“Let Thy Grace, Lord, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.”
I remember the first time I sang those words, in a small (overly) air-conditioned room with about 15 kids from my youth group. I had been a Christian for just a few months. Our worship leader, rather than singing the Hillsong United and David Crowder* Band songs that I had been used to, said, “I wanna play one of my favorite songs of all time. It’s a hymn.”
He went on to describe what a fetter was, and how it’s used to chain prisoners and keep them from escaping. He poetically described his own experience of how often he needed Christ to bind his own sinful heart to God. Shortly after, we sang “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” And I felt… nothing. Zip. Zilch. Those words which meant so much to my friend had no effect on me.
Fast-Forward 7 years.
The words which were once so mundane to me are now some of my favorite lines to sing and to pray. In a meager seven years, I’ve begun to realize the magnitude of God’s holiness, His commands, and my own failure to live up to that: and therefore, I’ve begun to scratch the surface of the richness of mercy laid up for those who believe. I need His grace every single morning, because it’s only His grace that will bind my sinful heart to what is best for me and most glorifying to God. Such blessed chains indeed.
Most times it can be discouraging and even debilitating to come face to face with our own idolatry and sinfulness. But it’s so necessary to appreciate the Gospel, and to accept God’s grace to heal and repair those areas in our lives where we are prone to wander. Tim Keller often says that when you truly go to God, you realize more and more that He asks for so much more than you previously thought, yet He is even more gracious and good than you could ever imagine. The more I realize the heights of God’s holiness, His calling for us to be holy in the same manner, my falling short of that call, and the cross on which He bore every stain of sin, the more I see the sheer magnitude of His mercy: both to save and to sanctify. So everyday, I hope that we all cry out, in a similar manner to the hymnist who penned these lines:
“Let thy grace, Lord, 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.”