“Bind My Wandering Heart To Thee”
I have a guitar that struggles to stay in tune. It’s easily impacted by the environment it’s in… humidity and temperature changes, not to mention the level of ferocity with which I’m strumming. Because of this, my guitar needs to be tuned frequently, sometimes even between songs on a Sunday morning. This guitar can make beautiful music when it’s in tune. When it’s out of tune, it’s kind of distracting, potentially even painful to the ears.
Have you ever stopped to think of your heart like my guitar? It’s easily impacted by the situations around it. While it’s capable of beautiful praise when in tune, when it’s out of tune, the song it plays is not so pleasing to God’s ears.
In the opening stanza of a song we are going to sing this Sunday are the words:
“Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace”
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”
Whether we like it or not, our hearts have a tendency to drift from the love of God to the love of something else. Our hearts tend to naturally sing the praises of almost anything but God.
Bob Kauflin, in his book Worship Matters, says “While it’s simplistic to say that worship is love, it’s a fact that what we love the most will determine what we genuinely worship”
Simplistically put what we love we will worship. Kauflin goes on to say,
“How do I know what I love the most? By looking at my life outside of Sunday Morning. What do I enjoy the most? What do I spend the most time doing? Where does my mind drift when I don’t have anything to do? What am I passionate about? What do I spend my money on? What makes me angry when I don’t get it? What do I feel depressed without? What do I fear losing most? Our answers to those questions will lead us straight to the God or gods we love and worship.”
Bob Kauflin “Worship Matters” Pg26
How do we tune our hearts to love God? It is by focusing on who God is and not on what’s going on around us.
The next lines of the song “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” are:
“Streams of mercy never ceasing
call for songs of loudest praise”
This reminds me of Jeremiah 17:8: It is the tree planted by the water whose roots drink from it continually that does not wither when the storms come. It has no worries in the year of drought. God’s mercy never ceases; He never gives up on us, and He never leaves us.
James 1:17 says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
God is always there, even when we have a hard time recognizing it.
Verse 2 speaks of Gods relationship with us.
“Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God”
Romans 5:8 says, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Before we ever did anything good, God loved us. His commitment to us isn’t based on our performance; it’s based on His character.
Verse 3:
“O to grace how great a debtor,
Daily I’m constrained to be”
We are forever in debt to Christ. But as we looked at in a previous devotional, we can never give a gift that is good enough to say thank you. What God wants is our hearts; He wants a life fully submitted to Him (Deut 6:5 and Psalm 51).
“Let Thy goodness like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee:”
A fetter is a chain used to restrain a prisoner, typically around the ankles. It’s hard to get anywhere quickly with your ankles chained together. May it be God’s goodness towards us that keeps our heart from wandering from these truths, from falling out of tune.
The next time you start to notice your heart wandering and singing the praises of something or someone other than God, remember God’s goodness. Remember that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And let that goodness keep our hearts tethered to Christ.