Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

I love modern worship music, but I have a special place in my heart for hymns from my childhood and adolescence. Not only do they bring back memories of when I first gave my life to Christ, but they have beautiful language from years gone by. Here’s one of my favorites:

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

“Ebenezer” refers to 1 Samuel 7:12 - “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far has the Lord helped us.” Ebenezer means “stone of help”. When I sing “Here I raise my Ebenezer”, I’m saying that God is my helper, the only one who will bring me safely home.

When I sing “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love”, I sometimes just want to cry. God loves me so much, but yet I’ll wander away at the drop of a hat like I’ve got spiritual ADD or something. But, not God. He doesn’t wander and He will “bind my wandering heart” to Him. Amazing.