Easter will Never Be the Same for Lydia

Have you made plans for Easter? Already have the menu planned? Ready to color those eggs for an Easter Egg Hunt?

What would you do if God changed your plan? Are you flexible, ready to travel to wherever God sends you?

In Acts 16:9 we learn about how Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia who was standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.”

After Paul had the vision, his missionary team got ready and left at once for Macedonia. They concluded God had called them to preach the gospel there.

Paul had plans to go to Asia but God gave him new plans, but he wasted not time and headed off to Macedonia, and spent time preaching in Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea.

I love what happened in Philippi, where Lydia lived. She heard the gospel thanks to Paul’s visit.

In Acts 16: 13, it says Paul and his team of preachers went outside the city gate to the river, where they expected to find a place of prayer. They sat down and began to speak to those who had gathered there.

One of those listening was a woman named Lydia. The verses say she was a worshipper of God, but she was not yet a believer in Christ.

So the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message, she and her household were baptized and she invited them to her home.

She said, “If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house.”

Lydia is mentioned in only two short passages, but she was important to God, so important the Lord changed Paul’s travels to include a stop in her town.

So again, what are you doing this Easter? Are your plans set in stone, that even God cannot change them? Or are you open to his call on your heart, so you can reach others for Jesus?

One year, my plans to recite “The Legend of the Dogwood Tree” poem in the morning church service got interrupted, because my father in law passed away early that morning.

I remember sitting in my car, leaving church early to go to the hospital. I had a dogwood branch with pretty blooms with me, as I had planned to hold it during my part of the morning service.

The petals soon wilted from the heat, the East Texas humidity tends to wilt a lot of things.

(For the rest of this devotional, listen to the podcast....)