Inviting Others to Share Your Life

Dannah Gresh: Vicki Rose looked like she had so much going for her. She had money. She rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous, and she had a powerful job on Fifth Avenue in New York City. But inside, she was dying without Jesus.

One day an invitation arrived.

Vicki Rose: It said, “Mrs. Arthur S. DeMoss invites you to dinner to meet and hear Secretary of the Interior, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Hodel, to talk about Christianity in the world today.”

And then at the very bottom left corner it said, “Black tie.” And I thought, I’m going. It’s an opportunity to get dressed and go out. It wasn’t really that I was interested in the topic or that I was curious about it, but it was a dinner party, and I had an opportunity to go out.

Dannah: At that dinner Vicki heard the gospel and came to faith in Jesus.

Vicki: The first thing they said was, “God loved me and had a plan for my life but that I was separated from God because of the sin in my life. But the good news was God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for my sin. And if I placed my faith in Him, then I would spend all of eternity in heaven and all my sin would be forgiven.”

And the fourth thing they said was that they were going to offer us an opportunity to pray and ask Jesus Christ into our life.

And all of this was in a black tie dinner party in a grand ball room of the Hotel Mazzini.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules, for October 25, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

What are some of your favorite sounds? Hmmm, I love the sounds of my twin granddaughters laughing.

I love the sound my peacock makes in the morning. It just sounds so tropical.

But there is a sound I love to hear more than any other. That’s the sound of God’s voice through His Word or His Holy Spirit.

When was the last time you prayed that someone you love would listen when God speaks? Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If you’re just joining us in this series, you may want to go back and listen to yesterday’s podcast. We’re in day two of a three-day series on one of my new favorite characters in the Bible, a woman named Lydia.

If you have your Bible, turn with me to Acts chapter 16. These are the acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles in the founding of the early church. We’re seeing the spread of the gospel.

How did we get here today? How did we come to know Jesus? Well, it all started after the death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus as He sent His disciples into the world to go and make disciples in all nations. The apostles were following the command of Jesus. And so we see how the gospel spread from city to city, from nation to nation, from continent to continent. That’s why we’re here today.

We’re in this passage, Acts chapter 16. We have Paul and Silas and Timothy, and another character I’ll introduce you to in just a moment, who are on Paul’s second missionary journey. They’re trying to expand the reach of the gospel into unreached areas.

As we saw yesterday, they kept facing one roadblock after another. They kept getting stopped. They wanted to go here, and the Holy Spirit said, “No.” They wanted to go here, and the Holy Spirit said, “No.” The Lord was redirecting Paul’s steps, sending him in a different direction.

We do this at Revive Our Hearts. We have strategy and planning meetings, and we get whiteboards, and we say, “This is what we think.” We’re prayerful. We seek the Lord. We’re not just trying to make our own plans. But sometimes we can get all this on a whiteboard or on a document, and then the Lord makes it clear there’s something else He’s doing.

We’ve had a partnership develop recently with Revive Our Hearts in Vietnamese. That was not on our chart. That was not on our whiteboard. That was not in our strategic plan. But God has created a hunger and an opening there, and we sensed the Lord leading. Thanks to our Ministry Partners, we’ve been able to expand in partnership with another ministry, and the Word is going out in Vietnamese.

God is doing things that we don’t know and we can’t see. So we’ve got to make sure we keep following Him.

They finally came to Troas, these missionaries, the furthest west the missionaries had ever been. The Aegean Sea lay before them, and they were like, “What’s next? Are we going swimming? What are we going to do?”

And verse 9 of Acts 16, just recapping from yesterday, 

During the night Paul had a vision in which a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, ‘Cross over to Macedonia and help us!” After he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, [because that’s where God said, “Go.” And when God says it, you do it.] concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. (vv. 9–10)

It was pretty clear, right? Now, I want you to notice something little here. It may not seem that significant, but it gives a clue into Bible study, and I want to illustrate it here. You see the word “we”? “After he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia.” That’s in verse 10.

If you go back to verses 6 and 7, verse 6 says, 

They went through the region of Phrygia . . .; they had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit . . . When they came to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Passing by Mysia they went down to Troas.

But then you see verse 10, “After [Paul] had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts.”

Did you catch the difference there? The author is talking about they–third person, and now he’s talking about we–first person. What happened here?

Well, scholars believe that Troas, which is where it goes from they to we, Troas is where the author of Acts, the human author, joined Paul’s team. Do you remember who that was? Doctor Luke, the beloved physician.

So now it’s going to be we. So it’s Paul, Silas, the two who are on the missionary journey, and Timothy, who was picked up in Lystra and joined the missionary team there, probably a convert from the first missionary journey. And now it’s we, Doctor Luke is with them.

So they journeyed across the Aegean Sea, then by road, and finally, verse 12, to Philippi, “a Roman colony and a leading city of the district of Macedonia. We stayed in that city for several days.”

What were they doing? Well, maybe they were getting rested up from their long trip. Maybe they were looking for a place to land. But for sure what they were doing is waiting for God to show them what to do next.

It doesn’t tell us what happened during those several days. Sometimes it’s okay that there’s nothing noteworthy happening during several days because God may have you resting. Or He may just have you waiting until He has orchestrated circumstances to where He wants you to be.

We get so restless. We get so fidgety. We get so, “I’ve got to know. I’ve got to do something.”

God doesn't work off our to-do lists. He’s not checking off boxes. He’s not working on our calendars. I mean, I live and die by my iPhone calendar here. Right? But God is at work in ways we can’t see.

So they stayed in that city for several days. On the Sabbath, as was their custom, they looked for Jews that they could worship with. But as we saw yesterday, there weren’t enough Jews in the city of Philippi, a city of probably ten to fifteen thousand people. There weren’t enough Jews. They needed ten males to have a synagogue. But they found the place outside of town near the river that was set aside for prayer. As we know, they often had in Gentile cities in the Roman era, a place where the Jews or the Jewish proselytes could go and worship their God.

And then verse 13 tells us: “We sat down and spoke to the women gathered there.”

Now, verse 14 we’re introduced to the main subject of this study: “A God-fearing woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira [some 240 miles away], was listening. The Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying.”

So much packed in one precious verse here. I love it! Let’s look at this process of Lydia coming to faith in Christ.

First of all, we see that the Lord drew this woman, this business woman, to the place of prayer where God was sending Paul to come and share Christ. Lydia gathered there with others who feared and worshiped the God of the Jews—Yahweh.

Then we see that the Lord gave this woman an awareness of the fact that there is a God and a respect for that God. She’s called “a God-fearing woman.” That’s actually two Greek words that have to do with being devout, being reverent, being a God-worshiper.

Now, this woman was not yet a believer. Remember, we’re transitioning from the old covenant to the new covenant, and the gospel is just starting to go out. She’s probably a Gentile by birth, but God’s Spirit had worked in her heart to incline her, to turn her toward the God of the Jews. She was “a God-fearing woman.”

Proverbs tells us that, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It’s a starting place. Where did she get that fear of the Lord? God put it in her heart. God did it. God inclined her heart to know that there is a God. There were many gods worshipped in the Greek and Roman world, but she knew there was a God, and she gathered there because she had a respect for God, and she wanted to pray with these other women.

And then this verse says, “She listened” to what Paul said. She was listening.

Romans 10, verse 17, tells us that “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

That’s why this ministry will always be a ministry of proclaiming the Word of God. What I have to say to you, my opinions about how to deal with your life and challenges and struggles, they’re not going to change your life. But what’s in this Book is inspired by God. It’s Holy Scripture. It will change your life. The Spirit works through His Word to point us to Jesus.

So we need to take the Word and then ask God to give people who are ready to listen. She was listening to what Paul said.

And then as this God-fearing woman was listening to Paul’s message, it says “the Lord opened her heart to respond” to what Paul was saying.

I love that verse! “The Lord opened her heart to respond.” (v. 8)

The ESV says there, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention” to what Paul was saying.

Another translation says, “The Lord opened her heart to heed” (NASB) what Paul was saying.

It wasn’t just listening with her ears. It was listening with her heart. It lodged in her heart because God opened her heart, and she paid attention. She heeded. She responded to what Paul was saying.

There is a deep, intense, real, unseen spiritual work going on in this woman’s heart—just as there is in many of our hearts at this moment as the Word is being proclaimed. “The Lord opened her heart to respond” to what Paul was saying.

Listen, our hearts and our eyes are closed to the gospel until the truth of God’s Word, until the Lord opens our hearts, opens our eyes. No one can respond to the gospel, no one can respond to God’s Word. It’s just a book. It’s just ink on a page. It’s just words that are gibberish, that make no sense to someone in whose life the Holy Spirit is not at work.

Jesus said it in John 6, “No one can come to Me unless it has been granted him from the Father” (v. 65).

No one can come to Jesus, no one can be saved unless the Lord opens our heart to respond.

So if your heart has been captured by the gospel, if you have responded, if you have paid attention to it, it’s because God opened your heart. You can’t take any credit at all for being a Christian. It’s the work of the Spirit of God.

And true conversion, we see in this passage, always involves a personal response to the Word of God and to the gospel. It’s not enough to hear it. It’s not enough to have your heart opened. Your heart has to be opened in such a way that you say, “Yes, Lord. I believe. I repent. I trust You for my salvation.”

True conversion always involves a personal response. If someone says, “I’m a Christian,” they’ve heard the gospel; they agree with it, but they’ve never responded in faith and repentance to Christ, they’re not a Christian. They may be religious, but they’re not converted.

Now, just a reminder, as I’ve been studying this passage, it’s reminded me, we cannot open anyone else’s heart. Only God can do that.

So what do we do? Do we say, “We’ve just got to wait for God to open people’s hearts?” No, we do have a responsibility. Our responsibility is to deliver the message as Paul did that day. But we’re dependent on God to open the hearts.

 

Sometimes when you’re talking to someone about Jesus, and you feel like, “They’re just not getting it. It’s, like, going over their heads. There’s no comprehension.”

Can you picture someone that you know, and you try to talk about Jesus, they don’t get it. They’re not ugly about it. They’re not resistant. They just don’t get it. That’s why we need to pray for God to open the hearts. Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they would not believe, so they could not see. We need to pray, “Lord, take off the blinders. Open their eyes. Open their hearts.”

We don't know how many women were gathered to pray at the river that day, and of those women that were there, we don’t know how many believed in Christ, how many hearts God opened. We’re only told of one. There may have been just one, or there may have been others. But we know there was one, and the Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul said.

This verse has come to mind frequently in recent days as Robert and I are praying for people that we know who are not believers.

We were praying recently with a couple who are dear friends of ours who have unbelieving children and grandchildren. Recently they told us, “We’re having one of our grandsons over for dinner tonight. We’re wanting to have a chance to share the gospel with him.”

We prayed with them. And what did I pray? “Lord, would You open the heart of this young man? As our friends share about Jesus, would You open his heart?”

I believe that’s in the process of what’s happening, but it can be a long process.

There’s an older couple who lives near us. I’ve been praying for them for years, and they are, as far as I can tell, still spiritually clueless. They’re friends. They love us. We go to dinner together. We connect with each other. But there’s no sense of any spiritual connection.

They desperately need the Lord. Everybody desperately needs the Lord. So we have tried to reach out, to be friends. We talk freely about the Lord. We pray. And as we pray, we’re asking the Lord to turn on the light, to open their hearts, and to move their hearts to respond.

As I’m talking about this, is there someone in your mind? I see a lot of heads nodding.They just don’t get it. Think of that person. Picture them in your mind. Think of their name. And just, right now, would you pray and say, “Lord, open his heart, open her heart to respond to the gospel”? Just pray it in your heart. Lift up that prayer to the Lord. “Lord, open their eyes. Open their heart.” And then don’t stop praying. Keep praying that God will do only what God can do.

Well, clearly God opened her heart because we read in verse 15 that: “After [Lydia] and her household were baptized . . .”

First thing, the Lord opened her heart to respond to what Paul was saying. Then it says, next thing you know, she’s getting baptized. And then, “She urged us, ‘If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.’ And she persuaded us.”

Now, I just want to notice several things. And when you’re studying the Bible, you start by making observations about the text. That’s what I do. I don’t have seminary training. I don’t have Greek and Hebrew training. I know how to use some references and tools, but mostly I sit and think about a passage for a very long time. I just try to hold it up and look at it from every angle. That’s what I’m doing with this verse.

It says, “She and her household.” Wait a minute. There’s no husband mentioned here. Who is her household? Well, it could have been relatives who were living with her. Maybe they were servants. She was a business woman, successful. If she was a widow, maybe there were family members.

But here’s my question: Who’s in your household? Maybe living with you, maybe not living with you, but who would be included in your household?

And then I would ask: Are you influencing your household with the gospel? Are you believing God to bring your household to faith in Christ?

Now, there’s no promise that because you pray and because you witness and because you live a godly life that all of those in your household will be saved. But there’s a way better chance that God will move in their hearts if there’s somebody here praying for them to come to faith.

“She and her household were baptized.” This is an immediate public declaration of their faith. “We’re identifying with Jesus.” Now this is in a city where there had never been any believers in Jesus. There was no gospel. There were no churches. This was all new in a very pagan culture and world. And they said publicly, “We’re following Jesus. We are now believers in Jesus.”

By the way: Have you been baptized since coming to faith in Jesus? Maybe you were confirmed or baptized as an infant. Different churches have different practices on that, but there is in the Scripture a practice of believer’s baptism.

That’s, once you have come to faith in Christ, this is your public acknowledgement, “I am following Jesus, no turning back.” And you’re willing for everybody to know that.

If you’ve not been baptized, it’s something that, if you’re a child of God, you need to get that on your list and get that done.

And then she says, after they’re baptized (this is all, like, one sentence here), “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.”

She invited Paul and his friends to her home. There’s immediate evidence and fruit of the gospel at work in this woman’s life. She became a believer in Christ, she was baptized, and the same day, she became a partner in the ministry of the gospel. She opened her home to the Lord’s servants. She did what she could do. And that’s what she could do at that point.

This was not just a polite invitation. She urged Paul. She persuaded Paul, Timothy, Silas, and now Luke to stay at her house. In fact, she begged them for the privilege of giving to them in this way and getting involved in the work of the gospel.

It reminds me of . . . Where were we? We were in Philippi in Macedonia, the region of Macedonia. In 2 Corinthians chapter 8, Paul wrote about the churches in Macedonia, including the church at Philippi. There were many in these churches, unlike Lydia, who were in extreme poverty. But Paul says they begged us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints.

Where did that generous heart start in the church in Philippi? With a woman named Lydia who said, “Come, stay at my house.”

Now, it’s clear that Lydia was a woman of means because she had a large enough home for additional guests. She used her home to bless others, and her home became an outpost for the gospel witness.

I’ve just been thinking about this: How many others did she invite in to come and hear Paul share the gospel? What kind of sweet fellowship did these new believers enjoy together? Think of all the conversations that took place over meals and in the living area and first thing in the morning and late into the night.

Apparently this was an extended stay, not just an overnight visit. What Lydia did was to give Paul and his companions a home base while they proclaimed the gospel in Philippi.

Most Bible scholars agree that Lydia’s home became the meeting place for the very first church in Europe. She was the first convert in Europe. And her home . . . I’m getting goosebumps thinking about it. She hosted this young church in her home.

And we see that the early church was born and cradled, largely, in homes. Remember, Acts chapter 2, the end of that chapter tells us that, 

Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, . . . And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. (46–47)

There were no church buildings. There was the Jewish temple, or in cities outside of Jerusalem, synagogues. Then there were the homes where the believers would meet together and grow in their faith.

Rosaria Butterfield was a tenured English professor who identified as a lesbian and was an LGBT activist when she first encountered the gospel of Christ. That encounter did not take place in a church, because she would not have been caught dead inside a church.

But it took place in the home of a pastor and his wife, a couple who reached out to her, opened their home, offered her hospitality, befriended her, helped her grapple with her hard questions, and opened the Word to her. Eventually, Rosaria came to faith in Christ after hours of sitting and talking with this precious couple around the kitchen table.

Rosaria, who has been greatly used of the Lord, has written a book, among others, on the lost art of Christian hospitality. I love the title. Perhaps you’ve read it. If you haven’t, you should. It’s titled, The Gospel Comes with a House Key.” Today, Rosaria and her husband’s home is a base for gospel ministry.

Robert has been there. Am I right, Honey, about that? He was telling me there was this brightly painted picnic table in the front lawn, and just the whole neighborhood knows they’re always welcome at the Butterfield’s home. They are always having people. She starts her day by cooking a meal for whoever is going to be there for dinner that night.

Here’s a woman . . . She’s a speaker. She’s an author. She’s homeschooling kids, but she’s hospitable. There are believers, there are non-believers in her home constantly, gathering over meals, talking, sharing life, praying, singing hymns, studying the Scriptures together. They do this with believers and non-believers. They’re introducing people to Jesus from their home.

I had such a great example of this growing up. My parents for as long as I can remember, always had open hearts and open home. We were always hosting Christian workers, and missionaries in our home. Some of them would come and stay there for longer periods of time. Some would just come in and out.

One day . . . this was in the days when you left keys in the car. You could do that, and the cars were in the driveway. We got up, and our car was gone. It turned out that one of these Christian workers who was staying with us borrowed our car, but my dad didn’t know that. So he’s, like, “Where’s the car?” I mean, this was the way we lived: open hearts, open home. I don’t recommend doing that today. (laughter)

We lived in all those years in what is known as the Philadelphia Main Line. It’s an affluent area, a lot of business and professional people. My parents were always concerned about people who had wealth and influence. They had everything this world offers, but they didn’t have Jesus. My dad felt these people were as hard to reach as somebody who’s on Skid Row in a gutter, blowing his mind on drugs.

So he was concerned about these people, but he didn’t start by inviting them—he called them up-and-outers— to church. He started by inviting them to our home. My parents would invite people they knew, but they would also invite total strangers.

My mom at times would drive through some of these affluent neighborhoods. She would look at mailboxes at homes where she knew there were people who had money, but they didn’t have Jesus. She would get the address. She’d find out the name.

They would invite these people to come to dinner parties in our home where they would get a great meal. It was just beautifully presented, and then someone would come who had testimony about faith in Christ and would present the gospel. They would invite people to receive Jesus.

Many, hundreds, thousands of people over the years came to faith in Christ in and through the outreach of our home. Bible studies were started out of that, many of them. Out of one of those Bible studies that lasted for many months, eventually came a large church that is still prospering in the Philadelphia suburbs.

After my dad died, the house was sold. When Robert and I were dating, I wanted him to see the area where I grew up. We went there, and we were able to meet the current owner, who’s not a believer, but he’s lived in that area for years while my parents were doing this kind of ministry. He said, “Since we’ve moved in this house, people have come up, rung the doorbell, and said, ‘I met God here, and I’ve wanted to see this house again.’”

Open hearts, open home, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, and the example of my parents’, my mother’s, incredible hospitality (because there’s a lot of work behind all that, as you know) has deeply influenced my own life.

I was thinking today about some of the places I’ve lived, starting with college, a dorm room, and then later in college, a room in an older couple’s home. For a while I lived in a townhome, then lived in a motorhome for a number of years doing itinerant ministry. I have found such joy in welcoming people into whatever I called home at that moment. So many conversations around Christ with believers, with non-believers, with strugglers, with Christian workers, with young couples just getting started into marriage, with new parents.

Thirty years ago, after years of traveling in itinerant ministry, I built a home in Southwest Michigan. In the process, the builder, the general contractor and his wife, came to faith in Christ—that’s a whole other story, a beautiful one. But I began bringing them into my home, talking with them. They were so hungry-hearted. We would study the Word together. They started inviting their friends.

And for a number of years I hosted Bible studies there. We brought a man in there to teach a couples’ study. There were three men who were in that original study (not including the builder, he’s still alive), that came to know Jesus in that study and are in heaven today. They met Jesus in a home.

You don’t have to have a large home, an elegant home. Use what God has given you to advance the gospel. “Come and stay at my house,” this woman said. It might be to stay for dinner. It might be to stay for the afternoon. It might be to stay for a week or a month or a year. “Come and stay at my house.”

Such ministry flows out of this. Could Lydia have imagined that God was planting a church that would spread throughout all of Europe, and from Europe, to our country, to our continent?

The pattern for hospitality, ultimately, isn’t Lydia. It’s not my parents. It’s not Rosaria Butterfield. They’re great patterns. But the pattern is Jesus who, at the cross, opened His heart and said, “Come and stay in My House. Return to Me.” We have a hospitable Savior who invited us to come to His home.

So Peter says in 1 Peter 4, “Be hospitable to one another without grumbling” (v. 9).

Hospitality is hard work. Opening your home. This was a busy, business woman. There’s sacrifices to be made through opening our lives, our hearts, and our homes to others. But Peter says, “Be hospitable to one another without complaining . . . so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything.”

Would you just ask the Lord how he wants you to use what He’s entrusted to you? We’ll talk a little bit more about this tomorrow. But say, “Lord, my home is Your home. Use me. Use my house. Use my life to bless to sow seeds of the gospel so that You may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything.” Amen? 

Dannah: Amen. That’s another word I love to hear. It means God’s people are agreeing with each other. I certainly agree that if we want to see those we love transformed by Christ, we need to pray for them to listen to His voice and then obey it.

Nancy’s been encouraging us to open our Bibles and learn from the life of Lydia. If today’s program has inspired you to pray in a new way or to use the resources God’s given you to intentionally bless others, consider giving to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts.

Your partnership helps us reach women around the world with a message that’s worth listening to: Heaven rules.

In fact, that’s the theme of our 2023 Revive Our Hearts Calendar, featuring photography from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. We’d sure love to send you your copy when you give a donation of any amount to the ministry. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-8989.

We’ll continue exploring the life of Lydia tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts, and Nancy will share why facing opposition might actually be a good sign. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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