Tune My Heart

One of my favorite hymns over the years has been "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing". As I played it for church recently, I got to thinking about its words which were penned by Robert Robinson in the 1700s. Whether or not you're familiar with these words, they bear reading again:

Come, Thou Fount of ev'ry 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 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, 

Wand'ring 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 wand'ring 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.

Our hearts need to be "tuned" to sing of God's goodness. After all, if the only thing we had to praise God for was our salvation from sin and an eternity in His presence, we still would have enough to keep us busy praising Him every moment of our lives. 

Charles Spurgeon once said, "God is so good that every moment of His love demands a lifetime of praise."* God's goodness is what, as Robinson wrote in his hymn, binds our wandering hearts to God. We are prone to leave Him, to get distracted and wander off spiritually. But the remembrance of His goodness to us should bring us right back to His feet, hearts tuned to sing His praise. 

Romans 2:4 states that "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance". When we consider God's goodness, we are naturally led to a deeper realization of just how far short we fall in comparison. A heart tuned to sing God's praise is a grateful heart, but also a humble heart that acknowledges just how much God has done for us, and how gracious He was to do it, considering just how unworthy we are apart from Christ.

So as you get ready for church tomorrow, consider: is your heart tuned?

"I will sing unto the Lord, because He hath dealt bountifully with me." 

Psalm 13:6

*Spurgeon, Charles. The Practice of Praise p. 43-44