Today’s story begins with Paul planning to bring the gospel further into Asia Minor, but the Holy Spirit prevents him from doing so (Acts 16:6–7). God can use red lights as well as green lights to direct our activity. Paul is led to break out of Asia Minor to plant God’s Word in other regions even closer to the heart of the Roman Empire: Macedonia and Greece. He receives this challenge in a vision in which a Macedonian man begs him to help teach the gospel there.

In Philippi, Paul follows his usual habit of seeking out the Jews first. There’s no synagogue there, so he goes where he expects to find them: worshiping on the Sabbath at the riverbank outside the city. The remote location shelters Jewish worshipers from the dominant Roman culture, and the river provides water for ceremonial washings.

Paul finds a number of women there and has no reservations about teaching them despite the cultural taboo against doing so. One of the women is a merchant who comes from the city of Thyatira. Her name is Lydia, which is also the name of the region of her hometown. She’s not Jewish, but she is a “worshiper of God” (v. 14). Her familiarity with Israel’s God has prepared Lydia to receive Paul’s message.

But there is nothing automatic or natural about Lydia’s conversion. Hearing the gospel does not guarantee acceptance. It takes a special operation of God’s Spirit to break people out of their unbelief and natural resistance to the good news about Jesus Christ: “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” (v.14). The first toehold of the gospel on Macedonian turf is through a miracle that only God can bring about: the miracle of conversion.

That Lydia has truly come to know Christ is clear from her subsequent actions. She’s baptized along with her whole household, and the message spreads to her family and friends. Lydia also demonstrates the love that comes from faith in Christ by showing hospitality to Paul and his companions (v. 15). Later she provides the meeting place for the new community of believers (v. 40).

Lydia’s conversion reveals how the Holy Spirit continues to overcome the barriers of geography, gender, race, and ethnicity. But most profoundly it shows how the Spirit loosens the fetters of unbelief that keep us from believing the gospel and following our Lord. Common and unspectacular as it may seem, that’s still the greatest miracle of all.