“I just Have to Have a Relationship With God”

After a lifetime of striving, you helped Joe find what he was missing.

Joe has accomplished nearly everything he set out to do. In high school, he was a state wrestling champion and All-American. During his 20 year career in the US Army, he was a member of the esteemed Sergeant Morales Club and deployed 14 times, serving four tours in Iraq. After their service came 15 successful years with a company here in Michigan.

“I’ve always been very focused,” Joe says. But it never felt like enough.

“I knew no matter what I had done, no matter how successful I was, there was something missing,” he continues. “There was no fulfillment in it.”

Orphaned as a young child and raised a ward of the state, Joe passed through four foster homes on his way to adulthood. Looking back, he sees God’s hand throughout it all. “People were put in my life to help me, or guide me through,” he says. “I’ve always had people who led me in a good direction and kept me out of trouble.”

But when Joe lost his last job, he also lost his place to live. He spent nearly eight months living in his truck, his savings dwindling, searching for direction. “I need to find what it is I’m supposed to  be doing,” he told himself. That search led him to Muskegon Rescue Mission – and to the relationship with God he has been longing for all his life.

Joe joined our Man of Integrity (MOI) Program last October. Today, he is transformed. He is active in his church and is grateful for mentors who have stood by him through it all. “I have some leaders in the program that help teach me things when I have questions,” he says, “I don’t have to fight the world.”

Most importantly, Joe has stopped striving and started surrendering.

“Everything that I was able to accomplish wasn’t me,” he says. “He gave me the talent to do the things that I was capable of doing. He helped guide me away from life’s curveballs. Then I think He nudged me and said, ‘Okay, it’s time.’”

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