For God Alone: Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Thomas W. Hunt (1929-2014) taught music and missions, and music in worship, at Southwestern Seminary’s School of Church Music from 1963-1987, and it was God’s gracious blessing for me to study with this faithful man of God. (T. W. Hunt authored several books, including The Mind of Christ.) One day, Dr. Hunt walked into class - a bit late, as was his usual custom, placed his large stack of books on the piano, turned to his full class, and said: The Lord awakened me early this morning and placed the following stanza on my heart:
Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come,
And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home.
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.*
Then, our humble, yet deeply profound professor who was a devoted man of prayer said: I struggle with these words: prone to wander Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. After guiding his students in a brief discussion of that text, during which his students learned that our hearts, too, would wander even from the God we loved and love still, Dr. Hunt then led us in a prayer.
I have never forgotten Dr. Hunt’s honest faith, which he openly lived before his students, teaching us by example to be honest, faithful, and humble before God and others.
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)
One Palm Sunday, our pastor challenged his congregation to find a place in our homes during Holy Week where we could quietly and honestly confess our sins before God. (I John 1:9). In Psalm 139, the psalmist powerfully describes the omniscience and omnipresence of almighty God.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!
Of God’s immanence, twentieth-century preacher and author, A. W. Tozer wrote: God is above all things presiding, beneath all things sustaining, outside of all things embracing, and inside of all things filling. Where do you stand with your Redeemer this day? During this Holy Week, even as we anticipate Resurrection Sunday, the current worldwide malady requires of us a deeper patience, and a sacred resting in God. As we wait, let us Behold Our God** as never before, and pray the prayer of the eighteenth-century hymn writer, Robert Robinson: Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy praise!*
*Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, arr. Wilberg
**Behold Our God, Sovereign Grace Worship
Comments
Post a Comment