Giant Killers Crushing Strongholds, Securing Freedom In Your Life

Believing a Lie You read about them in the pages of Scripture. You learn their stories in biographies of great Christians. And if you are like me, you have been privileged to know some of them personally. They are giant killers, men and women armed only (onlyha!) with faith in an almighty God and who have, in boldness, brought down the spiritual foes in their lives. Some have felled sin, once looming tall and solid as Colossus. Some have quelled an anxiety that troubled their souls like gales upon the water. Others have "done in" doubt, despair, or even the fear of death, our last enemy. What heroes, these! What heroines! The stories of many of these giant killers will continue to be retold for generations to come, so thrilling are they. You may have your own stories of defeating the giants in your life, even if another behemoth stands before you now, and those stories mean so much to you. Every story of giant killing is valuable; every one inspiring, every one instructive. Let me now tell you my own story of defeating a giant. My giant may be different from yours. Surely the way in which it grew in my life and the way in which God enabled me to defeat it are different from what you have experienced or will experience in giant killing. But I trust that as you hear my story, God will be at work in your heart, filling you with the confidence that you can overcome the giant challenging you now. I was born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Soon after my birth, my parents moved to the farm my grandparents Samuel Washington Jernigan and Myrtle Mae Snyder had builtthe farm where my father was raised. We lived three miles from the small town of Boynton, Oklahoma (population four hundred), where my brothers and I attended school. The Lord gifted me from an early age to play the piano. By the time I was nine, I was playing for the worship times at First Baptist Church. This was also the church my grandfather Herman Everett Johnson had pastored. This was the church where my parents, Samuel Robert Jernigan and Peggy Yvonne Johnson, had met. My father had also "led singin' " there from the earliest I can remember (as he still does today). When I was six or seven years old, my Grandmother Jernigan moved back to the farm, living in a trailer next to our farmhouse. Each day after school I could be found at my grandmother's house practicing piano (and conveniently forgetting about my chores). My grandma taught me how to play by ear and how to "chord" for "church playin'." She was always kind and supportive of me. By contrast, over in the Jernigan household, we were not an affectionate family. While I did feel affection from my mother, I never remember receiving physical affection from my father or my brothers. In part, this was how families tended to act back then. And in part, the emotional distance was due to my daddy's working so hard. In addition to working the farm, he was employed by a utility company and worked as a mechanic for many years. Since I have gotten older, God has reminded me of many ways my father expressed affection and love for me as I was growing up. My problem was not my father; my problem was that I believed a lie. Once Satan got his foot in the door of my heart, I perceived any rejecttionno matter how big or smallas a lack of love from my dad (or whomever I thought was rejecting me at the time). While from an early age I felt worthless, I discovered something: If I performed well, people would like me. So I tried to be the best in whatever I did, including schoolwork, basketball, and music. In the process I became a selfish person, usually at the expense of others. It wasn't long, however, before I became frustrated, because no matter how well I performed, it neverJernigan, Dennis is the author of 'Giant Killers Crushing Strongholds, Securing Freedom In Your Life', published 2005 under ISBN 9781578567751 and ISBN 1578567750.