COME THOU FOUNT OF EVERY BLESSING

As a teenager, Robert Robinson (1735 – 1790) went to a George Whitefield meeting with the purpose of ridiculing him. Instead, Robinson was converted and later entered the ministry. The text of this great hymn was written when he was only twenty-three years of age while he ministered at the Calvinistic Methodist Church in Norfolk, England. In the USA, the hymn is usually set to an American folk tune known as Nettleton, by attribution to the evangelist Asahel Nettleton who composed it early in the nineteenth century. It is one of those rare hymns that has survived the centuries and is still sung today, by many, as a song of praise and testimony. As I grew up I often heard song leaders and minisfers talk negatively about the words "prone to wander" in the third verse. I would agree that our salvation is secure and that nothing can take it away from us. But I also believe that all of us at times begin to wander and need to be brought back to the victorious life the Lord desires for us. I remember how my grandfather often talked about sheep who tend to wander away from the shepherd by nibbling a patch of grass here and then going to nibble another patch a little farther away and then another, and then another until they had wandered a distance from the shepherd. But the shepherd always brought them back. And isn't that the same with us? Aren't there things that cause us to wander away from the close fellowship that we can and should have with the Lord? But in His great mercy and grace, the Lord brings us back to Him and to close fellowship with Him. As the song says, daily we are debtors, but in His goodness He binds our wandering heart to Him. He truely is the fount of every true 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

And teach me some melodious sonnet

Sung by flaming tongues above

Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it

Mount of Thy redeeming love.

(2) Here I raise my Ebenezer

Hither by Thy help I 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) 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

Prone to wander, Lord I feel it

Prone to leave the God I love

Here's my heart Lord, take and seal it

Seal it for Thy courts above.

Listen to it here. LISTEN