He Opened Her Heart While She Worked

She has divided her week and she did not notice doing it.

There is the working part, which is Monday to Saturday and most of Sunday afternoon if she is honest, and which involves a small business with four people in it, three suppliers who are difficult in different ways, and a phone that does not stop.

And there is the other part. Sunday morning, and the Tuesday group when she gets to it, and the fortnight in the summer, and about eleven minutes at the end of most days when she is too tired to be useful.

She would say, if asked, that God is in all of it. She would mean it theologically and she believes it.

But look at where she expects anything. Everything she has ever described as God speaking to her happened in the other part. Every single one. The working part is where she does what she is good at, and the other part is where God does what He does, and the two touch about as often as two people who work in the same building.

Here is what she has never said out loud, and it came to her in the van in a car park.

She thinks of six days of her week as the part God is not in.

Not because she believes it. Because that is what her expectations actually say, and expectations are more honest than theology.

Look at what she was doing for a living

There is a woman in Acts whose conversion is the first one recorded in Europe, and everything about her setting is in the text.

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.Acts 16:14

A seller of purple. That is her trade, and it is a serious one. Purple cloth was the expensive end of the market and she is described as running that business across cities.

And where is she when this happens? At a riverside, outside the city, at a place where people gathered to pray, on what the chapter tells us is the Sabbath. She has brought her working self to the riverside, and the writer thinks her occupation is worth putting in the sentence.

Whose heart the Lord opened. He opened it. She did not open it by achieving a state, and there is no account anywhere of her arranging conditions.

Your heart is opened by Him rather than by you, and He does it to a working woman in the middle of her own trading life. That is what the word actually records, not encouragement I am offering you, and the Holy Spirit is the One who does that opening in a van in a car park.

The border is in your expectations

Now the plain thing, sister, and it is not about your beliefs.

Your theology is fine. You would pass any test on the omnipresence of God and you would be sincere in every answer.

The border is in what you expect, and expectations run the actual traffic. You expect on a Sunday morning. You expect at the Tuesday group. You do not expect on a Thursday with three suppliers and a phone that will not stop, and so on a Thursday you're not listening, and a person who is not listening does not notice much.

That is not hypocrisy. That is a border drawn by habit rather than by conviction, and habits are laid down where attention goes.

And God has never once observed that border, and the working part has never been outside His reach. Scripture opens a trader's heart at a riverside on a working woman's day, and the Holy Spirit does not keep to a Sunday timetable.

Put the expectation in the working part

Here is the practical piece, and it is about where you expect rather than where you go.

Pick one recurring noisy stretch of your working week and start expecting there.

The van between the second and third call. The twenty minutes before you open. The bit on a Thursday when the phone is at its worst and you're standing behind a counter waiting for somebody to call back.

Not a quiet part of the working week, because you do not have one. The loud recurring part.

You are able to expect Him inside your trade, and the expecting is where the listening actually begins. Acts 16:14 has the Lord opening the heart of a woman at her work, and the Holy Spirit is the One who moves an expectation from a Sunday into a Thursday.