Finding Hope in Prison

This program contains the following episodes:

"Standing in the Gap for a Child"  

"Plans to Give You Hope and a Future"

"Lies Women Believe about Themselves"

"Reaching Inside a Cambodian Prison"

"Lives Built on the Cornerstone"

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Dannah Gresh: What happens when you hit rock bottom? For Christopher Yuan it was in that place of total desperation that he discovered The Rock, Jesus Christ. 

Christopher Yuan: I felt so broken about my sin and rebellion, and things were just not looking like they were getting any better.

Dannah: Hear some amazing stories—stories like Christopher’s—of how God is at work behind prison doors, today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Hi, I’m Dannah Gresh. I’m so glad you’ve joined me today.

You know, one of my favorite stories in Scripture is found in the book of Acts, chapter 16. Paul and Silas had been arrested and thrown into prison. Ah, but God was at work! He sent a great earthquake to shake the doors of that prison open. And He did more than just set the apostles free. The jailer and his whole family surrendered their lives to Jesus because of what they saw God do. 

If you’re hitting rock bottom today, I’ve got some good news for you. God is still at work . . . and that includes what’s happening behind prison walls. 

Today we’ll hear how God is using Jennifer Smith to share the hope of the gospel with women coming out of prison, along with the stories of Christopher Yuan and Julie McGregor, in this powerful edition of Revive Our Hearts Weekend. 

Sometimes getting caught can be God’s best for us.

Christopher Yuan was about to graduate from dental school. From the outside looking in, it seemed like he was on his way to a bright, successful future. But Christopher was secretly dealing drugs. His rebellious lifestyle caught up with him, and he found himself in jail, experiencing a spiritual earthquake.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sat down with Christopher Yuan. Let’s listen in to what was going on in those first few days of Christopher’s prison sentence. Here’s Nancy..

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: You’d lost your friends, your money, your job dealing drugs, if that’s a job, I don’t know. And you’re in this detention center.

Christopher: Yes. Three days after, I was walking around the cell block. And you know, I still in my mind thought, I’m not a criminal. I didn’t do anything wrong. And I mean God was still working . . .

Nancy: You thought, I’m not a criminal?!

Christopher: Well, because, I’m a good kid.

Nancy: You thought you were a good kid?

Christopher: I was raised in a good home. I’m not like all the other people who are homeless or living in the projects, stuff like that. So in my mind I’m like, “I’m really a good kid.”

Nancy: So your thinking was really twisted.

Christopher: It was really twisted. I mean, that’s what drugs will do to you. So it was three days after that, I was trying to stay away from the riff-raff—the bad guys. “This is just probably a mistake, and I’ll get out soon.” I was walking around the cell block. I mean, God was softening my heart, but my heart was so hard that there was a lot of softening to do.

Walking around, and you know, Nancy, I passed by this garbage can. It was just disgusting, things just flowing out of it, flies circling around. I looked at that and I thought, That’s my life. I’m raised in an upper-middle class suburb of Chicago. My father has two doctorates. I was four months away from becoming a doctor myself. I had it made. Everything in my life was going the right direction, and yet it just took this turn and now I found myself in jail among common criminals—just trash.

So I was just going over all my life and how horrible it was now and the place I was in. I was about to walk past this garbage can, and I looked on top of the trash—right on top of it—I found a Gideon’s New Testament.

Nancy: That somebody had thrown away.

Christopher: Someone had just thrown it away. Someone must have just thrown it away because nothing was on top of it. It was just sitting right there. I walked right by it, and I picked it up and I brought it back to my cell. I started reading God’s Word. I read through the entire gospel of Mark that first night.

That was just the beginning of God working. I thought I was rebelling. I remember before I was sentenced, I read Psalm 51, and I just felt like those were my words. The words that David wrote were my words. I almost felt like reading that to the judge. I felt all this conviction and weight and thinking, There’s nothing good about this. What is there good about this? I felt so broken about my sin and rebellion, and things were just not looking like they were getting any better. I felt there couldn’t be anything worse.

Nancy: And it did get worse.

Christopher: Yes.

Next day:

Nancy: So in the jail you started to . . . you were just being drawn . . . I think maybe it was because you were bored, too. You were looking for things to do. You didn’t have the high life anymore.

Christopher: No.

Nancy: And you read through the Gospel of Mark. You started reading and seeking the Lord, and He was seeking you. You were now on this journey to God bringing your heart home to Christ and ultimately to your family.

But you were also going through this trial.

Christopher: Yes.

Nancy: Getting this prison sentence, and, God’s drawing you, but the circumstances are pretty bleak, and can it get any worse? And then comes this moment when you find it can get worse.

Christopher: Yes, and that’s often the case. Sometimes we see God working and sometimes things get worse before they get better. And that was the case here.

I was reading Scripture and finding just this new life within me that was coming through, and yet really convicted of my rebellion against God, against my parents, against the government.

Nancy: Can I say even that is the work of God’s Spirit, because in the last program you were telling us you thought you were fine. You wondered what you were doing in prison with those criminals.

Christopher: was able to justify drug dealing, doing promiscuity. I was able to justify all of that. And so you’re right, it was really . . .

Nancy: . . . the conviction of God’s Spirit.

Christopher: Yes, conviction of the Holy Spirit telling me that I was rebelling against God.

Nancy: And the power of the Word in opening your eyes. I think it’s just amazing as I think about both of you how God used the Scripture to bring you to faith. It wasn’t any great plan or speaker.

Christopher: Yes. Often people would ask, “Who brought you to faith? Who shared the gospel with you? What ministry was it? Was it a prison ministry?” They were asking my mother. It’s the thread that goes through our lives and our journey of faith, of faith to God. It was the Word of God. It was the Bible. It was Scripture.

The effectiveness of any ministry, the effectiveness of any method of evangelism is not how good it sounds or how well the administration is. It’s the power of the gospel. It’s the Word of God.

Because I was in and out of different jails and prisons, I don’t think I was able to really delve deep into any of the ministries that were present there—the prison ministries and the people coming in, the volunteers. The only thing that was constant throughout my time in jail was the Word of God. Throughout everywhere I went, even though I couldn’t bring anything with me, even though I couldn’t even bring the clothes on my back with me, shoes, nothing; everywhere I went, there I could at least find a Bible from the chaplain.

So I was reading Scripture, and it just was convicting me. I was finding that things were looking more and more bleak because I was a sinner, and I did not think I was a sinner before.

Dannah: That’s what the gospel does. It convicts us of the sin that lies so deep, but it also washes us with God's grace and love. It releases us from the prison of sin and death so that we can live free in Christ! Today, Christopher Yuan is a drug dealer turned Christian author and Bible professor!

We have Nancy’s entire conversation with Christopher and his mom, Angela on our website, ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, click on today’s episode, "Finding Hope in Prison" and scroll through the transcript. We’ll have a link there for you. Christopher’s mom prayed for many years that God would capture her son’s heart. Her side of this incredible story will give hope to many moms.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has spent so much time studying God’s Word. She might even say that a prison sentence for Christopher was a gift from God. Wait, that doesn’t make sense . . . or does it. Here’s Nancy sharing with us what she found in Psalm 142.

Nancy: Anything that makes me need God is a blessing. Anything that forces me to look upward to Him to get my needs met is a blessing. Listen to Psalm 142. This is a prayer of David when he's in a cave, running from an insane king who's jealous, who's threatening his life, saying all manner of evil against him. From that cave, he prays.

I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the Lord for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who know my way. In the path where I walk men have hidden a snare for me. (vv. 1–3) 

A snare can be the snare of words that are said, or the snare of words that aren't said that we wished would have been said.

He says, "Look to my right and see; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life" (v. 4). Now that may or may not have been literally true. Sometimes the enemy makes us think that's true when it's really not true—like Elijah saying, "I'm the only one left here." And God said, "You've overdone the pity thing. There are those who do care." But it's possible that a person could be at a place where that is literally true.

I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. [What's the very next verse say?] I cry to You, O Lord; I say, "You are my refuge, You are my portion in the land of the living." Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. (vv. 4–6) 

Some of those people who are too strong for you may have been people from your childhood. They're not even here anymore, but they're still pursuing you. Those words are still haunting you. That lack of affection is still lodged deep in your soul.

And he says to the Lord, "Listen to my cry, I'm desperate; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. Set me free from my prison, so that I may praise Your name." That's the objective. It's not about me; it's not about my feelings. It's not about me being loved. Ultimately, it's about being able to praise God, to bring Him glory, to reflect His love to our world.

Dannah: I’m thinking of a group of women who might hear David’s words that Nancy just read us from Psalm 142 . . . The women I am imagining would know exactly what that feels like. I’m talking about the women behind bars, separated from their families, their children, their friends. 

Julie McGregor loves women behind bars. For many years she went into Cambodia’s largest prison with the message that freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness can be found in Christ.

When Julie came to our most recent True Woman conference, she sat down with our team and shared the incredible things that God was doing. 

Julie McGregor: My name’s Julie McGregor, and I’m from New Zealand. I currently live and have lived in Cambodia, Phnom Penh. I had never dreamed of being a missionary. I had not grown up as a little girl thinking that that would be what I wanted to be. I had traveled a lot around the world for my corporate job, but in the midst of a pretty decent life crisis, I called out to God and just said to Him, “I need to see You at work in a bigger context than my life.”

So my church said, “There’s a lady in Cambodia who we support, and she needs some help for a couple of months.” So that’s how I first got there.

My ministry now, after a long journey, I work in Cambodia’s largest women’s prison, in Phnom Penh. A prison in Cambodia doesn’t have a lot of money, so the buildings are fairly rudimentary. They’re very overcrowded. There are a lot of people and a lot of heat and a lot of dust and a lot of rain in the rainy season. You know, I’m sure life is not easy in a prison in New Zealand or in America either, but comparably, it’s a very difficult place. I can’t imagine knowing that I would be in there for one year, let alone twenty years. I go in and out two or three times a week, and the reality every time I walk in of, “They haven’t been anywhere else.”

I teach Bible, we worship. The women in my class, which has grown over the last five years from about six people to forty, is made up of women from all over the world. I see sanctification in front of my eyes. God at work in these women’s lives. As they recognize their true identities, God is transforming them, and it is being seen. The church inside the prison is growing because people’s lives are truly transformed.

There were, in the last five years I guess, four or five times that I’ve requested permission and been granted permission to have baptisms. I take in a paddling pool, a child’s little, colorful paddling pool that sits very low off the ground, one that you have to blow up with your mouth. We take that in and blow it up, and then some of the youth prisoners in the prison, the young boys, they bring the buckets of water. It takes about forty-five minutes to fill up the pool, and the women hop in the pool, we kneel down, and then to baptize them we put their heads forward so that they’re wet on top.

The excitement that they can be baptized and that their old life truly is gone and buried and they are alive in Christ [is amazing]. I have watched multiple women, but three especially, and nothing changes around them. Nothing changes around them. They are in the same place day in, day out, bumping up against other women who don’t want to be there either. Constantly it’s like they’re in a hothouse of God showing them that when the Spirit is alive within you, His fruit will come out. They are different people from when I first met them, and they’re testimonies of hope, even though some of them are in there for decades. 

They are learning the Word of God. They get to study. They have more hours available to them than I have. They’re teaching each other, and they’re giving hope to each other. The guards can see it, and the prisoners around them, both the foreigners and the Cambodians. People are seeing truly changed lives and a hope that makes absolutely no earthly sense.

Dannah: My heart is so stirred!

Julie’s story reminds me of Paul and Silas’s story—the one I mentioned at the top of the broadcast. Jesus is working behind the jailhouse doors, and the guards are paying attention! 

We have an update from Julie. The prison has been closed to teachers since the beginning of COVID. From what Julie has heard, a small group of women have still been encouraging each other and remain strong, but many have lost heart.

Friend, we need to pray for these women in that Cambodian prison. Pray that hearts would be shaken and that the earthquake of revival would strike in that place where she has invested so much. 

You know, sometimes it’s what happens after leaving prison that shakes women to their core. Jennifer Smith spent more than a decade behind bars. Now she helps women live free in Christ through the ministry of Cornerstone Transition Home. 

Jennifer Smith: We started with three residents, and Bethany and I had no clue. I think after the second day we sat across the table and said, “What are we doing?!” You know, with our hair pulled out.

We had no clue. We thought it was going to be one way, and it ended up being something totally different. You have this idea of how you think ministry is going to look, and you’re going to go home, and it’s going to shut off. Then you’re going to get up in the morning, and you’re going to go to the workplace, and you’re going to do ministry again.

That was not at all what was going to happen. This was going to be a place where the Lord was going to stretch us. He was going to cause us to pour our lives into these women and come alongside them, walking alongside them to get identification. These women don’t have any identification when they get out of prison. They come with a paper sack. That’s it. They don’t have any clothes. They don’t have anything.

So we were just like, “Oh, what do we do? What do we do?”

Immediately we began to seek the Lord. As we began to get organized, He began to direct us. Then we got a little bit more girls, and all of a sudden we grew to about five. We got used to handling that number, and then we grew to about eight. And we’re, like, “Oh, man, this is getting crazy!”

But the neat thing was before we even knew sometimes we had a need, He was providing it. At that point, we’re, like, “We need a vehicle because we’ve got to carry all these people around.”

Someone would show up and say, “Hey, the Lord has prompted me to give you a van.”

And we’re, like, “Yes!” We didn’t know we were going to need a van. 

Before we knew it, we had twelve. Then before we knew it, we had twenty-two.

Then the Lord began to grow our volunteers. But out of that, Bethany and I realized, “We can’t do this. We have to have help.”

He actually began to bring some residents out of the program that had graduated and who had done well and had proven that they had some strong leadership skills, and we were able to implement them back into a role of staff. That gave the other girls coming in hope. “Hey, they went through this program, and now they’re doing some staff things.”

Dannah: The team at Cornerstone Transition Home provided so much practical help to women coming out of prison. They also shared the ultimate hope we all need to be truly free. They taught these women about Jesus.

Jennifer: That’s the only thing that’s going to change these ladies’ lives. It’s the gospel that’s going to transform them. That’s where the power’s at, in the gospel, to do that. So it’s not going to be anything that we can actually do or anything that we can actually say. It’s the gospel.

Dannah: And the Lord is changing hearts at Cornerstone Transition Home.

Jennifer: Which leads me to a family that we love dearly. Her name is Elizabeth. We call her E.B. She’d been in prison six times. She came and really just surrendered her life to the Lord. I mean, she was all in with those all-in “yeses” where you just put your “yes” on the table.

She had an estranged daughter and mother that was living in Texas. They were so taken by the changes in her life, that when she finished the ninety-day program, she ended up staying six more months because she wasn’t ready. She had goals. She had to pay off fines, get a license—she wanted to get a car before she got out of the house.

So once those goals were in place, she came to us and said, “I think I’m ready.” 

We said, “We think you are, too.”

She was able to move into her own apartment. Her mom and daughter actually moved from Texas to live with her. It wasn’t long they were coming to classes at Cornerstone, and they were listening to the Lies Women Believe books, the studies, and they were going through the same curriculum that she had gone through. They both got saved and gave their heart to the Lord and were baptized. Now you have this daughter who is now reaching her family.

And there’s another element to that: She had a husband named Ricky who was also incarcerated, and he has not been out at this point yet. We began to pray for Ricky because she was concerned about his salvation. He got out in June, and within two weeks he was giving his life to the Lord.

This couple is on fire for the Lord in our community, his workplace. Now they’re expecting a child, their first child together. They just closed on their home. They’ve got a lot of new stuff going on right now in their life, but it’s stuff that they never could have done because they’ve never sought the Lord. They’ve never depended on Him. They’re doing it now as transformed new creatures.

It’s really neat just to step back and see how this one life was able to trickle out, and she became a missionary in her own family. And now she’s on staff with us full time.

Dannah: God weaves incredible stories. Layers of stories. Layers of lives changed. 

As Jennifer continues to share her story, God is using it to set more prisoners free. You can find my entire conversation with Jennifer at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. Just click on today’s episode. 

Are you fully surrendered to Christ? Jennifer is, Julie is, Christopher is. They surrendered their lives and gave it all for the sake of Christ—even their fears. Being used by God the way they have takes guts, takes courage and boldness and moving past fears. Revive Our Hearts wants to help you learn to look your fears in the face and find lasting peace with Facing Our Fears, a new booklet from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. You can do so by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode.

Next week, we’re gonna talk about nomophobia, (laughter) that is the fear of being without your phone. And yes, it’s an actual thing. Well, Arlene Pellicane is going to give us some clues as to why nomophobia is a becoming a bigger problem, and we’ll talk about a good ole thing called self-control.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil Krause, Blake Bratton, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, Erin Davis, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.