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When Pastor Mike was about 12 or 13, the children in his family were sent to a man he calls a warlock to be cleansed. The man burned sage, put each child in the middle of the smoke and went through them one by one with a white rock.
Pastor Mike was the last of nine. He remembers the man’s hand shaking. The rock fell out of his hand, and the man told Pastor Mike’s dad he couldn’t touch this one.
He wasn’t following God yet. Looking back, he says, “Even when I didn’t know Him, He was still protecting me.”
In this interview, Pastor Mike tells Justin Gilpin how a boy raised around witchcraft met Jesus at 18 and went on to minister deliverance for more than 30 years. What follows is his account.
Where he came from
His mother’s mother survived a man who tried to kill her at a water well. She called on the name of the Lord and woke up three days later on the edge of the well. His mother was kidnapped at 14 and escaped. Pastor Mike believes both women had to fight to stay alive so that he could be here.
He was born at six months, a three-pound baby who slept in a shoe box. His great-grandmother prayed over people at an altar of idols, and his grandmother went into witchcraft. He grew up around it and thought that was just life.
His dad was verbally and physically abusive. For a few years his parents were separated, and the kids went from home to home. Later the kids lived on their own, and when the food ran out they walked across town to dig leftovers out of a KFC dumpster.
When he was eight or nine, he ran into a field across the street and told God that if He was really God, he wanted his parents back. About two weeks later he woke up to the sound of a laugh and found his mom and dad in the living room. He told Justin, “I felt the Lord answer. That was the very first prayer and I knew that there was a God.”
When he was about 15 or 16, his grandmother opened her books of witchcraft and told him she could do anything to anyone just by reading the words.
Losing Joe
At 17 he had dropped out of school. His grandmother, sick in Mexico, cleared everyone out of the room except her Miguelito, her little Mikey, and asked him to promise he would graduate, because he was going to be an important person someday. He never forgot it. At 18 he moved in with cousins so he could go back to school.
His brother Joe, one of the twins, was his best friend. Joe was drinking a lot, and one day he told Pastor Mike he wanted to change his life and start going to church. A week or two later, Joe asked him to come along and tell their parents. Pastor Mike woke up that day with a heaviness on his chest and told Joe he would go next time, but not today. On the way to their parents’ house, Joe was hit by a drunk driver and killed.
Pastor Mike blamed God, because he didn’t know there was a devil. He fell into a depression and decided that if his brother wasn’t going to be here, neither was he. He decided to end his life, and his whole body went limp. He couldn’t go through with it.
The church he said he’d never go to
Joe had wanted them to go to church, so Pastor Mike started going. Every church in his town turned him away, some because of the way he dressed. He passed one more church, watched people come out with their noses up, and decided that one was probably even worse.
That same day he got home, fell back on his bed and heard himself say, “God, if You give me a wife, I’ll serve You.” He had no girlfriend and no friends.
Then at Walmart, a young woman asked him if he went to church. She invited him and said they would pick him up at 7:00. By 7:30 he decided they had lied to him and changed back into his shorts. At 7:45 he heard a honk.
They drove him to the church he had written off, and he got saved that week. He told Justin it was a week of healing for the void, the hurt and the unforgiveness he carried toward his dad. He later married the young woman who invited him.
Learning to obey
The enemy came after him right away. About a month after he was saved, a voice he had never heard before told him to take his own life, and he obeyed it. Guilt fell on him, and he asked Jesus to forgive him. Then a different voice, one he can only describe as a voice of silence, told him he was His son. In the morning he had no symptoms at all.
He tells it to expose how the enemy deceives: “The voice of the Holy Spirit will bring you conviction. The voice of the enemy will bring you condemnation.”
The pastor filling in at his church told him to read the four Gospels, and he was in awe of Jesus. Then the pastor asked him if he knew he could do that, too.
Two months in, Pastor Mike stepped into a 3:00 a.m. fight next door. Joe’s twin brother had been drinking all day. He swung at Pastor Mike, then his feet flew up and he landed on the kitchen floor, growling like a dog. Pastor Mike felt the power of the Holy Spirit come over him and told the spirit, in the name of Jesus, to leave his brother. His brother opened his eyes, completely sober. It was the first time Pastor Mike ever cast anything out.
Later, a young man he knew named Johnny came into the convenience store where Pastor Mike worked, and the Holy Spirit told him to tell Johnny about Him. Pastor Mike asked Johnny three times if he wanted to accept Jesus. Johnny said he was 18, maybe someday but not today. That Friday, Johnny was shot and killed. He died in his brother’s arms.
Pastor Mike says that woke him up to how serious salvation is. “I think that it is important that you obey because you never know how much time a person has.”
Thirty years later
Today Pastor Mike pastors a church and leads Manger Ministries in West Texas, reaching people all over the world through deliverance. He has done thousands of deliverances, and he says not one has been the same. One of the biggest things he sees is people getting their identity back.
He and his wife have been married 34 years, and he always says the same thing when he introduces her: “I’m more in love with my wife now than when I first met her. And I’m more in love with Jesus now than when I first met Him.”
Pastor Mike’s word to you
Pastor Mike often sees people try witchcraft, tarot cards and everything else before they come to Jesus. But he says, “Even though they’ve chosen everything else but Jesus, Jesus is still sitting there waiting with compassion and love to set them free.”
To anyone who thinks they have gone too far, he says: “I’ve heard many people say, ‘God can’t forgive me. I’ve done too much.’ Yes, He can. Yes, He can.”
If a voice is telling you to end your life, Pastor Mike believes it is lying to you, the same way it lied to him, because there is a purpose on your life. He says the Lord who pulled him out of all that mess has already given you the victory. He says to confront those thoughts with the truth. For anyone who struggles to hear God, his advice is to seek the Holy Spirit and spend time in the Word.
Watch the full interview
Hear it in Pastor Mike’s own words. Press play at the top of this page to watch the whole conversation.