Many of our hymns have special stories associated with them. Some of these from the past have been recorded and passed on to us, like those of John Newton and Fanny Crosby. We are fortunate to have some from our own lifetime with writers still alive and sharing their testimonies, not only in the lyrics they have written, but also in video testimonies and occasionally even with dramatic documentaries were they tell their story in their own words.
Such is the case with Christian writer, performer, and recording artist Dennis L. Jernigan. He was born in Sapulpa, Oklahoma in 1959 to Samuel Robert Jernigan and Peggy Yvonne Johnson Jernigan. Soon after his birth, his parents moved to the farm that his grandparents had built and where his father was raised, three miles from the small town of Boynton, Oklahoma. There he and his brothers attended school. When he was six or seven, his grandmother Jernigan moved back to the farm in a trailer next to the old farmhouse where they lived, and she taught him to play the piano by the time he was nine years old. Each day after school he could be found at his grandmother’s house practicing piano, even though he could not read music. The family attended First Baptist Church where his grandfather, Herman Everett Johnson, had been minister, where his parents had met, and where his father led singing.