As I lay motionless week after week in an attempt to have the bones knit together, I had to believe that if God wanted me at the bike meetings to share His Good news with people, then either in, or out of a wheelchair, I would be there with His help.

God works all things together for good for those who are called according to His purposes, and I had known from the age of fourteen that He had called me to take part in His plans, so I was going to have to trust Him to work this out.
As a lad my main passions were table tennis and motor bikes. My love for bikes was to find me riding pillion behind some older friends, and my love for table tennis saw me in the local church youth club once a week.

I did not know then that God was going to use both these things to bring my life into line with His will.

Having sat listening to the ten minute "Bible bit" at the end of each Friday night's youth club, I gradually became aware that two thousand years ago, Jesus, the Son of God, died for my sinfulness, and rose again to make it possible for me to find a way to God, and He is coming back to take His Church to Heaven to be with God for ever. So it was, that on one of these Friday evenings, I simply asked God to forgive me and to become real in my life.

I then found myself in an exciting and personal relationship with God as I started to have real conversations with Him, and be aware of Him speaking back to me as I read my way through the New Testament.

All went well until I met up with God's challenge to me in Mark, chapter 16:15, "Go into all the world and preach the Good news to all creation."

Did God mean ME? Was I to preach the gospel? To whom?

Back came the answer, I was to preach the Good news to whosoever would hear. So I did.

I started with those firends of mine that shared my interest in motor-bikes. I had tried to be a shirt and tie Christian, but knew deep down that for me to be sincere and honest before God I had to be found wearing leathers and boots. (Maybe there was a bit of John the Baptist about me - he was a nonconformist also.)

At seventeen I got my first bike and, having kept my links with the "End of the Lines" bike club, the idea of a club for Christians who rode bikes occurred to me.

I started to pray to the Lord about it, trusting Him to sort it out, and five years on I read in my local newspaper an article about the Christian Motor-cycle Association wanting to start a group in Northern Ireland. I made contact with them, and soon began meeting with other bike fans who were also Christians.

Word about the club soon spread and as well as attending races and rallies together, to be like the preachers in the marquee missions that I attended, speaking to hundreds of people, but God had very different plans for me.

Eventually I found myself amongst fifty thousand bikers of many nationalities, all packed on to the Isle of Man during the T.T Road Races for two weeks every year. Here where the fields that were white unto harvest, and God had chosen me to labour for Him there.

Up until August 1990 everything had been straight forward for me, but then being confined to bed, staring at the ceiling for ten weeks I was having to contemplate what God's plans for my future were going to be.

The doctors had informed Donna, my wife, what they thought the outcome of my accident would be, and it was not optimistic. But I knew that with man this was impossible, but with God all things are possible. God was still at work in me and around me.

The first thing that proved this to me was the sense of peace that grew on me, that all this was in God's will. The next thing was even more fantastic when my mother arrived at my bedside to tell me she had put her trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And finally, after a total of thirteen weeks in hospital I was declared well enough to return home to Donna and our daughter Kerry, albeit still in a body cast. I was so thankful to God for answering prayers of many friends who had remembered me so faithfully. God is good! Well Lord, what next?

The administration of the C.M.A had built up to the point where I was writing to more than two hundred people per month. I needed to take stock of where this was leading me to.

Donna has always been supportive of the ministry that God has placed me in, and has always been a great sounding-board, giving advice and guidance when necessary. She and Kerry are great friends, depending on each other and the Lord when the work of C.M.A takes me away from home more and more. In fact, out of twelve years of marriage, I have been at home for six of them.

I feel that I need to be released out of the work place to give myself fully to the Lord's work.
To this end I have set up Fireblade Ministries, a trust which I hope will ultimatley enable me to go out as a full time worker.

Firstly though, I had to ask the lord if this was His plan, or mine, and as a way of testing this I approached "Honda UK" to seek permission to use the name of "Fireblade", one of their top-of-the-range motor-bikes. Their agreement to this came within one week, and I felt that God had given me His confirmation for His plans for Fireblade Minsitries to go ahead.

To the Christian, "Fire" represents the Holy Spirit of God, and the word "blade" of a sword represents the Word of God. Therefore I will be taking the Word of God to the "whosoever", through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are still waiting on the Lord to provide us with the means to go full-time into the work, but meanwhile, it continues to grow. The one thing I am sure of, is that if God was not in all of this, I would not have come this far.

Eddie is the founder of the Christian Motorcycles Association Ireland