Mind: Identity and the Matter of Choice. It can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Renewing-Your-Mind-Identity-Matter/dp/1613143737/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1GZNXS5ELN5VZ&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.AzdEHdBTMOTtUENfsWu4UA.iqW1r7w7iwlGizbjnBz1FgM45tDrmRp4AVQvUh0pUPk&dib_tag=se&keywords=renewing+your+mind+identity+and+the+matter+of+choice+dennis+jernigan&qid=1750857840&sprefix=renewing+your+mind+identity+and+the+matter+of+choice+dennis+jernigan%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-1

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