"Without an open heart and mind, Lydia couldn’t hear, understand, and respond to the gospel message (Acts 16:11-15). What this teaches us is that Christ takes the divine initiative in salvation. That is, before we can respond to God, He reaches out in love and embraces us, pursues us. Without God opening our hearts, we cannot respond. This fact for Lydia and modern-day Christians reminds us of just how deep in sin we truly are. When someone says that we are “totally depraved,” it means that we are, to use Paul’s phrase, “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1, 5). We are so dead in our sins that “He made us alive” (Ephesians 2:1, 4). He is the one who causes us to come alive and understand the gospel, to see our sin and our need for Jesus to save us from sin. If we can credit anyone with our salvation, as Lydia could, Jesus is the one who gets all the credit -- not us. We see the divine initiative in the Lord opening her heart, making a response to Him possible. Had God not opened Lydia’s heart, she wouldn’t have been able to respond in faith. If God didn’t open our hearts in the context of gospel preaching, we wouldn’t have come out of sin and been saved, either. We, like Lydia, owe our salvation to God, who opens our depraved, hard hearts and minds to receive Jesus and see ourselves from the divine perspective (that is, humanity needs to be saved from its sins).