When Haim first began speaking with Yulia about God, their children were still small enough to be playing together on the playground. Their conversations happened in the ordinary spaces of life—two parents watching their children play, talking about life and, often, about God. Haim would share about the Lord. Yulia would listen. But she was not ready.
Then life moved on. The children grew up. Years passed. And what may have seemed like a conversation that ended long ago was, in the hands of God, only the beginning. Because God had not stopped speaking to Yulia.
Through difficult seasons, she found herself praying. Again and again, she experienced God meeting her in moments when she needed help. A quiet searching had begun, eventually leading her to join a discipleship course for people exploring faith and looking for answers about God. Then, recently, Yulia reached out and asked to come to one of our home groups. Twenty years after those first conversations, Haim found himself sitting with Yulia once again, talking about the same God.
Only this time, something was different.
Yulia had come a long way, but one question still stood between her and fully surrendering her life to Yeshua: Why did she personally need a Savior? She did not see herself as a bad person. She had not committed terrible crimes. The idea of being a sinner was difficult for her to accept. She could believe that God existed. She could pray to Him. She could even recognize His help in her life. But the Gospel had not yet become personal.
So they opened the Scriptures together. As they read Isaiah 53 and explored other passages revealing the meaning of Yeshua’s sacrifice, the veil began to lift. The Gospel stopped being something Yulia understood about and became something she understood for herself. Yeshua had not simply died for humanity. He had died for her. Her sin, her need for forgiveness, His sacrifice, His love—suddenly, it was personal.
And after twenty years of conversations, questions, searching, and seeds quietly growing beneath the surface, Yulia prayed aloud, repented, and invited Yeshua into her heart.
What a reminder that we rarely know what God is doing beneath the surface of someone’s life. We see the conversation that seems to go nowhere. We see the person who listens but does not respond. We pray, we share, we wait—and sometimes we wonder whether anything we said made a difference. But God sees what we cannot. He knows where every seed has fallen, and He is able to continue a conversation long after we think it has ended.
Perhaps that is why what happened next is so beautiful. Almost immediately, Yulia began thinking about her husband. She asked for prayer for his salvation, but she struggled to believe that he could ever come to faith. He is an atheist, she explained. In her mind, the possibility seemed almost impossible.
But twenty years earlier, perhaps someone could have said the same about Yulia.
Haim encouraged her not to lose hope. Changing a heart is God’s work. And when he saw Yulia again, she was already filled with joy over unexpected changes at home. Her husband had begun showing her a new tenderness and affection, drawing closer to her in ways she had not experienced before. His spiritual story is still being written, and we continue to pray—but Yulia is beginning to understand something she has already lived herself: we should never decide in advance what God cannot do in another person’s heart.
Perhaps you are praying for someone today—a child, a spouse, a parent, or a friend who seems far from God. Perhaps you have shared the Gospel and seen no response. Perhaps years have passed.
We shouldn’t mistake waiting for absence.
Twenty years ago, Yulia listened. Today, she belongs to Yeshua. And now the woman who once needed someone to keep believing and planting is learning to do the same for someone she loves.
Never underestimate a seed. Never stop praying. God knows how to wait—and He knows how to bring a heart home.
“Believe on the Lord Yeshua the Messiah, and you will be saved, you and your household.”
Acts 16:31
