Read Lydia’s story in Acts 16:6–40.
Purple may have been Lydia’s favorite color. She was a successful businesswoman who sold fine cloth. Lydia was a Gentile from Thyatira in Asia Minor. Thyatira was famous for its dying works and was the center of production of royal purple.
Lydia’s job was to sell purple cloth, but she was also a worshiper of God. Lydia had a family to care for and a business to run. She was busy. Still, she set aside time in her busy schedule for God. But Lydia didn’t worship God in a church building.
The law stated that a city needed ten reliable Jewish males before the city could have a synagogue. Since Philippi didn’t have enough Jews to support a synagogue, the women worshiped and prayed at the river’s edge.
The apostle Paul, along with Silas and Timothy, traveled to Philippi on one of their missionary journeys. On the Sabbath, they went out of the city gate to the place of prayer along the river’s edge. There, the three missionaries sat with Lydia and the other women, and Paul preached about Jesus. He told them God was a holy God. That all people were sinners and fell short of God’s holiness. Paul also told Lydia that Jesus was God’s perfect Son, who had been crucified and had risen from the dead for love’s sake. He did this so all people could receive forgiveness for their sins and have a personal relationship with God the Father.
That day Lydia believed in the Lord Jesus Christ and became the first recorded convert to Christianity in Europe.
Lydia had known there was a God, and she worshiped him. But, there on the riverbank with Paul, she learned the rest of the story. She heard and believed that she was a sinner who needed Jesus to be her Savior.
Paul hadn’t planned to visit Philippi. But God had his own plan for Paul. And God’s plan included Lydia, the other women, and all of Philippi and Europe. God wanted them to hear the good news of Jesus, so the Holy Spirit spoke to Paul through a dream and led him and Silas and Timothy to the women on the riverbank that Sabbath day.
Lydia was strong in her faith in Jesus. She was so enthusiastic that her whole household became Christians. Lydia invited Paul and his fellow missionaries to stay in her home. They stayed for several days, and Lydia’s home became the center of Paul’s teaching ministry in Philippi.
God had heard Lydia’s prayers. Like Lydia, you can seek God through prayer. You can ask God to reveal himself to you, your family, your community, your country, and the entire world.
What about you? Do you only know of God because you’ve heard a family member talk about him or heard about him at church? Or do you have a real relationship with God through your own belief in Jesus?
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
—Matthew 7:7–8
I will continue to seek God and his holy ways.
Dear heavenly father, thank you for all you did so I can know you and have a personal relationship with you. I love you. Amen.
Philippi, a city in Eastern Macedonia in Greece, was a Roman colony named after Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.
Sometimes when we pray, it’s good to close our eyes and fold our hands. Closing our eyes and folding our hands can help us ignore distractions and maybe even avoid them. But we can pray standing up or lying in our bed. We can pray out loud or quietly in our spirit. We can pray with tears of sadness or tears of joy. We can talk to God anytime and anywhere.