When We Begin to Answer

“The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.”
Acts 16:14

An invitation can remain unchanged while our answer to it changes completely. We may understand what is being offered, see why someone else would want it, and still feel little desire to say yes. Then one day we begin to respond differently to the same invitation. Nothing obvious has been added. No stronger argument has been made. Yet what once seemed easy to decline now feels worth considering. The surprising part is not simply that we have changed our mind. A response has become possible where there had been almost none before. What is it that happens within us that makes a new answer possible?

Lydia was a businesswoman in Philippi who had joined other women for prayer beside a river. Paul, an early follower of Jesus, had come to the city speaking about Him. Then the account says, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” (Acts 16:14). Though Lydia was hearing about Jesus, what changed was not only that she understood more but that she had become able to respond to what she heard. Could movement toward God begin before any outward choice, with God awakening a willingness to answer Jesus that had not been there before?

Sometimes we notice the change only because our own response surprises us. Why does a truth about Jesus that has been familiar for years now bring gratitude, trust, or even a desire to know Him more? Paul gives us an unexpected image when he writes that the God who once said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” also “made his light shine in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 4:6). Creation is a startling comparison for such an inward change because light appears where there was no light before. Could our new responsiveness be something like that, not a stronger version of what we already had, but a capacity God is bringing into being?

Maybe we recognize a new responsiveness to God when a familiar truth about Him draws gratitude before we had planned to be grateful. We may begin to feel wonder where there had once been little response, even though the truth we know about Jesus has not changed. What has changed is the way His goodness and mercy are reaching us. What we once only believed about Him can begin to move us personally. Praise may begin there, not because we decided that we ought to praise, but because what we’ve come to know about Jesus has begun to draw gratitude and wonder from us and draw us toward Him.

The change in Lydia does not remain hidden for long. After “the Lord opened her heart,” she says, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house” (Acts 16:15). The woman who had become able to respond to Jesus now responds with her ordinary life. Her home, her time, and her welcome become part of that answer. Maybe this is where the change becomes especially real, as what God has awakened in us begins to shape choices we would not have made before. Could this be how a new response to Jesus becomes part of the ordinary way we live with Him?

Prayer

Jesus, open my heart more fully to You. Let what I am learning of Your goodness awaken gratitude and wonder within me, and teach me to answer Your grace with a willing, responsive life. Amen.