Come Thou Fount

Have you ever been captivated by a lyric?  Has the Lord ever used a song or a hymn to catch you and make you think?  I've had a hymn stuck in my head for the last week or so and I can't seem to shake it.  It's not a bad thing, don't get me wrong it's just always there.  If you're familiar with the hymn "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" you might understand why.

The first verse reads.

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.

 
The first verse calls us to praise. To sing the graces and mercy's of our "fount" if you will, the Giver of all blessing.  It reminds us that all things come from our Lord and that all the wondrous things He has done for us are worthy of the loudest praises we can sing. It talks of wanting to sing His praises as the angles above.  It also remind us and calls us to be fixed upon the "mount of thy redeeming love".  Think about it, why would you want to push this song from your mind?  


The second verse...

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.

Here the hymnist talks of raising his song to the Lord.  Of wanting to be home safely by His side.  It tells us that only by the Lord's help is that possible.  "Here I raise mine Ebenezer", tells of raising our 'Stone of Hope'. (1 Sam. 7:12) It goes on to tell the story of how even while we were still in sin He sought us and interposed His blood that we might live forever with Him. (Romans 5: 6-11)  What a wonderful reminder! 


The last verse is the one so often stuck in my head.  I believe this is the one most often stuck there because it speaks right to us in our everyday lives.  Not that the other verse do not but, because it's not often that we are called out in song.  Take a look at the last verse...

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.

"oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be."  Do you feel this way?  you should.  I know I do!  Look at what I was and where I could have been, no was, headed.  All you need to do is look at the world around you.  Those that do not know the Lord are lost.  So lost in fact that they don't even know they are lost.  I think that feeling of debt, is what drives us to worship.  It makes us fall on our face and thank the Lord with all we have, for all we have. 

"Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee."  Do you know what a fetter is?  Tell you the truth I didn't know...so I looked it up.  A fetter, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary, is a chain or shackle for the feet.  So, he is asking that God's goodness would be that chain that ties our wandering hearts to Him. 
"Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;"   Do you wander?  My heart does, it's my human nature and the temptations all around me.  Much as I try, its a losing fight with out the help of the Lord.  My prayer is that the Lord would use His goodness as a fetter to keep me close to His side.

"here's my heart, o take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above."  The second half to the prayer.  Lord take my heart and prepare it for Your kingdom above.

My prayer is that you would get this song stuck in your heads, or at least that the message it is sending is stuck there.  We are prone to wander and we know it.  The only thing we can do is pray that the Lord would keep us close by His goodness and seal our hearts; that we might not destroy them with earthly things. 




 

Heavenly Father I come to you tonight as I write this entry.  I pray Lord that all those who read it would be touched by this message.  Take our hearts Lord for we know not what to do with them.  You, the maker and perfecter, are the only one who knows.  Thank You Father for your love so great that You would send Your Son to die a horrible death on a cross for our sins.  We praise your name, and are fixed upon it Lord, let us not stray from You.  Make Your goodness that fetter, preventing us from wandering away.  Tune our hearts, Father, to daily sing Your praise, for You are the only one worthy of it.  We thank You and praise You for all that You have done and continue to do in our lives.  To the glory of your name alone, Amen.

~JMarie

I came across a few verses this morning in my reading and felt compelled to share my thoughts on those verses with you.  The first verse I want to make mention of is Isaiah 64:6.  Now if you don't know the verse by the reference I'm sure once you start to read, the rest of the verse will find its way to your brain.  Isaiah 64:6 reads,

          

"But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away."(NKJV) 

This is a common verse when we refer to the fact that our salvation is no doing of our own and that what we do here on earth is nothing in comparison with what the Lord has done.  We usually only get the first part of the verse however.  "But we are an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags..." and we stop there.  But look with me at the last part of this verse...

We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Yes, we literally fade as the leaf as our bodies age and we pass away: were it not for salvation our souls would be carried away by our sin and taken far from the Lord.  But look also at the everyday application.  Aside from the grace and mercy of our Lord, aside from Him sending His only Son to die a horrible death on the cross of Calvary, we are but filthy rags.  AND we all stumble, we all fade in our rigor of the study of the Word,  we make mistakes and each and every one of our sins (iniquities) causes our now frail, weak and faded spirits to be carried farther from our Lord and Savior and farther from the Truth.

The other verse often quoted is Isaiah 64:8.  Again if you are not familiar with the reference the verse reads,

      But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the         work of Your hand.

We usually get this full verse when we reference it.  All the parts are there and we understand what it's telling us.  That we are clay, meant to be shaped and molded into a glorious thing.  That our Lord is the potter. He will be doing the shaping and molding, the breaking down to build back up into something more glorious.  That we are all a unique work or creation of God our Father.

The part we don't hear or reference very often is that little verse in between these two.  Did you notice that these two often quoted verses are in the same book?  How about the same chapter?  Did you notice that they are only separated in that chapter by a single verse?  So, what does that mysterious missing verse say?

Isaiah 64:7 reads

And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, And have consumed us because of our iniquities.

This missing verse talks about how no one, not a single one of us, calls out His name in our sin.  We don't get ourselves in a fit trying to reach Him.  It is explained that this happens because He hides His face from us when we are consumed by our sin.  And rightly so, for the face of the Lord is not that of sin but of righteousness.  However, now that we are living in the new testament and the Savior has come, we have hope in His face and He does not leave our side.

If we put these verses in order, the story would tell us...

All that we do, no matter the effort we exert, falls short of the glory of God.   
(But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;)

Our stumbling, mistakes and the fading of our rigorous study of His Word cause our sins to carry us from our Lord. 
(We all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.)

In that sin that has carried us away, we, of our own power, do not cry out to you, or strive to return to you.
(And there is no one who calls on Your name, Who stirs himself up to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us, And have consumed us because of our iniquities)

BUT, we know that we are clay, being molded and shaped by our Maker, the Potter.  We are a unique creation of the Lord and He takes care of His sheep.
(But now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the         work of Your hand.)

And that my friends, is the gospel story.  While we were sinners, separated from our Creator by our sin, He sent His only Son to die on the cross for all of our sins.  So that, by believing in the glorious thing He has done and counting Jesus Christ alone as our Savior, we can have eternal life with our Creator and Sustainor in heaven, when we pass from this earth. (Ephesians 2:1-9) (John 3:16-17) Glory be to His name on high!!

To His Glory Alone,
JMarie

Jesus I am Resting

I wanted to share with you a song that has been a hug blessing to me lately. 

What wonderful words to remember daily. He calls us to gaze upon what He is, who He is, and what it is He holds for us.  It is our job to rest in His greatness, love, beauty, power, and majesty.  Imagine for a minute taking the time to just rest in the joy of what He is.  Can you picture just resting there?  How much we could learn and how little we would care about the things that are troubling us.  Next time you're overwhelmed by school, work, friends or even family, just take a minute to rest in His great glory.  It is a transforming power!  The joy of what He is, is a gift, a command, and a promise.