Victory

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
Mount of God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by Thy help I'm come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

So I am a contemporary worship kind of girl. I like modern praise and worship, but you can't deny the power of the words of some hymns. Whoever wrote Great is Thy Faithfulness or Holy, Holy, Holy or Victory in Jesus...man, those guys knew how to praise! So, driving to church one day I heard a beautiful version of Come Thou Fount...I was mesmerized...

The line that I couldn't get out of my head was "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love" Wow. Isn't that how we feel so much of the time? What is interesting is the deeper you get with God the more you feel the tendency to wander. When we first meet Christ and begin the process of becoming more like Him everyday, it is easy to make a list of the things that we need to stop doing (maybe not so easy to actually stop). When we rid ourselves of obvious sin, He doesn't stop expecting us to change. That is when He gets into our business and asks us to really commit to being completely Christ-like. Even nominal Christians will stop drinking or using foul language or whatever. It is hard to transform or renew our minds...our thoughts and feelings... The 'prone to wander' feelings become as much sin as the act. Jesus says that adultery is committed when we lust and murder when we hate. What sin my thoughts have gotten me into! UGH!

But this hymn is so obviously about victory. When I heard the song on the radio (SpiritFM), I was so struck by the one line that I didn't get that at first. I had decided to share my thoughts on that one line so I looked up the lyrics to the rest of the song. They are profound. What an amazing prayer. "Tune my heart to sing Your grace." Can you imagine a heart filled with the grace of God? "Streams of mercy never ceasing call for songs of loudest praise." When you truly examine the mercy freely given without end...if you aren't praising, you don't get it (the big picture, not the mercy. He freely offers that to all of us - just one reason to praise). "Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God; He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood." The greatest display of our sweet Savior's love. "Let that grace now like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee." Grace is what allows us to be loved by a holy God. Isn't it amazing...truly awesome that He knows us intimately and still wants anything to do with us. He knows that we are prone to wander even though we love Him. What a God we serve!

My heart longs to be more faithful. My head knows I won't be. I love Him so much for loving me anyway.