Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

My blog has been pretty quiet lately, because what the Lord has been doing in my life lately feels too personal to publish. He has not been silent in these first few weeks at the Bible college. He has been working, bringing all kinds of things to my attention, and all I know is that I need Him to not stop working.

One of the pastors last night said something that I need to remember. I am here learning because I need God in my life more. It's not so that I can be smarter or better than others or even as good as others in my own eyes. The Lord directed me here, because I need to know more than I know right now and love God more than I do right now. I need. How true is that statement when I apply it to me next to God! I don't measure up. I don't understand. I don't have something of great value to offer. I need.  

I am so blessed to hear teaching daily that challenges me to take in God's word deeply into my life -- but if it stops at hearing that, it will be worthless. I need to seek God. I need to understand. And more than that, I need Him to change my life, to give me His character, because on my own I don't have it -- even now, if I try to live each day, each moment, without His power, I can't make it. When I am walking in my own strength and my own wisdom and following the desires of the flesh, I fail -- and I mean it, my life on my own strength is an epic fail... except that sometimes it's just a pitiable fail.

"Oh foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was so clearly portrayed among you crucified? ...Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:1,3)

Some time ago, I was sharing with someone God's love for him. He could not accept it; he believed it would be better to die in his sin, because what he had done was too bad to allow God to take the punishment for him. He said I could not possibly understand. "My heart is black. Yours is white," he told me. I understand so much more deeply than he knew... and I wish I could have told you this then, my friend (though I think I tried) -- we are the same. On it's own, my heart stands as guilty before God as his... But the Lord does not leave me there. He sees me, with Christ as my covering, clothed in His righteousness, as sinless. And He has given me His Spirit to walk out a victorious life, if I will walk in it. My life does not have to be an epic fail.

This song has been coming up over and over in the past few weeks... during worship, in my mind, someone whistling the tune while walking in the hall. There are alot of big, old-fashioned words in it, but the essence is what we are reminded over and over and over in God's word -- we need Jesus, because in Him we have grace and life. The lines that stand out the most to me are these -- Oh to grace how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee !

 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 thy redeeming love. 

 Here I raise mine 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 thy goodness, 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. 

       Text by: Robert Robinson, 1735-1790

 

Jesus, I praise you because you are worthy. 

I love you, because you first loved me. 

I follow you, because you called me... 

May you never stop calling me closer.