John Wilkerson

I was born into this world in 1956 in Bangor, Maine. One of six children in a military family, I moved to Morocco when I was four. Then at the age of seven, we moved to the promised land of California to the small town of Atwater.. I became the first child in my family to express an interest in becoming musical. My first musical instrument was a battery powered transistor radio. The local top forty station is what I enjoyed listening to most. My favorite band was the Beatles and by the age of ten I persuaded my parents to buy me a guitar. They also paid for lessons, which lasted about two months. I suppose that was about the time when my instructor began to feel guilty for taking my parent’s money and discontinued the lessons. There I was, two months into my musical career, abandoned. So I went to the music store, bought a Beatles music book with chord charts, put my fingers where the dots were, and began making music. That’s basically how I learned to play. Since that time a lot of life has come and gone. By 1980 I was ready for some kind of positive change. I actually received Christ because somebody cleaned my kitchen. What?! Yes, it’s true. I was a bachelor at the time and you know what a bachelor’s kitchen can look like. My friend Chico used to pick me up for work and this one time while I was getting ready to go, he went in and overhauled my kitchen. He had talked to me about Christ many times but this was the first time that I actually saw Christ through him. That next weekend he invited me to his church and during the song “Just as I am” I went forward and accepted Jesus. I’ve been going to Jesus just as I am ever since. It’s been getting better all the time!....................................................... ............................................................ .About the Songs....................................................... ............................................................ .It Must Be Me : Even as a Christian, you can wake up some days and not feel the presence of God. You know for a fact that God never changes and still you feel alone. Understand that any road you take is going to lead right back into the presence of God, I’m talking about Judgement Day. So before you go out and begin working on a new testimony, doing stupid things, humble yourself before the Lord and seek His direction for your life. ............................................................ .........................................................Your Diamond Ring : Here is a song that I wrote for my wife in commemoration of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Now anyone who has been married for a number of years knows that the married life isn’t always the “happily ever after” that you thought you would be experiencing from day one of your married life together. You stand at the alter and vow before God and to your spouse to grow in love and often times growing in love requires that we give up our rights to be right and learn to forgive and move on. I believe that God has honored our commitment to each other over these many years and I can't help but see His faithfulness and the many ways He has blessed the two of us. I want to encourage you all, that when you run up against those trials in your marriage, to remember back to your day at the alter and know that God is still in your midst, just as he was on your wedding day. ............................................................ ........................................................Where I Long to Be : As Christians we know that when a fellow believer passes from this world that they are instantly before our Lord in Heaven. That is where I long to be ............................................................ ........................................................Dry Bones Boogie : Here's one that pays tribute to the pioneers of the contemporary Christian music that we know and love and play. Back in the day these guys were sometimes referred to as Jesus freaks whose music was just too holy to be played on the radio and way to rock and roll to be allowed in a church. Change seems to be one of the hardest things to deal with, we love our comfort zones. The resistance to change often times can leave a church wondering where all the young people went as they continue to do church the same way they've always done and the life of the church just dies and all that is left are old dry bones. Now I've sung hymns before but more importantly I've read them. They hold so much of God's truth in them that I can not dismiss them as just old folk's music, but personally, I have never rocked out to an album of hymns. (I have heard some that have been arranged differently that sound really cool though) . So anyway it's just a song that speaks of the walls that had to be broken down and how, through prayer, doors were opened so that the devil no longer had all the good music....................................................... ............................................................ ..The Center Cross : There is an interesting story as to how this one was written. I had finished recording ten songs for my new album and was undecided as to what to name it. I was taking each song into consideration for the title cut and I was just coming up empty. It was the beginning of Easter week and I ran into a preacher friend of mine. We began talking about my music and he asked me if I had anything for a Good Friday service that spoke about the other two guys who died with Jesus. I didn't, but that seed was now planted. By Friday it was finished. Now even though both men were mocking Jesus, when things began to get serious (like I think I'm gonna die today) the one thief had a change of heart and asked Jesus to remember him when he came into His kingdom. Jesus told him that he would be with Him in heaven that day. So the question is really, which side of the cross are you on? Oh yeah, the other guy died and went straight to hell, but that's another song........................................................ ............................................................ .Viva La Difference : The Pastor at my home church was doing a series on marriage and one of the weeks he was going to talk about the differences between men and women. I didn't have a song that addressed the differences at the time, but being married for almost twenty-five years I was thinking that I had a bit of material I could chose from. Now this song is intended to be a lighthearted look at the differences between the sexes and do know that it is written from a man's perspective.