Introduction: What is a legacy? A legacy is something we leave for someone else. It could be money, a possession or a memory but it is some reminder that we lived. Max Dupree says, "A legacy results from the facts of our behavior that remain in the minds of others, the cumulative, informal record of how close we came to the person we intended to be. It is important to remember that what we do always will be a consequence of who we become. What you plan to do differs enormously from what you leave behind…Everyone leaves a legacy. A legacy may consist of words, a building, a single deed. One powerful moment may be our legacy, and we may not even realize it at the time."

When you think of a woman who has left a lasting legacy for Southern Baptists there is no greater example than Lottie Moon. Born in 1840 and reared in Virginia Baptist aristocracy, Charlotte (Lottie) Moon was strong-willed and throughout her college years vigorously opposed the Gospel. Surrendering to Christ was difficult. Of her conversion she said, "I went to the service to scoff, and returned to my room praying all night."

After her conversion she taught school in Cartersville, Georgia, where she worked among destitute families for whom she bought clothing from her own income. Touched one Sunday morning by her pastor's sermon, she decided to become a missionary to China. In 1873 she joined her sister Edmonia in Tengchow, in northern Shantung province. Once there she plunged into the work with great energy and determination. Her reports to her mission board were sometimes critical. She once wrote, "It is odd that a million Baptists of the South can furnish only three missionaries for all of China."

After the Boxer rebellion a severe famine followed and thousands of Chinese died of starvation. The Chinese churches did what they could and Miss Moon gave much of her salary to help them. She wrote many letters to her mission board, imploring them to send large sums of money, but the cash-strapped board claimed it was not able to help. In an appeal for more workers, Lottie wrote to Annie Armstrong of Baltimore. Lottie's words were, "Let them come 'rejoicing to suffer' for the sake of the Lord and Master who freely gave His life for them." Annie Armstrong made it her personal campaign to promote Lottie Moon's concept of a Christmas Offering for foreign missions. The total collected for the first offering was $3,315.26, enough to send three women to help Lottie in the field.

As the famine worsened and appeals to home went unanswered, she withdrew the last of her savings and gave it to relief workers. Shortly after, fellow missionaries began to notice that she was behaving strangely and called a doctor. The physician soon realized that she was starving to death. She was placed on a boat heading for home but it was too late. She died while enroute to the United States on Christmas Eve 1912.

After her death the Women’s Missionary Union of the Southern Baptist Convention adopted Lottie Moon’s idea for an annual Christmas offering for foreign missions in her honor. That first offering was the seed from which ninety one years later, literally millions upon millions of dollars have been given to missions, thousands of missionaries have gone out into the world, uncountable people saved, nations open to the gospel and most of all the Kingdom of God is bigger. Lottie Moon was only four feet three inches tall but her legacy is greater than we as humans can measure.

This morning I want us to encounter one woman whose "one powerful moment" of life left a legacy that in reality is the reason you and I are Christians today. Her name is Lydia. She was the first person to respond to the gospel as Paul moved westward into what we know as Europe today. Her story is only four verses long but her legacy is one that is unimaginable. As I speak to you this morning I want you to clearly understand that I believe that your gender does not prohibit you from doing anything that God wants you to do. As I affirm the spiritual dimension I am not diminishing anything that you believe God might desire you to do as a woman. As Billy Graham once said about a woman’s role in missions, "If God is leading her, she shouldn't take no for an answer." God’s call for both men and women is a call to mission and service. I want you as a woman to leave today with the understanding that of all the things that you might do in this life your greatest legacy is the result of a life lived completely open to God.

To understand Lydia’s legacy we need to know the context of the passage in Acts. First, Paul, Silas, Timothy and Luke have begun what is called Paul’s second missionary journey. They leave Antioch in northern Syria and travel through the heart of what we know as Turkey today. They revisit the churches that were established on their first journey. Going east to west they arrive at the coastline seeking direction for their next destination. Through a dream in which Paul sees a Greek speaking man calling for their help in Macedonia, they are persuaded by the Spirit to go to Macedonia. That is going from Turkey to Greece in our day.

Second, they land at the coastal city of Neapolis and the next day head to Philippi. Philippi was a very impressive Roman city, where the gospel had never been preached. It was one of the key cities of the region. They stayed there for "some days," probably wondering what they were to do. Paul had seen the vision of a man calling for help – but there wasn’t even a Jewish synagogue there. It only took ten men to form one. That means there weren’t enough men who were Jews to constitute a synagogue. Paul may have begun to wonder if his vision was divine direction or just a wrong turn. They hear somehow that down by the river outside the city is a place for foreign religions to meet. They discover this is where those who worship the God of the Jews met to pray. They find only a small group of women gathered for prayer.

I find it interesting that they may have been expecting perhaps a great male figure to lead the crusade for Christ in the west and instead they found a women’s prayer meeting on a Saturday! To their credit instead of rejecting this opportunity for witness, they sat down and "began speaking to the women who had assembled." This was no small matter! Paul takes a lot of abuse for his statements about women but when you see how he eagerly embraced what God was doing at this place it is a different matter. Perhaps this experience as well as others on this journey would cause him to write, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

Of those women who prayed that day there was one who seemed more aware of the presence of God’s Spirit than the rest. Her name was Lydia. What can we know generally about Lydia from what Luke writes? First, we know she was from the city of Thyatira, a city in modern Turkey and is mentioned as one of the seven churches in Revelation. It was not a tremendously wealthy city but an average Roman city of the 1^st century. Next we know that she was a seller of purple. This could be the dye used to make purple cloth or the dye itself. The region of Thyatira was known for this particular industry. The dye was made from a certain type of plant root. Another thing known about Lydia was that she was obviously wealthy. We can pull this together because of her trade and the phrase "her household,"(v.15) meaning not simply a family but servants and maids as well. We can also know that she is a Jewish convert. She is from Thyatira and is Gentile. Luke defines her as "a worshipper of God." Somewhere along the way she rejected her pagan background and began to worship the one true God, as she knew Him.

Friends, because of this woman’s presence and response to God, we are Christians today! For you see that because of her receiving Christ as her Savior, opening not only her heart but also her home to these missionaries we owe our life in Christ to her and this group of women. The Gospel gained a foothold in the west for the first time because of these women. It would spread farther but this place and these women would be the first.

How is Lydia’s legacy an example to women for our day?

We have said that Lydia was influential, wealthy, a leader and free from some family responsibilities that might have entangled others. All of this was under the guidance and direction of God’s hand to achieve a specific purpose. She was, I am sure unaware of God’s hand bringing circumstances together for one important purpose: to establish an outpost for the gospel where it had never been before. All of life had been preparing her for this moment. Somehow God’s Spirit had stirred dissatisfaction within her spiritually and caused her to be aggressive enough to seek a business opportunity in another region of the world. What you see is that she was the woman of the vision. The man from Macedonia in Paul’s dream turned out to be a woman!!

Erwin McManus writes in his book Seizing the Divine Moment, "What if there was a moment, a defining moment, where the choices you made determined the course and momentum of your future? How would you treat that moment? How would you prepare for it? How would you identify it? Moments are as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands in the sea, and any of them could prove to be your most significant divine moments. Within those moments, a handful will become the defining moments in your life. However mundane a moment may appear, the miraculous may wait to be unwrapped within it. You rarely know up front the eternal significance of a moment. When a moment is missed, you have a glimpse at an opportunity lost. When you dream, you look to a moment still to come. Yet the only moment that you must take responsibility for right now is the one in front of you. This is your moment. Your challenge is not seizing divine moments, but seizing your divine moment. The biblical imagery for a moment is the wink of an eye. In other words, don’t blink or you’ll miss it…Moments are to be treasured—not just the moments that you’ve already lived, but the moments brimming with life. I can say with confidence this is your moment. There may well be many moments waiting behind this one, and though the most significant moments of your life may still be moments away, the moment you’re in right now waits to be seized."

If we believe in God’s providence, God’s plan, God’s purpose, could it not be true for every Christian woman here that there is a unique place where God wants you? I’ve become aware that one of the things that women need is a feeling of self-worth. You fight the thoughts of "I’m not important." "I’m not doing anything meaningful." "I’m not fulfilled." The question is how open is the door of your heart to seizing your divine moment? Fulfillment for you as a woman will only come, as it does for anyone, when you are fulfilling the purpose of God in your life. Where is your Philippi?

The Lord has a desire for you as a woman to find your deepest fulfillment by fulfilling his purpose in your life. Seize your divine moment! If you do, then all of heaven is at your disposal! If you do not, then all the earth can’t make you happy! Are you seizing your divine moment of His purpose for you?

Lydia was a woman, even before she knew Christ, who resisted the cultural pressures to conform. How do I know this? Remember that she was a Gentile who worshipped the God of the Jews who then became a follower of Jesus who the Jews rejected. She was also a businesswoman who celebrated the Sabbath. That meant she shut down her business and lost revenue. She openly practiced her Jewish and Christian faith. She was at the river praying, not at the temple of a pagan God. She would be brave enough to host a church in her house. Later in the story the city leaders would arrest Paul and Silas and would beat them mercilessly but she let them use her home as a base of operations. Pressure was not an issue. Lydia is an example of someone under pressure to conform that would not be molded into someone else’s expectations!

Another important spiritual quality about Lydia is that she was a woman whose heart was eager to respond to God’s initiative. The text says "and the Lord opened her heart." This is one of the most beautiful phrases in the New Testament. The word means to open wide or completely. It literally means "both sides." The verb means that at once she allowed the words of the gospel to penetrate every area of her heart. For a woman to open her heart is a very sensitive thing. Luke refers to Mary the mother of Jesus as pondering and treasuring things in her heart. It seems to mean the most sacred of places; the most sensitive understanding of things is the areas of a woman’s heart. A woman’s heart can sometimes break or be wounded as they expose their heart—the most intimate thing they have—and we ignore it and treat it with callous insensitivity. For God to open the heart of a woman—both sides is a beautiful picture of spiritual character.

She was a woman pressure couldn’t shake, whose heart, both sides of it, were open to God, but she was also a woman who has fixed her priorities. Verse 14 says, "…to respond to the things spoken by Paul." The word "respond" means "to hold the mind." Its present-tense meaning: she kept her mind centered on the things Paul said. A. T. Robertson translates this, "Whose words gripped her heart." Verse 15 tells us how she responded, "Since you have judged me to be faithful…." What is implied is that there was a period of time between her conversion and her baptism. So she responded by living a Christian life and obeying the word of the Apostles to be baptized. But she also responded by serving them in her home.

The highest achievements that could be credited to you are those that most exemplify Christ. It may be refusing as Jesus did the pressures to conform to the world’s agenda. It could be having a heart like Jesus that is so sensitive to God’s voice you can respond immediately. It might be seeking with all your heart as Jesus did to do all that God asks. As you seek to achieve more and more for your self and those you love the highest accomplishment is to have others say about you that you remind them of Jesus.

What is Lydia’s legacy? Simply this: what has happened in the western world for the cause of Christ began with her. Would Paul and Silas have had the same success with a man? We don’t know. Would we still have had the gospel planted in the west as it was here? There’s no way to know. What we do know is that the spreading flame of the gospel was sparked by this woman’s obedience. That is a true lasting legacy!

Lydia dared to be a leader not only in her business and home but spiritually as well. She initiated the members of her household being baptized and as we said established her home as a point of ministry. Women played a significant role in the missionary work of Paul-the women of Thessalonica (Acts 17:4), Berea (Acts 17:12), a woman named Damaris in Athens (Acts 17:34) and Priscilla in Corinth (Acts 18:2). The women at Thessalonica and Berea were called "leading" and "prominent". Those words however you want to translate them show qualities of leadership spiritually.

But you know what’s funny? After verse 40, we never hear of her again. She is not mentioned by name. Yet there is no doubt that she was a guiding influence in the Philippian church that Paul would later write: "I thank my God upon my every remembrance of you." Yet like a meteor in the summer sky, she burns brilliantly and then is forgotten with these verses being her only testimony in Scripture.

A lasting legacy is not something we seek for ourselves but it is really the result of living a useful life. It may be that our legacy is only four verses long or four decades long. Either way what matters is that you were willing for your life to be used by God. What is the reward in life you seek most? Like Lydia, you may be forgotten but yet your willingness to let God use you where He would is a legacy that won’t be forgotten.

Conclusion: Danae Prince is a young woman who in the process of building her legacy. Her story is one of allowing her heart to be open to seizing her divine moment, reflecting Jesus and letting God use her life.

What legacy are you leaving behind as a Christian woman? At the end of the day - or, more appropriately, at the end of a life - there are four possible legacies we can leave. No legacy whatsoever…A bad legacy…A perishable legacy…A lasting godly legacy in the lives of others. The greatest legacy that you can leave behind is the result of a life completely open to God-seizing your divine moment, daily reflecting Jesus and enjoying the rewards of a useful life. At the end of the day for either a man or a woman there could be no greater legacy.

Sunday, August 27, 2003

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

[email protected]