Tag Archive - Family

24/7 Prayer at Central

November 13, 2009 in Church, Family, Spirituality with 3 Comments

I spent some time praying at the Gilbert campus tonight for this year’s 24/7 prayer event at Central. It was a great time and very spiritually refreshing. In one station, people could write thoughts onto a white board. I took a picture of one comment that stood out to me.


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As I sat and stared at these three sentences, I suddenly remembered two years ago when I was doing the same exact thing. I was at a 24/7 prayer station, this time it was a station setup with a punching bag. In that station, we were encouraged to write something down that we were frustrated with God about. At that point in our life, Michelle and I had been trying to get pregnant for about a year. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t start a family, especially when I felt that God was the one who had given us such a desire to have one. I wrote my complaint on a piece of paper and left it there and walked away from that night unresolved.


Flash forward to tonight. I sat there and remembered the frustration I had then when I felt that God was silent, and how different that seems to me now as we are currently pregnant with our second child. God is still listening, and prayer really does matter. So wherever your journey with God is right now, don’t give up on Him. He may have an answer for you that you can’t see coming.

May 12

October 14, 2009 in Family with 4 Comments

Many of you have heard by now, at least if you were at Third Format last week, but I want to officially announce that Michelle is pregnant again! We are super excited about this and we both feel extremely blessed that God has given us a second child. We have a hunch that this might be a little girl, but we won’t know for sure till Christmas time. Our new little bundle of joy is expected to burst onto the scene May 12.


may 12

Is the Voice Enough?

September 16, 2009 in Family, Spirituality with 2 Comments

Last Saturday as I picked up Gavin from children’s ministry in Mesa after our Third Format service, I was told about something interesting that he did during the service. Apparently he was pretty mellow and was cuddling in a lady’s arms in the nursery until she walked over to part of the room where they were playing the service live on a tv. I happened to be teaching at the time. Gavin immediately started looking around when he heard my voice and when he didn’t see me he started crying. They ended up turning the tv on mute.


Fast forward a day to Sunday night. I pick up Gavin from the children’s ministry in Gilbert and they tell me another story. They have a similar tv in their nursery as well. When I began teaching, Gavin quickly crawled across the room toward the tv (they compared it to a baby sprint) and when he didn’t actually find me but heard my voice, began to get fussy again. They ended up playing Baby Einstein DVDs until the service was over.


The odd thing about this is that he’s never done this before, and all of a sudden does it on back to back nights in two different places with two sets of people. So I’m enjoying being a dad and having a son who gets bothered when he hears my voice but can’t find me.


But I wonder how often we are content when it comes to our Heavenly Father to hear bits of His voice only. We don’t often long for more. We hear part of His voice in one moment, and we are content with that instead of looking around and longing for Him even more. I pray that our desire for His Spirit would grow and that we would be bothered whenever we can’t experience Him fully.

Short Term Memory

August 17, 2009 in Family, Life with 2 Comments

As I’ve watched Gavin grow and develop over the last nine months, I’ve come to a shocking realization: adults could never be babies. Let me explain.


I don’t know what the first memory that you have is. I’m not counting what you’ve seen on home movies or in pictures, but what you can actually remember yourself. Most of us start at a few years old and anything beyond that is left up to our parents’ memories. So I guess you could say that babies have an extreme sense of short term memory. Normally this phrase implies something very negative. We criticize people for having short term memory or we fear that we’ll suffer from it when we get older. But as I’ve watched my son develop I’ve realized that short term memory has some huge advantages that we seem to overlook.


As a baby grows, he needs to learn everything about life: how things work around him, how his own body works, how he interacts with people, etc. Each of these is learned through trial and error. Gavin will attempt to stand up, then fall on his face and cry. But the amazing thing is, he’ll try it again only moments later. Put an adult in this situation, and they’d conclude that it hurt the first time so they better keep things the way they are. In a bizarre sense of irony, babies are able to develop much faster than adults because they want it more. To them, it is all about trying–>failing–>trying again–>learning. Most of the time for adults it looks like this: trying–>failing–>reflecting–>quitting.


So if we had to insert our current selves into our bodies when we were less than a year old, we’d never develop into the people that we are today. We got to where we are by a foundation of short term memory and a persistence to keep growing even after numerous failures. But life has taught us to hold onto those painful memories and avoid repeating them at all costs. We pride ourselves in our long-term memory. But are we missing out on more of life? Has your long-term memory caused you to stop developing as a person? If it has, then it’s time to start acting like a kid.

West Valley View

June 30, 2009 in Family with 5 Comments

I’m going to take a moment here and be a proud husband. My wife is featured in an article today from the West Valley View, highlighting her real estate work in Avondale and the program that she works with. It has been so fun for me to watch her excel in an area that I know little-to-nothing about.


Click here to read the article.


Michelle Jernigan Real Estate Avondale

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