Heart Tracks - Out Of, Or According To?

     There was a time, early in my journey through my separation and eventual divorce, that I "lived" for a time in the Sunday School room of a church.  I never felt like I was living "in it" but "out of it."  I was thankful for a place to go, when there was no place else to go, but it was not a place of life.  Much like those that we hear are living "out of a car," so was I living out of that room.  Through the years I have learned and continue to learn that such a life isn't confined to where our physical abode might be.  Indeed, there are multitudes who live in outward splendor, but who inwardly, feel the same sense of emptiness, homelessness, that I did.  It's because they, we, live out of, rather than according to.

     There are so many, and many of them sit lost in the pews of our churches, living these very "out of" lives.  They are living "out of" their anger, their woundedness, their fear, discouragement, failure, prejudice, bitterness, lust, greed, and unholy ambitions and desires.  These places they live out of are choking out the life of Christ, and in so many cases, preventing His life from reaching them at all.  These places we live out of aren't always places of darkness and corruption.  Many may at root seem, even are, good and pure desires, but they end up with us living out of a desire to be in control and living in ever deepening anxiety as to whether these desires and hopes will ever come to pass.  In effect, we are living out of jail cells whose bars are comprised of our emotions and thoughts.  It's a life of lack, of need, and of want.  It's not the life we were made for, and it's not the life that most of us, I fear, are really living.
    Ephesians 1:7 says that the Father gives all that we need or ever will need, "according to the riches of His grace."  God does not give, has not given us, out of His riches.  That would mean He merely gives the excess of His heavenly wealth.  He gives instead according to them, and since His riches are infinite, can never be exhausted, He pours into our lives the endless resources not just of blessings, but of Himself.  He gives us Himself according to the riches found in Himself.  Mind boggling indeed!

    May our prayer become that we no longer live out of our anger, woundedness, fear, or whatever else may hold us in spiritual, mental and emotional poverty and captivity, but that by His grace, He would transform us to live according to the riches of His life, love, peace, joy, and wholeness.  No longer living out of a place that can never be home, but living in His heart which has become our home.

Blessings,
Pastor O

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