Posted on 04/01/2013 11:12:14 AM PDT by fwdude
He could play the piano by ear in the first grade. His artistic and creative bent set him apart from the other boys, and this sense of being different grew steadily over time.
I could hear a song on the radio and sit down and play it, says Dennis Jernigan, acclaimed Christian songwriter and musician. His life is the subject of the forthcoming feature film Sing Over Me that will focus on his deliverance from homosexuality, when God made him a new creature in Christ.
Jernigan grew up in Boynton, Oklahoma, a prairie town of only 400 people about 50 miles from Tulsa. The guys labeled me a sissy pretty early on, he admits. By junior high they called me fag and queer. He found solace by hanging out with girls, because they seemed to connect with his emotional side.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.godreports.com ...
Jernigan isn't an isolated example, by any measure, of people who've escaped from homosexuality. Most don't want to broadcast their stories and want to simply live their new lives of freedom quietly, free from the attacks of the homo-Left, who will NEVER forgive such a "betrayal." Be sure that Jernigan will be getting his share of bile from them.
God always makes a way for those will call upon Him.
Always.
I’m so glad they’ll be making a movie about Jernigan! What an amazing deliverance story.
ps insert old joke here:
Piano. And probably guitar as well.
Van Cliburn, who died recently died, had a similar experience growing up. In his case. he was smothered by a mother who lived to very old age and just ended up taking a partner who __I surmise—was no threat to MoM”
Most homosexuals are not born that way.
They just get sucked into it.
Great story. If the left had their way, you know he’d be forced to remain a homosexual.
Yes, he’d be deemed to have a psychological disorder called “homophobia” and counseled to frequent highway rest stops to accept himself.
“Homosexuality” is really not much different from any other sinful temptation. As such, I’m not sure anyone can really “escape” it, or be “delivered” from it.
Yes, people can find their same-sex attraction (SSA) diminish over time.
And yes, certainly people who experience SSA can refrain from engaging in homosexual behavior.
I just don’t think it’s helpful to talk about “escaping” homosexuality, since we don’t magically “escape” any other kinds of sinful temptations.
(I also think, FWIW, that the term “homosexuality” is so imprecise and unhelpful. Let’s instead speak of SSA and homosexual behavior.)
I think you’re looking at it from a purely secular, therapeutic viewpoint. Jernigan’s testimony is that he had supernatural intervention, which certainly CAN entail complete, or even partial, delivery from a compulsion.
Hm. Though I’m an “ever-straight,” I’ve done a good amount of work over the years with Exodus and with Focus on the Family, and have done a good deal of study of the subject.
In most cases, the Lord does not deliver people from temptations in a snap, but does so over time. This is true whether it’s sexual sin or drug abuse.
Of course, as you mention, the Lord still does perform miracles. Some people have been “delivered” from homosexual temptation, from drug abuse, and so on.
I think it can be unhelpful to imply that instantaneous “deliverance” is the norm. That can be very discouraging to those who have prayed for “deliverance” from SSA, for example, and yet who still experience it ...
Don’t Exodus and FoTF both emphasize a psychology-based solution, though?
I think you can escape homosexuality through God’s intervention, without the “help” of psychology.
God invented “psychology.”
Again, I affirm miracles. God does the miraculous. Every day.
But I also recognize that the Lord sometimes brings people out of sinful patterns and cravings and addictions over time.
Are you familiar with Teen Challenge? They are a year-long residential drug rehab ministry. Sometimes it takes a year for people to overcome patterns developed over a lifetime.
And do you know anyone who has experienced SSA? I do.
I have a good friend, a woman, who was married. Then she decided she was a lesbian and left her husband for a woman, who she lived with for several years. She became a Christian and as a Marriage and Family Counselor went around speaking about leaving the lifestyle and getting spit at.
She has now been remarried to a good Christian man for about 20 years and is happy as can be. Two of the most wonderful folks I know.
She also said it was the relationship with the same sex parent that can send you in the homosexual direction.
How would you feel if your daughter announced her intention to marry an ex-homosexual?
No, He didn't.
It is antithetical, from its roots, to God.
Jernigan tells his story as a combination of crisis experience and gradual change in his “orientation”....he was in the audience during a Second Chapter of Acts concert and experienced a dramatic change...went on to marry a woman and produce a large family...I heard him tell it, it was very interesting.
Much of modernity depends on his story being false. So it is necessary (insert Nazi sounding voice here) that he be destroyed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.