Paying Attention When God’s Speaks – Come thy Fount of Every Blessing

I wasn’t paying attention.

The spiritual practice of paying attention is a key way to open your heart and ears when God speaks.

But last week during the worship portion of Speak Up conference, I allowed distractions to take me away from the moment of praise and attuning to the Lord.

If fact, I stewed critically about the old, out of date words in the hymn on the screen before me.  I loved the melody, but my heart scrutinized the lyrics in what I believed to be old fashioned “what in it for me?” narrow-focused terms.

I silently mouthed the first two verses with aimless alertness.

Then God surprised me with tears when I sang the next verses. Immediately I was present, before him.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God…

 

How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell…

 

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.

 

I came to the Fount of Every Blessing and was blessed.

Paying Attention to Come thy Fount of Every Blessing

Paying Attention to the Story Behind the Hymn

Come thy Fount of Every Blessing was written by Robert Robinson. I didn’t know anything about him so researched his story.

No wonder the words felt old to me – they are!  The lyrics were written in 1757!  Wow.

Robert Robinson lived a tough life. His father died when he was young so as a teenager he was apprenticed to a barber in London.

He ran with a gang, getting into trouble until he heard the evangelist George Whitefield preach. One story tells the gang attended the revival in order to cause trouble, but God intervened instead, and he paid attention to what was being said.

Paying attention to that moment transformed him.

He worked within churches after that change of heart, but some sites mentioned he later left the church for a while.

It is said one day he was on a stagecoach conversing with the strangers there. One young woman quoted words from Come thou Fount of Every Blessing saying how much the words gave her meaning.

Robinson confessed he wrote that hymn years before and “would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then.”

She gently reminded him that “The streams of mercy are still flowing.”

Robinson paid attention once again and returned to the Lord.

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 Thy redeeming love.

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve 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;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.

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.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

God speaks to us all the time – through the words of others, the Scriptures, in prayer, nature, and often in music.  His voice is near we just need to wake up and pay attention.

How is God speaking to you lately? Is there a line from this old hymn that touches your heart? What hymn resonates with you recently?