If you’re looking for a heartwarming story this Christmas Eve, you can turn on your TV and find Christmas movie marathons on nearly every channel. But if you’re interested in a life-changing, eternity-altering, only-God-could-do-it story of transformation, keep reading.

In a recent article, Jonathan Gass tells his story of transitioning from a biological male to a transgender female—and back again. After undergoing surgery and hormone therapy, after legally changing his name and the gender designation on his driver’s license, after supporting others through similar transitions, Jonathan eventually realized that gender transition fell short of what he truly wanted and needed: spiritual transformation.

“While I was always trying to develop a different life for myself,” he writes, “what I really needed was a rebirth as a Christian.” And he found it as he read a copy of Gentle and Lowly given to him by a friend who also invited him to church. This extraordinary transformation started with the ordinary faithfulness of a Christian friend.

As you gather with family and friends this Christmas, perhaps there’ll be a Jonathan at your table. Someone who seems so far from Christ that you wonder if there’s hope. Someone who might even consider Christianity the “most feared religion” as Jonathan once did.

Cry out to the God who “opened [Jonathan’s] eyes to Jesus’s wisdom, kindness, and immense importance,” and ask him to open your loved one’s eyes too. And ask God to use you, as he used Jonathan’s friend. Look with hope to the God who came near to us so that all who are far off might be brought near to him (Eph. 2:13).