Hope from Hopeless Places

Dannah Gresh: When Angela Yuan’s son Christopher was expelled from dental school, Angela didn’t give up hope.

Angela Yuan: I thought, This is God’s doing. I have to trust God because I’ve been praying. So maybe this is His way to catch Christopher’s attention.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Surrender: The Heart God Controls, for June 3, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Do you ever wonder if your prayers make a difference? If you love a prodigal, chances are you know what it’s like to pray and pray without seeing any change happening.

We’re about to hear a powerful story of a mother’s faithful prayers and how God works in the waiting. It's a story from Angela Yuan and her son, Christopher. In fact, they will both be joining us tomorrow night for a special online event called When You Love a Prodigal. I’ll share more about that at the end of today’s episode. 

Before we dive in, I want to let you know today’s subject matter contains some mature themes. If you have little ears listening, you may want to come back to this episode or occupy them elsewhere. Now, here’s Nancy to start off her conversation with them. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We are very blessed to have with us in the studio this week a mother and son who are here to share their journey of faith and the amazing, transforming, redeeming power of God in their lives. As I’ve heard the story of Christopher Yuan and his mother, Angela, both of whom are with me here in the studio today, I’m just reminded of the story in Luke 15 of the prodigal son, and how God is such a redeeming God, a reconciling God, a restoring God who brings hope out of hopeless places and light out of darkness and joy out of depression and discouragement.

That story of the prodigal son and his return home is so beautifully illustrated in the mom and son that we are going to hear from on Revive Our Hearts. So, Angela Yuan and son, Christopher, welcome to Revive Our Hearts.

Christopher Yuan: Thanks so much for having us.

Angela: Thank you for having us.

Nancy: I want to take us back to that day in May of 1993 when Christopher, you had come home from dental school. You were in your junior year. You were with your family at the dinner table. It was really tense. And I know, Angela, you remember that evening so clearly because you were getting ready to confront Christopher over something you had found. Just tell us how that evening unfolded.

Angela: I remember Christopher came home. I thought he came home for Mother’s Day. I just thought I would welcome him home because we hadn’t seen him for months. But just before he came home, my husband found a video tape in the crawl space. I remember because this had happened before; I was scared to look at the tape. I told my husband to view the tape. It happened to be male pornography.

Nancy: Gay pornography.

Angela: Gay pornography. So at the dinner table I was hoping my husband would bring this up, but he didn’t. So when I confronted him, I said, “Christopher, are you still . . .” And Christopher seemed to know what we were talking about, and he said, “Yes, Mom. I am gay.”

Nancy: So you’re devastated.

Angela: I was so devastated.

Nancy: Now let’s back up. There were a lot of things that led up to this moment. Your family was not Christian at that time. And Angela, you really had no interest in spiritual things or in the Lord at all at that point in your life, right?

Angela: No. I thought as long as I did what I was supposed to do and be the best I could and be an honest person, then I didn’t need religion. I didn’t think that there was a God.

Nancy: And Christopher, for you, this wasn’t just a sudden foray into this lifestyle. It’s really something that started with exposure to pornography at an early age.

Christopher: A very early age, Nancy. I recall back to when I was about nine years old. We had some good friends of the family, and we would visit them over the summer. They were good friends of my parents. We would spend overnight at their place, and I found pornography in the bathroom. I remember looking at it and that was when I realized I that had this affinity towards the same gender, and I was scared. I believe I was about nine years old. So that was probably the beginning of when I realized that struggle. But I kept it pushed down, just hoping that it would go away. That it was somehow some phase and I would become like one of the other boys.

Nancy: And so, coming out of a non-Christian background where you weren’t shepherded, you weren’t protected, you had made some choices. Then continuing into your teen years, and by the time you got to college or dental school, were you actively pursuing this homosexual lifestyle?

Christopher: Well, through high school, college, I just kept those feelings pushed down and in secret because I was really hoping that they would somehow go away. I even was in the Marine Corps Reserves for a little while thinking, Well, maybe I can find my manhood this way and fit in. But they didn’t go away.

So when I was in my early twenties, I went to dental school in Louisville, Kentucky, and that was finally when I came out of the closet. I was open to my friends, my classmates, there in Louisville. That was after that first year in dental school in Louisville, University of Louisville, that’s I went home and had this confrontation with my mother.

Nancy: And at this point, Angela, he says, “I can’t deny who I am.” And he walks out the door?

Angela: Yes.

Nancy: And leaves? You go back to school? Where does that leave you, Angela?

Angela: It left me just hopeless. I felt that this was going to be the end of my life because there is nothing that can hold me back on this earth.

Nancy: You thought there was nothing left to live for.

Angela: Yes. I felt there was nothing I could live for. So I went to a minister, and he gave me a pamphlet on homosexuality. And with the pamphlet I went to the train station and I thought, Well, at least I want to say good-bye to Christopher.

On the train I was reading that small pamphlet. I remember I was holding on to that pamphlet on the train, and I started reading that pamphlet. That was the first time I understood unconditional love. I thought I loved my children, I loved my husband, and that was not it. I understood what God’s love is. It’s unconditional, no matter . . .

Nancy: So the pamphlet was talking about the love of God for us.

Angela: Yes. Even though the pamphlet was talking about the homosexuality, it showed how God loves even the homosexual, and even me, as a sinner.

Before, I didn’t realize I was a sinner, but on the train I thought, Am I a sinner? Even if I am a sinner, God still can love me. That just blew my mind away. 

Nancy: So when you started that train trip, you could not have imagined how you could love Christopher when he was acting out this homosexuality?

Angela: Yes. Before, I just didn’t think I could ever love him because he said he was a homosexual. But during that train ride, I'm thinking, I should love my son even though he says he is gay.

Nancy: And part of that journey was coming to grasp that God loved you. That was a new understanding, too, right?

Angela: Yes. That’s one thing, God can love me even though I was a sinner.

Nancy: So here you started on that train ride, intending to take your life, and in a way, as you were encountering Christ, you were getting a whole new life.

Angela: Exactly. That was the time I experienced God.

Nancy: For the first time.

Angela: The first time. 

Nancy: So you were in a process of being spiritually awakened here as you’re heading on that train ride.

Angela: Yes.

Nancy: Now, when you set out on the train, you were going to see Christopher, and you were going to tell him, “Goodbye.” You were going to end your life.

Angela: Yes.

Nancy: When you got to Louisville, you were in the process of being born again, getting a new life. So, Christopher, do you remember when your mom came to see you in Louisville? What happened there?

Christopher: I was not expecting it at all. She kind of showed up at the dental school. And I thought, What in the world are you doing here? Because in my mind I’m thinking, Finally, I’ve cut off my family. I don’t need my family. I have my own.

Nancy: This is just days after that dinner table conversation?

Christopher: It was just days after, and, in a sense, as I was going back to Louisville, I just felt freedom. I just felt I could begin this new life with the baggage of my parents just dropping away. So when my mother showed up at the dental school in Louisville, it was, like, “What are you doing back in my life? I wanted you out.”

But in my mind, it was my mother who cut herself out because she couldn’t accept me, so I was justifying it. And so it was not what I wanted, not what I expected. But she came and said, “I love you.”

Nancy: Which was really not what you were expecting.

Christopher: Which was really exactly the opposite of what I wanted because that was not playing into the narrative that all my friends had been telling me. But I just thought, Okay, so what? That’s not going to change the way I’m going to act or live.

I just kept doing my thing. My mother stayed there for six weeks and was discipled by another lady. I knew that something was going on, but I just thought, Well, maybe my mom’s just doing some crazy thing now; let her do her own thing, but I’m just going to keep living the way I’m living.

Nancy: And in the meantime, you’re in the process of . . . God’s awakening you, drawing you to Himself.

Angela: Yes.

Nancy: And you find a woman who gets you into the Word?

Angela: Yes.

Nancy: How did you end up getting your first Bible?

Angela: Let me go back a little bit. It is just amazing how God prepared me to realize, after I realized that unconditional love from God, then, when I saw Christopher, I really had that love. “I love you.”

Nancy: It’s God’s love.

Angela: It’s God’s love. "Even though you told me you are gay, and even though you choose what I don’t think is the right thing you should do, I still love you." 

Nancy: It’s really impossible to express unconditional love if we haven’t received it from God first for ourselves. If we haven’t seen ourselves as sinners that God has loved because of His mercy and His grace, then we have no love to be able to give to others.

Angela, you were in the process of coming to a spiritual awakening. You got this sudden new interest in reading the Bible. That was a whole new life for you, wasn’t it?

Angela: Exactly. I started reading the Bible the first thing when I got up in the morning, and I didn’t put it down until almost eleven or twelve o’clock at the end of the day, except when I went to have my lunch or dinner.

Nancy: You had this whole new hunger for God and His Word.

Angela: That was a miracle to me, and I couldn’t believe it. Usually I would fall asleep after one or two hours after starting to read a book. But the more I read the Bible, the more I wanted to read more.

So I went to the Bible bookstore again to get more Christian books. I would read Christian book after Christian book. I had a whole box of Christian books. So I would read the Bible, then Christian books. I just totally immersed myself into the Bible those six weeks.

Nancy: So God was giving you a whole new life. This one prodigal mother had come home. You were experiencing God’s love in a whole new way, but Christopher, you were unfazed at all the Christian things your mom was getting into. It wasn’t touching you at this point. In what direction was your life headed?

Christopher: Well, I kept doing my own thing. I really enjoyed, at that time, my new freedom, my friends in the gay community. While in dental school, I was going out and partying on the weekends and going out to the clubs.

Unfortunately, I got involved in drugs and was in and out of relationships. I was experimenting with drugs, but I didn’t have a lot of money as a student. So I came up with this idea that maybe I could sell a little bit of drugs to pay for my own habit.

That’s how it began. Unfortunately, it grew to the point where I was selling a lot of drugs and making quite a bit of money, where I could travel a lot on the weekends. That just drew my emphasis away from school, and I would be absent on Fridays or Mondays because I would have long weekends.

This went on for several years, to the point that finally the school had enough. They didn’t know that I was drug dealing. Several of the students knew because I had sold drugs to some of the students and even to a professor, but finally the administration had enough, and they expelled me from dental school.

Nancy: And you were close to the end . . .

Christopher: I was only about four months away from receiving my doctorate.

Nancy: Didn’t I read you ordered your cap and gown?

Christopher: I ordered my cap and gown, the invitations had gone out. I had finished part one and part two of the National Boards for dentistry. So I was already headed in that direction, to become a dentist and to go on and be successful, but I finally was expelled from dental school.

Nancy: Did they call you or did you get a note . . . how did they tell you?

Christopher: I was already having problems with the school. This wasn’t something just out of the blue. I was kind of on probation. I had been suspended once because of my grades and for not being very serious about my schooling. So it didn’t come as a complete surprise, but it was a surprise in the sense that I didn’t think they’d actually expel me. I thought they’d just let me through.

Nancy: So, Angela, in the meantime, you were back in Chicago, and you had really been praying for Christopher. In fact, you had a special place in your house that you had made into a prayer closet. Tell us about that.

Angela: When I got home, and it was a brand-new home. We’d just finished the construction of it. We have a small shower in the master bedroom. Somehow I went in there and thought, Wow, this is a good prayer closet. It’s a shower that we’re not using, and the contractor built a stoop for me to sit on to wash my feet. So I converted the stoop to a table. I put my Bible and some lighting in there, and so that was my prayer closet.

Nancy: And of course, all this time a big item on her prayer list, maybe number one, was praying for her son, Christopher. You didn’t even know it and really didn’t care. God had been working so much in your heart, Angela, that you had come to a place where you weren’t going to enable him to live a sinful lifestyle. You said something to the Dean that Christopher didn’t expect.

Angela: Yes, I have to say that when I was praying and studying the Word, I realized God was working in my children. It was not just, “I have to do something.” And I also saw the picture that I should stay away and let God work.

Nancy: . . . not interfere . . .

Angela: . . . not interfere with what God was going to do in my son’s life. I thought, This is God’s doing. I have to trust God because I’ve been praying. So maybe this is His way to catch Christopher’s attention, to get expelled. In my mind, I don’t think anything was more important than to have my son Christopher know God.

Nancy: You know, what’s really interesting, I’m thinking again about the story of the prodigal son, and that dad. There’s no indication he went after his son into that far country. He had to want to and probably could have and would have had some influence, but he waited for his son to come to the end of himself.

I think what you’ve just described is a picture of that. How often do well-meaning parents rescue their children from the cross, from the very circumstances God is wanting to use to bring those children to the end of themselves?

I know it’s not always the same answer in every situation, and that’s why parents have to be so prayerful and discerning. But in this case you stepped back. You said, “We’re not going to interfere with what God is doing.”

Imagine if you had interfered, he would have finished dental school, become a dentist, but he wouldn’t be a follower of Christ.

Christopher: My heart would have probably been even harder. 

Nancy: So you were furious at the moment, but you look back now and you realize how much God loved you and how much your parents loved you, to be willing to let you get thrown out of med school.

Christopher: Yes . . . but my parents were hoping that was rock bottom.

Angela: Yes, I was hoping that this was the rock bottom. Please!

Christopher: And they were hoping things would turn around as a result of this.

Nancy: And from all of appearances, they didn’t.

Christopher: They did not. Things got worse, much worse. So instead of me waking up and finding out I needed to change, I just picked up and moved further away from Chicago. I moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Atlanta, Georgia. I already had some friends there; I had people I was selling drugs with, doing a lot of partying there.

My drug business just exploded. I became not just a drug dealer, but a supplier. I was supplying drugs to dealers in over a dozen states. I was very active in the gay community, very popular.

I felt like I was larger than life. Unfortunately, I was living a very promiscuous life as well—just further and further and further away from God.

Nancy: Kind of becoming your own god.

Christopher: I was becoming my own god. I love where it says in Romans 1 that “I was believing the lie, that I was worshiping the creature, myself, rather than the Creator” (see v. 24). So the whole time all this was going on, over a couple years, things just got worse and worse and worse.

My parents had hoped that things would get better, and they were praying and praying and things just did not get any better.

Nancy: But you did not give up knocking on heaven’s door.

Angela: No.

Nancy: You kept praying.

Angela: Yes, for seven years.

Nancy: Without any evidence that God was hearing or answering those prayers. What kept you praying?

Angela: I think it’s just God’s Word. Every time I read God’s Word, He never gives up on us. I also have the picture of the persistent widow, knocking on God’s door. Maybe I’m not the first in the line, so I want to get up early in the morning and knock on His door, praying, crying, fasting . . .

Christopher: My mom fasted every Monday for seven years.

Nancy: Even an extended fast at one point.

Christopher: She once began fasting and felt that, “I’m going to fast until God tells me to stop,” and she fasted for thirty-nine days.

Nancy: And from all appearances, you were impervious to all of this, and it was having no effect. But God gave you the faith and the grace, Angela, to keep knocking on heaven’s door, and you even prayed that God would help you not to give up, right?

Angela: Yes. I just believed God’s promise.

Christopher: I think often my mom would try to reach out. Not hearing anything for years is probably the worst any parent could experience. It’s really easy to be consumed and dwell on that. But I think during that period my mother would consciously make a decision every morning to go into that prayer closet, to open up her Bible. That was her way of taking the focus away from me, and the storms and the tragedy, and put the focus back upon the face of Jesus.

Even today, on her bathroom mirror my mother has the hymn, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” because that was the first thing in the morning. She wanted to get her focus back on track and put it back on Jesus.

Nancy: I heard you say recently you chose not to focus on the hopelessness but to focus on the promises of God.

We’re going to continue this story. God was working in Christopher’s life even though he didn’t realize it at this point. We all want to hear about that, but I think this today has been such a ministry to some moms and some grandmoms who are tired of praying, tired of crying out, tired of not seeing the answers. I think your story, Angela, just says to them, “Hang on to the Lord. Wait for the Lord. Be of good courage. Don’t give up. Keep praying.”

My life is the result, humanly speaking, of a praying great-grandmother—my Greek Yaya—whom I never knew but who laid hold of the Lord and prayed for my dad’s salvation.

I don’t think she even lived to see him come to faith. But I look at the power of those years of her praying on her knees, through the night, as the testimony has been told. I know there are some moms out there who need to be encouraged to keep, keep, keep seeking the Lord.

Dannah: Yes, as Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth just reiterated: don’t give up praying for your prodigal child or loved one. God is at work, whether or not you see Him—in their life and yours.

I’m really excited because both Christopher and Angela Yuan will be joining us tomorrow night for a special online event called When You Love a Prodigal: Hope-Filled Wisdom While You Wait. The heartbreak of loving a prodigal is real—but so is the hope of the gospel. Angela knows that well, as we just heard in their story today. They’ll also be joined by Mary Kassian, Joannie DeBrito, and Erin Davis to bring you encouragement, wisdom, and hope while you wait for your prodigal.

This is the first event in the Biblical Help for Real Life series from Revive Our Hearts. The single event registration is just $29, or you can bundle all four events in the series and save on your total cost. Get the details and register at ReviveOurHearts.com/help. 

I also want to tell you about our newest print resource called, While You Wait for Your Prodigal: A 30-Day Prayer Challenge. You’ll walk through specific Scripture passages over the course of thirty days that will help you seek God in His Word and prayer. Plus, you’ll find prompts to reflect on and space to journal your prayers for the prodigal you love. 

You can get a copy of While You Wait for Your Prodigal with your donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. It’s a way we’d like to thank you for your support of this ministry. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we’re going to hear the rest of the story and find out what happened to Christopher. You won’t want to miss that episode. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.