Have you ever heard of the story of The Prodigal Son? According to Michael, he’s not only heard it, he’s lived it!

“When I was 7, my father was a preacher and my whole world,” Michael started. “But when he left me, my mom and his ministry for another woman, my world came crashing down.”

Michael shared that as he grew up, he felt God calling him to be a preacher. “I wanted nothing more than to do what my father did, but had turned his back,” Michael explained.

Michael married and became the youth pastor at a local church – the very church where his father once preached. “It looked like I was going to be able to finish what he didn’t,” Michael said.

“Life was good,” Michael continued, “But I kept trying to fill it up with things the world had to offer and not God. And just like the man I never wanted to be, I ended up destroying my marriage and my ministry with an affair. I turned my back on God because I wanted to do it my way,” Michael said, with a tinge of sadness in his voice.

“I destroyed my ministry and my marriage.”

When Michael lost his job, he found himself homeless and broke. “I started drinking so much that I became unemployable,” he explained. “I found myself at the end of my rope, in jail.”

A local preacher visited the jail and sat down with Michael. Michael told him what a mess he’d made of his life and that preacher, who’d just felt led to come to the jail that day, told Michael about Royal Pines of the Jimmie Hale Mission.

When he came to Royal Pines, counselors and chaplains were there to help. “One day, a counselor shared with me verse Romans 8:1, ‘There is therefore now, no condemnation for those who in Christ,’” Michael shared.

According to Michael, that message of God’s grace was the beginning of his changed life – a changed life that your support made possible! Michael is now going back to school at Wallace State and plans to attend ministerial school in 2015.

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS CHANGED LIFE POSSIBLE!
Thank you for allowing God to work through you to bless others.