LYDIA OF THYATIRA

(Taken from Acts 16:14)

“And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us saying, ‘If ye have judged me to be faithful in the Lord, come into my house and abide there.’ And she constrained us.”

On his second missionary journey, following the Holy Spirit’s leading into Macedonia, Paul made his first evangelistic contact with a small group of women by a riverside outside the city of Philippi (modern day Greece). Paul preached to these women and Lydia, an influential businesswoman of purple dye for cloth, came to believe. Not only did this open Lydia’s heart, but it opened the way for ministry in that region. In the early church as today, God often works in and through women.

Lydia appears telling how she came to believe in Jesus the Messiah, how she brought her own family and friends into the family of faith and started a church in her home. It is said that Lydia has the distinction of being the first convert in Europe, evangelized by Paul.