From Nightclub Manager to Pastor: Learning to Let God Love You | Michael Muccio
What happens when money, success, and the party life leave you feeling empty?
In this episode of God Says Yes, David W. Ebel talks with Michael Muccio about his journey from troubled youth and nightclub manager to pastor and prison minister.
Michael shares how his search for meaning led him to the Bible, how faith changed his life and influenced his family, and why he chose to live alongside inmates to share the hope of Jesus.
But one of his deepest lessons was learning that serving God involves more than enthusiasm and hard work. Through ministry and marriage, Michael began discovering what it means to surrender his striving and let God love him.
If you have ever felt empty despite outward success, struggled to prove your worth, or wondered whether God could use your past, this conversation offers encouragement: your story can become a message of His love and grace. God Says YES, David W Ebel
In this episode, Michael Muccio shares his transformative journey from a troubled youth to a passionate pastor and author. Discover how his faith, struggles, and insights into spiritual warfare can inspire you to live a more fulfilled and victorious life.
David W Ebel: Welcome to the God Says Yes podcast. You are welcome here. Welcome to another episode of God Says Yes. I'm David Ebel and I'm your host. After fifty plus years of ministry, I still have a burden and a heart and a heart calling to love everyone, including the ones who are struggling. I my desire with this podcast is to meet you where you are. If you're having a good day, to encourage that. If you're struggling to help you not get stuck because the it hurts. But to let God heal those wounds and move you forward and let you f discover the beautiful life that God has planned for you. This this podcast is all about changing lives from the inside out, because God created us from the inside out to be like Him. He planted love and hope and peace inside of us so that when we were born, we were already had the tools to live what will eventually be a beautiful life. So we want God to be able to manifest that in your life now that you need him, and we all need him. So today I have a I have a â a dear brother with me, his name is Michael Mucio. And â Michael Michael is â a pastor, an author. He's he's done a lot of things with his life and he's he's done them well and God has used his life me wonderfully. So â I can't wait for you to meet my friend. So Michael, welcome. Thank you, David. It's great to be here with you today. It's a privilege to have you here. Can you tell so we're we're not talking to strangers. Tell us a little about yourself. Well, â you said it well, author of â three books, and then I've been a pastor for over 40 years. â best thing to say about me is I just love Jesus. I have I've I've stayed on fire for God the whole time. â with in spite of me and all my br mistakes along the way, God has just extended mercy upon mercy. And he and here I am continuing to share his love and to â bring forth â the riches of of his word that'll never return void in people's lives. And so that's a that's the best description I've got of me. That's a beautiful one. people now know you know where you're at, and that's that's important. So â as we always start with, we ask the simple question Who were you before Jesus? Boy, I was a mess, David. I was the black sheep in the family. We we we we I was Catholic, race Catholic, and my brother and sister were model Catholics. The nuns and the priests love them. And then Michael goes to Catholic school and I'm getting paddled by Sister Gregory every day. And I have no complaints about it. I for whatever reason I was so naughty. I don't know. All I know is â the family â was it was an embarrassment to the family and but fast forward I'm off now, I'm playing sports, that's all I care about. Then I'm going to school. And and as I as I went to went to school, I went to taking business classes, but had a business-oriented family. I start â managing a nightclub owned by Prudential Life Insurance. Motor Hotel Management was the management company. We had 67 properties, and they put me into â into a high-paying position fast. But told me I had to prove myself because the home office thought they were crazy for putting such a young guy in there. And so I was I that's what I needed to hear. And I had the lowest payroll cost, liquor cost, entertainment costs, yet the second highest in revenue of our 67 properties. And we would have beat them too, except that they're the the the nightclub was too big. So the more money I'm making, the more wine, women and song, the more I realize that this is all life has to offer, it's gonna be a miserable life. I just couldn't, I felt like Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. I couldn't get any satisfaction. So I â started searching for whatever reason 'cause I'd never read the Bible. â keep in mind I was not a good Catholic even. â I I bought a Bible and I bought a book by a guy named Z â Zig Ziggler, and then the rest is is is history. So I was a pretty pretty mangy character. I I I was a I was a dog with with a with with mangy messed up fur â in in until â I got until I got born again. And then everything changed so much that everybody thought, Who is this guy? So Exactly. So so then obviously y you didn't know much about God, but you certainly were in need of him. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us about when you met him, what happened? So i â immediately I wanted to share Christ with everybody and I and I couldn't get enough of the Bible so I had We have Alexander Scorby on the King James Bible and I had that little little cassette series and I'm I'm I left the nightclub business and want and went to work for Zig Ziglar because he led me to Christ, took me under his wing. â I would go to church, then he'd take me out to dinner and I â I was like another member of the family. It's he he was an amazing individual that just loved me and I had all these questions. I mean I was grilling everybody. I just wanted I was hungry, wanted to learn. And they â they would give me to different people who are specialists in different in different knowledge areas of the word so that they could handle Michael's â inquisitiveness. â but be that as it may, â be in in in short order, I'm listening to Alexander Scorby tapes. I'm going home after I work for Zig and I'm studying the Bible from seven at night till I my eyes couldn't stay open any longer. Just consuming God's word, witnessing to people, â and and then I felt like God was calling me into ministry. So I began to prepare for ministry and went back. I figured I needed to learn the original languages because if the New Testament was written in Greek, I wanted to learn the Greek, so I'm doing all of that. â and thank God that he I and then I wowed God for for twenty years, at least That was what I thought he wanted is for me to show him how on fire I was, how impressed I was, and and that that ended up creating â creating problems that maybe we can talk about that, but be that as it may, â I I I got I got â the the change was radical. â it impacted my parents and my my brothers and sisters and I ended up leading â both sides of people and both sides of my family to the to the Lord because â they just they saw that they they saw the change, they saw it was real for me and I they my brother Kids and says he he kept that the family would if they saw me coming they'd cross the street on the other on the other side 'cause they knew he I'm they're about to get another sermon. So finally the Lord put it on my heart, stop stop preaching to my family that I'd already preached adequately and I learned how to pray, David. So I broke the power of the devil off of them, claimed their deliverance and salvation. And then believe that God would send laborers across their pathway. And one by one, God did just that. And it was remarkable to to watch them all come into â a a born again relationship with God. And I'm just so grateful for â God using me with with with family and â so it's it's always harder, it seems, â they f to be But what is it? Scripture says a prophet is without honor in his own home. â when I when I got saved because my parents had been hurt by the church, â I went home and said, Mom, I gave my life to Jesus, and I'm I'm gonna I I'm I I'm I'm living for God and not gonna get drink anymore. And and I I I'm I know I'm going into ministry, and my mom says, David, I loved you better as a drunk. that sounds a little bit my like my parents. Wow. And that was from then on, I was relatively top. Tolerated but persona non grata parties and stuff because they were afraid I would start preaching. And at the beginning they were right. But I I learned quickly to shut my mouth so so that people would stop running. But â and then open my mouth when God wanted me to and just love people. Sure. Amen. And and that's when things started changing. Yeah. But I I can I understand that change. Because when you first fall in love with someone. Well, it's like you go to a restaurant, you love the food, and you can't you can't get enough and you go tell your friends. You don't tell them when you're having it that when it's Taco Bell. They can find that on their own. But when you find something exceptional, you want to share it. Yeah. Well when your life is profoundly changed, it's a lot better than going from green bologna to pr to to prime rib. You're you're going from no life to a real life. Yeah. Amen. That's exactly right. So tell me about your new life, this new life that Jesus gave you. Well, â when I I started the first thing I I did after going to â while I was going to school is I started a prison ministry and I learned faithfulness there 'cause I went to this work release center and averaged â a whopping â one and a half people per service that I would do. One some weeks some weeks there'd be one, some weeks there'd be two. Every so often we'd hit a gusher and have three, which would help that's that's what walk what what got me to one and a half average. But â but I stayed faithful to it whole time I was in school. I just kept going back, going back once a week, and I was making an impact on the the people that that were coming. â lives were changing, people were coming to Christ. But there was a point in which I started â learning â better about how to pray believing God for revival and I I would hear the inmates, sometimes they would say to me that I couldn't relate to them because I I'd never been incarcerated. So I went to the warden, Larry Fields, and I asked permission to be incarcerated, to move into the institution, and live under the same rules as the inmates, which I did. â did that and â the impact that was made then was was significant for we we we started to get get twenty five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty five and it just kept climbing as how many people were coming to our chapel services. There's n only ninety five people in the in the institution. But things like â when I would go into the cafeteria, the blacks would sit on one side, the the whites on the other, and I â just like cattle, you know, I I I'm I'd tell â I used to tease, I said, I'm not I'm not No white honky and I'm certainly and I'm not black. I said I'm I'm the color of Jesus. I'm olive in and with with tongue in cheek, you know, because Middle Eastern I'm Italian. So â so anyway, â I sit with with the white people that first day. Then the next day I went in there and I sat with the black with the blacks because they were â there were more of them coming to my chapel services than the white guys anyway. So And that caused a major stir, both in the black community within there and the white community. And that night they were they were nose to nose with me in the chapel services and how dare I and I God must have given me the gift of faith because I stood I stood up to some of those guys were were, you know, six foot five and I stood up to them and I said, Look, you may not like it. I don't care whether you like it or not, but but in in God there's neither June or Gentile, there's neither male or female, and there's certainly neither black or white. It's the color â of of â it's not the color of your skin, it's what's on the inside of you that counts. And that's part of what I'm teaching here. And I'm gonna model it. So before long, the blacks and the whites were all sitting together in the cafeteria. Just change the complexion of the place. We had some experiences where the gifts of the spirit moved and the discerning of spirits, different things. along those lines, but but I was on fire for God, started in a prison ministry, then I started recruiting other Bible school students, and we had a service somewhere in the state of Oklahoma every night. We were going to all of the institutions, maximum security, medium security, the halfway houses and so forth. â and then at that point then I my my pastor asked me to assist him, became an assistant pastor, then a senior pastor, then planted a church and so forth. So That's amazing. I â in my earlier days, â I planted a church outside of Chicago and I brought I invited the senior staff chap for Cook County Jail to be my guest speaker. And it we we hit it off, and all of a sudden I was the assistant staff chaplain for Cook County Jail. And the you know, â they didn't try to lock me in. What all I did is the first time I pr I preached there. is I explained to him that â I'm just straight off the streets of Detroit and â I've been shot at and I've been chased by crazy people with fire axes and and you know but I I I love people and if you'll let me I'll love you. Mm hmm. And â by the second time I was there, we had a full crowd. And it stayed that way. And we will let a lot of people to Jesus. It and it it's fear is not from God, so why have some? Right. Go in and do what God has told you to do and let him fight the battle. Yeah. It changes everything. So what was the next chapter in your story? Well, â incidentally, w they eventually at Oklahoma City, the head of the â the all of the prisons, â they gave a message to â the warden of our institution that they they needed to get me out of there because they were concerned about liability if something were to happen to me. So they I was told that I needed to leave. When I left the inmates got up a petition to get Michael Muccio reincarcerated. So I still have that in my filing cabinet. And and all but about four four of the inmates signed it. So I thought that was pretty cool. I'm very proud of it. I'm as proud of that document as anything, you know. I I I tell the word it's a good kind of pride, but I'm just I'm just thrilled that that the impact was made along those lines. And then as â started pastoring, â I took my love for the word and for teaching the word. â but yet never lost that passion for evangelism. So I'm trying to marshal the the the people to â to win their neighbors, win their friends to Christ and â and then â so I think I think â the the the consistency of ministry year in and year out and my and and love for the word and so forth was was one thing but the other thing that was showing up is marriage has a way of showing up our glaring â insecurities and inadequacies. And so this passion that I had for God and wanting to change the world, I needed to learn how to put on the kind of a hat that â and love my wife the way she needed to be loved. And â so that that was a that was a process that started peeling off layers of stuff inside Michael that ended up bringing me to a point of realizing that I didn't know how to surrender and let God love me. So instead of me trying to wow God with Michael's zeal, â it was a matter of me learning how to let God love me so that then love, I would do more by accident for God than by design prior to that. And that's exactly what happened. And And I went through a divorce and I in doing that I â asked the Lord, I said, Lord, I don't want to blame her. I said, I've got enough enough faults to keep me busy the rest of my life. I want you to show me as the head of my house where did I miss it? How how how did I get myself in into this? And you know, when you're a pastor and you and you lose your fa you you you lose your family, you you're not very popular. â so That all of that contributed to bringing Michael to the end of himself. And as I cried out to God, he began to â teach me of about Galatians 2 20. And I started meditating on that. You know, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, the life I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And I said, Lord, there's a lot of eyes in that verse. You have to help me. Because I love the verse prior to him talking to me about it. I'm not not not an audible voice, but just that knowing on the inside. Mm-hmm. And I â and he began to show me, he says, You you've been trying to fix the portion of you, the eye that is supposed to die. You've got there's two eyes in there, one eye dies, and that's the eye of pride and anger and fear and jealousy and strife and criticism and lust and You name it, all of the negative forces, the works of the flesh, everything that's there. and then the other eye lives, but it's not even you, it's Christ living in you. That other eye lives surrendered to Christ. And so I put that together, â started meditating on it. Of course it goes with John fifteen, four and five, or I am the vine, you are the branches, and â Jesus saying, If you don't abide in me, you're nothing. You know â surely, Lord, I'm something. â no, you're nothing if you don't abide in me. And and then Colossians, â you know, I am dead, my life is hidden with Christ in God, and then that verse, the next verse is Christ who is my life. So I â it revolutionized my life. I used to pray, God, I want to be the best husband, the best dad, the best pastor. But it was my prayers were all about me, my ego. Trying to be the best. And and when I got that revelation of Galatians two twenty, and the in the in it, as I say, it's in it's in Colossians one through three, one through four, it's in, it's in â John fifteen, four and five, it's in John where â twelve, where it talks about, you know, unless a kernel of weep falls into the ground and dies. It's located in Romans â six, six and seven. So the it's it the theme is there. all the way throughout scripture. So grabbing a hold of that just revolutionized everything for me. And so then I if I would have been married at the time, the way the prayer would have looked, it would have looked like it would have been like this. Lord, I can't love my wife the way she really needs to be loved. You know her like the back of your hand. You created her. So I'm going to ask you to make me the best listener that I can possibly be and love my wife the way That she wants to be loved in the way you want me to love her. â and when I would get up to preach, instead of wanting to preach the best sermon, I would get it maybe, Jesus, speak through me today. Keep me out of the way so that you can fully express yourself to everybody there. Let your let your Rhema, that a word that's alive in that moment, let that be the words that I bring forth to your people today. and that I did not know I was going to write a book. I just want to I was just wanting to survive. I I was at that point I was my attitude was â when I would see the woman who broke the alabaster box of ointment and washed Jesus' feet with her with her tears and her wiped it with her hair of her head, I said, you know, I I might not have long enough hair, but I can do what that woman does. I don't know what what my ministry is gonna be like the rest of my life, but I can I can sit at your feet and love you, Jesus, â for the rest of my life and realize that I'm nothing without you. So just changed my whole my whole context. And I wish I could say that, boy, from that moment forward I was I was â you know Mr. Godliness, but y yet there was there was there was a you know, I felt like I I at least I was a good stock. I would go up and then I'd correct. And then I go up a little bit more, higher â a new highs and new and and lower â higher higher lows and lower highs, â higher highs and higher lows, as I should say. â so â As I say, I do more by accident today than I did by design back then. And anyway, that the the book that I ended up writing was The Miracle Exchange, How to Exchange Your Limitations for God's Lack of Limitations. So Amen. Amen. So everything you said is not only true, but it's powerful. And â you know, â my life is different because I learned those same truths, and it it's still when I pray, it's always about dad basically daddy You're smart and I'm not. Yeah. And I I'm okay with you being smart. All I want you to do is is guide me so I can do it the way that pleases you. Yeah. I don't have to get credit for anything. I want you to get credit for everything. Right. I want you to be pleased with me. This changed me revolutionary. Every way. â and you know, my wife and I have been married fifty two years. And people say, Well, how have you lasted so long? I said, Well, she hasn't killed me in my sleep. It's simple as that. You know, â you know, that have I done it all well? No. And she but God gave me a godly woman and she prays and God's given her the grace to to to â to love me in spite of me. Mm-hmm and â and and the anointing is there for both of us and we just move forward. But the key is for all of us, every viewer here, your s your f your frailties and your f and your your weaknesses and your mistakes don't define you. You are defined by when you give your heart to Jesus and He f he accepts your gift of of surrender. He t and his Holy Spirit comes and dwells in your heart. Then he begins a new work in you. And I I think sometimes we use the word born again too much when it really needs to be just this new life. Yeah. This new life that he builds in us is built is is guaranteed. When you have a brand new baby in your hands for the first time. All you can think of is how am I going to take care of this beautiful thing? How am I going to be responsible? How am I going to raise this little bundle of joy so that if I'm responsible for this and that I want him to come out or her to come out beautifully? Well, when we give our hearts to Jesus, spiritually we're just like that bundle. We we know nothing and we need to be cared for. And that's why God gives us his word, he gives us a church where if you and if you don't find a good church, keep looking. There is a church that will preach and live what the Bible says and do it in love. Right. And you so you you you find Christian friends through them who are walking the walk you want to live, and you hang around people who are are like you want to be, and they're gonna tell you don't don't be like be like Jesus, but you can use them as a model of how this gets started. Mm-hmm. So you you wanna be like Jesus, you wanna be around people like Jesus, you want to go to church where you can learn about Jesus. You want to get in your Bible to learn how to please Jesus because He's the center of how we get to God. Yeah. And you're doing, you know, what you're sharing is exactly what every guest that we we have tells us in their own words. It's all about not being defined by your past, not being defined by your failures, not being not being defined by who's hurt you or you've hurt someone, but but being defined by who giving your heart to Jesus. And letting him do something beautiful in you. Wouldn't you agree? I would totally agree wholeheartedly. So at this point, if â what would you do to what would you suggest as a way for people, if they're sitting on the curb watching life go by, how would you encourage them to get off the curb and try again? â to do just that, get off the curb and try again, because persistence and and having some some grit is good in every area of our lives, Christian or not a Christian. But as a Christian, we're told that through faith and patience we inherit the promises. So too many times â we're it we're too we're we can be â too quick to give up. I love the story of the the the â Chinese bamboo tree in which they plant And they water it and fertilize it, and it doesn't even appear above the soil for for â for a whole year. And then they, you know, they if they if if they're un unaware of it, they're thinking, what's going on? And then they water it and fertilize it, and for the next year, it doesn't even grow above the ground. They water it and fertilize it a third year, it doesn't grow above the ground. Water and fertilize it the fourth year, it doesn't grow above the ground. They water it and fertilize it that fifth year, and somewhere in that fifth year, The Chinese bamboo tree grows huge in that fifth year. Did it grow in that fifth year or was it growing all along those first four years before it got up above the soil and then became the giant that it did? Well, I contend that it was growing the whole time. It was just building a deep root system. And in Ephesians three, where that beautiful apostolic prayer, one of one of them. In Ephesians 3, verses 14 through 20, we're told to pray and to be rooted and grounded in Christ's love. So sometimes for some of us, we just I don't know, I don't know why. It took me a while to get a hold of it. Although I did read books afterwards and found that Jay Hudson Taylor, â Mike Evans, some of the who's who? Andrew Murray, on and on with some of the great ones. That had been in ministry for usually ten, fifteen years and had done a lot of ministry in their own strength before they they discovered what it meant to be crucified with Christ. It just took me a little longer, took me 20 years. Some of us are harder, harder headed, I guess. But either way, I'm so glad I got it, David, on this side of eternity, and understand that it's all about Jesus living his life through me. So we always invite â invite our guests to give a golden nugget, something that people people can take from the podcast and consider over the next week or so. You know, whether they pray about it or they meditate about it or however they process, what would you s give them as a golden nugget to take beyond the podcast? You know, David, I used to be a wrestler, and when you wrestle that is one sport that if you you have a lull in your thinking or physically, you can get pinned very quickly. I mean, it's an intense word. And it's the word that Paul chose to use in Ephesians 6, where he says, We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and evil spirits. Now I'm not blaming the devil, because we have no we have authority over the devil, but I'm saying that there are three enemies that we have. And the nugget is We have the world, which is just the negative energy that's out there in all the world. We've got our own flesh, which is â the habitual sin and strongholds and our own life, and then there's the devil. But there's one puppet master and one ringleader, and he uses the world and he uses the flesh to pull us in and and making those suggestions that makes it look like it's it's our idea. I I would say the nugget for for your people is to realize that we're in a We're engaged in a fight. And Paul used that word wrestling match because of the intensity of that particular sport. And you you you have got to pay attention the whole time. And if we really understood what was going on in the unseen realm, we would take this life more seriously and realize that each and every one of us are this close to being deceived. For first twenty years of my ministry. I was deceived. I had too much of Michael trying to impress God and not enough of Michael surrendering and letting God work through me. But but thank God I got rescued out of that. And realizing that there is an enemy, and this is why the the last book that I wrote, The Evil's First Breath, has been so dearing. God gave me a vision about that thirty-five years ago, but I didn't know what to do with it. â in in initially for seven years and didn't do anything till I wrote a church drama. We ended up saving â getting a hundred and sixty five people saved, packed the church out for four nights in a smaller community, so that â that that was a big number for us, and then then d we did a sequel the next year on another hundred and thirty five people came to Christ. I thought I was through with the with the little vision that it was a vision of the fall of Lucifer, the origin of evil, where it began. But No, I wasn't until until this until this fall where I a actually â completed the book. But the but but the but the nugget is to realize we're not wrestling with flesh and blood, but we are wrestling with principalities and powers. And they're they're defeated foes. They're already beaten because of the shed blood of Jesus on the cross in the name of Jesus. And they're they're defeated, but but we many times as Christians are not operating in our identity as to who we really are in Christ and realizing that we have authority, we can we we can deal with those things. And I I I'm I'm gonna just pull back and be quiet here for because I I'll end up preaching on that one. Well thank you so much for for being on and being a part of e of everything. We look forward to â to â what God is doing in your life. â so brother We I I know that you've you you you mentioned books. You wanna tell us the names of your books? Sure. â the the one that I referred to earlier about crucified with Christ is called the Miracle Exchange. â and that was written back in two thousand thirteen. The most recent one that's causing a quite a stir is Evil's First Breath, Dawn of Darkness. And it's about the origin of evil, the fall of Lucifer, and it's using First principle thinking, which Elon Musk has made that term famous, you go back to where something began if you want to get it right, â and that's how he built rockets for so much cheaper than they have been built, is going back to first principles. What is a rocket made of? Well going back to first principles before we were ever even created, what was the characteristics in Lucifer, this this being that was created greater than any other being? The highest â the perfect in every way, the scripture says. But yet for whatever reason he couldn't be grateful for the position that he had. He was looking for more, wanted the one thing he didn't have, and to exalt his throne above the throne of God. And his pride pulled him pulled him into that. And so the book is all about what is it how did that happen? How did that unfold? Now, â before we close. Can you you you have a website we should be looking for? â I Evilsfirstbreath.com is the easiest for your listeners to remember because it's it goes with the book that I just mentioned. All right. It's it's two ways to get to my website, Michaelj Mucho.com or Evilsfirstbreath.com. That's the website, and then all the books are available at Amazon, just like most of us. All right. Well that's it's time for me to pray and close. and â into a a challenge. So let's let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the privilege we have to to to share with brothers and to share about how good you are. We pray that the viewers and the listeners would be impacted by your the love of God through the two of us as we served you. Lord anoint the words that were said. Touch the hearts of those that are seeking for for hope and help. Comfort those that are struggling or in pain. Speak peace to those that are that are traumatically impacted in any way. Bless them and draw them close to you so you can give them hope and healing and that you can do a mighty work in their lives. Do these things to the glory of God in Jesus' name. Amen. And our closing is always seek after God. He's there. You want to know him better, give your heart to Jesus. Jesus said he was the way to God. So seek after God by getting to know Jesus. Seek Jesus and he'll point up you right back to God. And that's where you want to be. This has been the God Says Yes Podcast with David Ebel. Connect with David, email him at GodsaysYespodcast at gmail dot com. You can get his latest book, When the Doctors Say No, God Says Yes at Amazon.com.
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