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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 642. The Divine Influence
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The Divine Influence
“The Lord opened her heart.” For such as Lydia it is not His way to use violent means, forcing the locks of the heart. He may deal so with a rebellious spirit like that of Saul of Tarsus-the preacher for that day. But for his hearer no such violence was necessary: she went forth to meet God, tremblingly: her heart was opened by consent and preparation of her will.
The most fundamental phenomenon of the religious life in all Churches and Creeds is weariness, not to say sickness, of self, and a passionate desire to find some new centre of life-a “not-ourselves,” as Mr. Arnold would say-which can renovate the springs and purify the aims of the soiled and exhausted nature. Now this craving, so far from being confined to those who have led a life of vice or self-indulgence, is perhaps even more powerfully exhibited in men of strong self-control and highly-disciplined nature, provided their spiritual affections be also deep and warm.1 [Note: R. H. Hutton, Contemporary Thought and Thinkers, i. 372.]
2. Immediately on hearing the truth from the lips of the Apostle, Lydia applied it to her own soul. She gave “heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul.” She did precisely what everybody who finds his way into the faith and fellowship of the Son of God has to do sooner or later-she called her own will into action, and by deliberate choice set herself over on the side of Him who came to announce a Divine love for all and to be a universal Redeemer. It would have been all in vain for her to be present at this river-side prayer-meeting, and to listen never so intently to the truth brought to her attention, had she formed no opinion and taken no steps for herself. It would have been all in vain, too, to have her heart opened by the Spirit, had she not brought her will into accord with the will of the Spirit and accepted Christ.
“'Tis in thy power to think as thou wilt.” And were the cheerful, sociable, restorative beliefs, of which Marius had read so much, that bold adhesion, for instance, to the hypothesis of an eternal friend to man, just hidden behind the veil of a mechanical and material order, but only just behind it, ready perhaps even now to break through:-were they, after all, really a matter of choice, dependent on some deliberate act of volition on his part?1 [Note: Walter Pater, Marius the Epicurean, ii. 48.]
Respecting what is called the Christian's experience, it is certain that we have no reason, from the mere contemplation of the operations of our own minds, to ascribe them to an intrinsic agent, because they arise from their proper causes, and are directed to their proper ends. Scripture informs us that it is “God that worketh in us, both to will and to do, of his good pleasure”; which passage, while it asserts the reality of God's influence, points out also the manner of His acting, for He works in us to will before He works in us to do.2 [Note: J. Sargent, Life and Letters of Henry Martyn, 31.]