Mike Harper tells us in his testimony “I hope to use this Ireland ministry training to help give me more skills to reach our local community with the gospel.”
Ireland Ministry Training
Hi, my name is Mike Harper and I am from Ireland. This is my testimony. I grew up in Dublin city on the East coast but now I live in Abbeyleix, County Laois. My wife and I are hoping to reach our local community of about 2,000 people with the gospel, there is no church here. We don’t feel led to start a church but are going to open our home as a house of prayer. The majority of the local population are cultural Christians, who have been inoculated against the gospel, but with God, all things are possible.
I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were missionaries in Dublin and my father worked for over fifty years in family and youth ministry. I first gave my life to God as a young man but I was holding onto childhood issues and suffered from depression since the age of nine. Depression began to tear my life apart and I turned to alcohol and away from the church, although I still believed in God. I spent several years in the wilderness, living an ungodly life and eventually became a ‘prodigal’ son who returned to the Lord.
My dream is more than a dream, it is a calling, to intercede for my people and my nation, to be a speaker of truth, a missionary as the Lord leads me. The wind blows and you don’t know where it will blow, so it is like this for those who are of the Spirit of God, following His direction wherever He may lead. This Ireland ministry training at Christian Leaders Institue will help me answer this calling.
I have faced many challenges while growing to maturity in Christ. The most difficult to face are when God takes an opinion or thought process and turns it completely upside-down. This happened recently after completing one of my latest books which was highlighting areas where Christians need to be more discerning and protective of their families and churches. After finishing the book, God reminded me that now that work was completed, I was to forget and overlook how people are now, and instead look at people the way that Christ does – as the finished article. These instances also are a reminder of the importance of humility. Furthermore, Jeremiah spoke about how all our good works are like filthy rags. If I wrote a book and it sold a million copies and changed the lives of many people, that ‘work’ is like a filthy rag to the Lord because He is so holy, and our minds are so easily filled with motives and selfishness.
God became real for me when I finally accepted that He was speaking to me and quite often in dramatic ways. For example, I remember somewhere around 2009, during my wilderness years, I was drinking at a party when suddenly I felt the touch of the Holy Spirit and then felt an urge to go upstairs to my friend’s bedroom. I obeyed. There I found my friend’s cousin attempting to kill himself with a belt around his neck.
I did say the prayer of salvation in my youth as previously mentioned, but it was not until around 2011 that I finally gave all my life to Him, every inch of my life, everything I own, EVERYTHING!
I hope to use this Ireland ministry training to help give me more skills to reach our local community with the gospel. At the moment Christian Leaders Institute suits because of the distance study element and being free also helps. When I was much younger I yearned to go to Bible College, now I am finally there!
God Bless
Mike Harper
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Fathers Ministry
My name is Geoff Ahmann and I am called to fathers ministry. I am from the Twin Cities of Minnesota. I have three children and they are my world. Growing up, I never really got that feeling from my parents. My biological father didn’t come into my life until I was 12, and he chose me as a party buddy shortly after that. My mother was barely home when we were little and there was active drug use in the home. I started down that path in my teen years. To escape that world, I eventually found myself joining the military as a young man. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. I served 8 years in the Army Reserve with deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. That year was difficult as I was away from my two children, and it started to draw me nearer to a God I never really knew before.
During my childhood, God only seemed to exist on Easter and Christmas unless I was with my grandparents. During the deployment, however, I became very spiritual and would pray regularly, but I didn’t spend a lot of time in the Word. I came home and eventually got married in haste. We had our third child in that marriage and I tried to bring God into my marriage far too late. I ended up finding out my now ex-wife was unfaithful for six months and the process was extremely difficult for us all. I found myself back in a very dark place. Jesus met me there. We were attending church the last year of the marriage, but it was more going through the motions at that point. During the divorce process, I prayed a lot. God the Father answered my prayers, just not always with the answers I wanted.
This year, I was rebaptized along with my 15-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son. It was one of the best days of my life! Since then, I have become more and more active not only in my church but in my faith in general. One of the things I am thankful for is my now 4-year-old daughter knows every word of the Lord’s Prayer. I am excited to see where God takes me and all three of my children as we continue to follow the leading of God and immerse ourselves in His word.
I am excited to see where God takes me in this fathers ministry. I am very passionate about returning fathers to the family environment. I have served as a father’s rights advocate for a few years. More recently, I have come to realize God has a plan of action for a fathers ministry and I want to be a part of it. I believe that God will lead me in the direction that will be most effective for this fathers ministry purpose. He has already blessed me with a small group I lead called “Fathering with Faith.” And even though it is in the infancy stage, it has already been a well-received blessing. I am here at Christian Leaders Institute hoping to learn more about Christian leadership so I can take this fathers ministry idea that God gave me and launch it to its full potential. After all, God wants fathers to teach their children and be leaders within their households. American men seem to have forgotten that. I am extremely excited to see what all CLI has to offer and where God will lead me.
“And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4
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