USA: A Taste of Heaven Right There on Death Row

Source: Movements, January 13, 2025

They’d run out of protective vests, so our visit to death row was limited to one unit.

Usually, the prisoners were locked up in the individual cells 23 hours a day. They aren’t allowed to socialize. Each one would take one hour of exercise alone. All that had changed in response to what God was doing.

When we arrived, there were eight men waiting for us in their day room. We stood a meter away behind a yellow line. They stood behind a barred wall.

They were full of the love and life of God—white, black, Hispanic, Asian. It was a taste of heaven right there on death row. God’s glory was shining out from these men’s lives. I wanted to cross that yellow line, put my hands through the bars, and embrace these brothers.

They wanted to tell us what God was doing. “We don’t call this death row; we call it life row. This is where we found Jesus.”

In three years, 24 men have been executed on death row, 20 of them were disciples.

Read the full story and/or listen to the related podcast episode. Poignant. And it sounds like a book of stories about what God is doing in prisons worldwide is in the works. A different kind of insider movements? Stay tuned.

Readers might also be interested an article about youth ministry in the U.S. asking, “Is America experiencing a revival?” Spoiler alert: not yet, but there are encouraging signs (Greg Stier, via Outreach Magazine).

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