I live in Northern England and I've been a Christian for more than 40 years. I was raised as a Roman Catholic but after studying church history, dogma and the bible I realised that I didn't believe some of the key Catholic doctrines and took the decision to become a Protestant. As a young man I went to a seminary to train to be a Catholic priest. I didn't do very well at the seminary, not because of a lack of faith, intelligence or spirituality but, as one of the teachers put it, "You're too Protestant to be a Catholic priest".
Whilst at the seminary, I encountered the Charismatic Renewal as it was known at the time. This had a significant influence on my development, beliefs and spirituality as a Christian after I was baptised with the Holy Spirit.
Over the past 35 years I have been a youth leader, preacher, bible teacher and deacon. 25 years ago I was accepted for ministry training at Spurgeon’s Theological College in London. Sadly, because of personal circumstances at the time, I was unable to take up my place at the college and I never got another opportunity. Although I have often been encouraged to go into full time pastoral ministry, personal circumstances have always prevented me from doing so.
Although I did not make it to theological college, I have been studying and growing in understanding and experience all of my life as a Christian. And if you were to ask me what kind of Christian that has led me to be, I would say that I am a biblical Christian. By that, I mean that I believe in the bible, the whole bible and nothing but the bible. And I believe that Christianity is experiential; that it is born out of a personal relationship with God.
For most of the past 15 years or so, personal circumstances and poor health have often forced me to become less involved in the kind of church ministries I had previously been involved in. The years between 2009 and 2014 were a particularly difficult period for me with enormous personal difficulties to cope with and a lot of time spent in hospital. I liken this period of my life to being in a huge storm at sea, in which it looked like I would sink and perish. However, that was never going to happen because of the promises of Jesus.
Despite all of the difficulties I have encountered in recent years, the Lord's calling on my life has never gone away and I still have the gifts and talents that he has graciously bestowed on me. With that in mind, in 2014 I began searching for a way to serve God's people in the circumstances that I found myself in at the time. In response the Lord revealed to me that this was to be through a website and he opened the door for me to create this website. I hope you find the material on this website helpful in your journey with the Lord. My prayer is that you will be blessed as you grow in your knowledge of Christ.
What I didn’t realise in 2014 was that the creation of the website was the beginning of my personal revival after the dark years leading up to 2014. Not long after creating the website I began to get opportunities to preach again and to reach out to other Christians around the world. And then in 2016 I met Suzanne and my revival was complete. I married Suzanne in 2017 and since then we have seen the development of a joint ministry. Suzanne is a remarkable Christian woman and she has made a huge difference to my life. Our gifts and ministries are perfectly matched.
In recent years I have been studying Escatology and this has shown me that we are now in the End Times spoken of by the prophets. This became much clearer in 2020 with the global Covid crisis. Since then most of my ministry has come to an end. I have not done any preaching or teaching since then but I have done other work as I wait to see what the Lord has in store for me next.
Mike Ashton