smattern, Author at Resonant 7 Page

December 6, 2018 by smattern Leave a Comment

What’s An “Ebenezer”?

Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
By: Robert Robinson, 1735-90

Listen as you read. This version from In Reverence by David Tolk.

I wonder how many a confused worshippers over the years have found themselves asking that question? So, what is it, you ask. What is an Ebenezer?

Ebenezer Explained

This is a great example of using an image and story from the Old Testament to inject tremendous weight and meaning in just a few words. The story Robinson borrows from is found in I Samuel 7 and has the prophet helping the people find their way back to God. Having been long subdued by their enemies, they begin to turn back to God. Samuel makes an offering on their behalf, during which time the Philistines attack and are routed.

To commemorate the victory, Samuel erects a stone of remembrance and names it Ebenezer, which means, “stone of help” and says, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” [I Samuel 7:12] And so marks the beginning of a period of rest for the people of God. The remembrance works two ways: to remind the Israelites what God has done, and to remind God that their eyes were on Him.

Ebenezer Exampled

How often has that happened for you? When you took a moment to look back over what you have just come through and you said, “Thus far you have helped me Lord”? And how often have you realized it was not because you deserved it.

How will you remind yourself of God’s past provision, and how will you allow that to encourage your faith as you look forward? Maybe you will not set up a stone which will remind you, every time you look at it, that God helped you through a particular difficulty. Maybe you will. Maybe it is a note or Scripture verse you keep before you. Maybe it is a piece of ribbon tied around a door knob. Whatever it is, let it be something.

Ebenezer Expected

So the people of God probably become accustomed to counting on God to be there, forgetting they had a part to play in this. We are guilty of the same expectation. So we must remember that we have to keep deciding to look to our Stone of Help.

Because it also has another layer of meaning. God is our Stone of help. Not only the help, but the stone as well. He is firm and unyielding. Never-changing. He is our Rock. Let’s keep looking to Him, until we safely arrive at our final destination, His glorious, eternal Presence.

Faithful God, You are our Ebenezer, our Stone of Help. As we work and wait through these sorrowful days, empower us to look to You. Remind us of Your work in the past, and keep our eyes on You today, even as we peer into the future. Bring us safely home.

Do you have practical ways you remind yourself of God’s help? Please share as we continue to build a community who encourages each other to resonate 7 days a week.

Podcast, Come Thou Fount – Episode 1.2

More Podcasts like this one are available in our Free Member Content Library. Click here to find out more about it!

November 29, 2018 by smattern 1 Comment

Who Started This?

digital-1446453_1920 — Flaming Tongues Above

Come, Thou Fount of every 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.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
By: Robert Robinson, 1735-90

I think it is imperative as we begin that we make it clear who started this. It was God. He called out across the vast chasm of our hearts birthing a genesis, a new beginning, out of nothing. He created something out of nothing, so calling worship out of rebellion or life out of death really is not inconceivable.

Do not misunderstand for a moment that our song writer is proposing we initiated. Inviting God to the party is kind of like inviting the President to the White House. He already lives there, that would be kind of silly. Essentially what we are doing is responding to God’s invitation with one of our own. “Yes, I would love to come to the party, since you are the Guest of Honor.”

Our response quickly acknowledges not only that God is present, but that He is the source of every good thing, and I accordingly want to give Him the praise He deserves. I love how the writer here asks to sing even the very song that the angels in Heaven sing even now, flaming tongues above. He concludes affirming that he is fixed on the immoveable reality of God’s redeeming love.

And there is the crux, right? We can not even praise this perfect One if we are not redeemed, bought back to rightness from our place of wrongness. In those clever words, the song declares two powerful truths 1. I needed redeeming, a truth every honest heart will admit, and 2. His love has done it.

Great 250 year old words, right? But how do we interact with them? How do we make them our own? First, we must understand what they mean, we must learn their message, like we long to learn the “melodious sonnet” from above. We have we have quickly considered their meaning, but now we must make them our own. And just in case you are still wondering, the entire idea of singing is both literal and figurative in this context. We must sing, but our lives must also become a song. More than an anthem of praise, we must live lives which declare His glory.

I would encourage you to personalize a simple paraphrase to God, something like this.

God I acknowledge You as the Giver of all good things and I welcome You.
I want to live my life in response to Your grace, and I need Your help to do it.
As I become aware of Your mercy poured out every day on me,
Help me to respond to it by living the reality of it before You and others.
As the angels praise You, so I long to praise You,
Not only as Your servant, but as Your remade son/daughter.
I commit to live my life, speak my words, think my thoughts, from a place of rest in You,
As the only fitting response to Your love that has redeemed me.

So, how are you going to do that? If you were to take an inventory of Your life, is it generally characterized by praise, or something else? Are you tuning your ears to hear the heavenly song, and your soul to echo it? Now down to earth…When that difficult person walks around the corner tomorrow, will you decide now how you will respond, with streams of mercy, or rivers of contempt? When challenges come will they wash away at your faith, or will reveal how solid it is?

Jesus, You are that Rock on whom we have fixed our faith. Too often we live unaware of Your Presence. Change that today. Heighten our awareness to the reality of You, and then enable us to walk in it, until that day our weaker songs give way to those being sung around Your throne even now!

How are you going to act on this? Decide now. Comment here. It may inspire someone else. Respond to what the “Fount of Every Blessing” is doing even now as you have invited Him into your day.

Podcast, Come Thou Fount – Episode 1.1

More Podcasts like this one are available in our Free Member Content Library. Click here to find out more about it!

November 27, 2018 by smattern Leave a Comment

Finally Free

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
By: Robert Robinson, 1735-90

“Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty we are free at last!” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Taken from his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, the clarion call of the Civil Rights movement, this phrase foreshadows an even bigger freedom. The blight of slavery, echoed in the malady of racism, has left a scar on the history of America, and is, in and of itself, a painful example of the larger epidemic of sin. While many who have witnessed the injustice of racism would confess how incredible it would be to live in a world free of it, all who have experienced the ravages of sin would acknowledge the even greater miracle of finally being free from it and it’s curse.

But to be honest, I am not sure that even that feeling will eclipse the wonder of finally seeing our Savior face-to-face.

Prepared to Sing

This is a difficult image to imagine. Christ shed His blood to redeem us. Our heavenly garments will be washed in His blood, yet whiter than snow. Though my sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow, from Isaiah 1:18. I believe it, it is just difficult to wrap my mind around it!

Can you imagine what we will sound like when we stand in His glorious presence, in glorified bodies, singing of His glorious and sovereign grace? I try sometimes. I have often asked the question, “Why do we spend so little time considering how we will spend eternity?” Rather, we spend so much time over concerns of this earth, this life, this age, but it will all pass away.

I have a friend who, when faced with the continual frustrations of this life, likes to remind me, “It’s all going to burn.” Those who have trusted in Christ will not, but effectively everything else will. It is the sovereign grace of our Redeemer that allows us to climb the stairwell and not only get to the heavenly gates, but confidently walk right it.

Uh huh. Your point?

These are all themes many are familiar with, but I wonder if we allow them to have their intended effect on our living. I find it interesting that the hymn closes with this incredible picture of Heaven for us. I love the certainty with which these things are declared. It is from that finality that we must draw strength to live these days, even as we long for those.

My point? That is our Savior. That is our future. That is our song.

Tune your heart to sing it today, that eternity may resonate within you even now.

Coming King, help you sing Your praise here, though imperfectly, even as I long to sing it best face-to-face. Come quickly, Lord. But should you tarry, that is delay Your coming, may it be to give me opportunities to encourage others to join me, and prepare my ransomed soul to sing!

What thought of Heaven gives you the greatest sense of anticipation for your eternal Home? Please comment below.

Video Log, Come Thou Fount – Episode 5

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November 20, 2018 by smattern Leave a Comment

I Wander As I Wonder

O 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, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
By: Robert Robinson, 1735-90

Many of you probably immediately identified the familiar Christmas Carol text, “I Wonder as I Wander”. [Listen here] Don’t worry, I am not confused, and neither are you. I have switched the words around to put emphasis on the wandering.

I have a friend who has a problem with the idea that I am “prone to wander”. His point is that my new nature is not prone to wander. While I would agree with Him, I contended that my nature is not prone to wander, but my flesh certainly is. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Matthew 26:41

This is why Robinson in His text asks God to bind his wandering heart to Himself by virtue of God’s goodness. In our context I would say our tendency is to get out of tune, to wander away from the Perfect Pitch, God Himself. So we echo that prayer to be bound and set fast in “tune”, but our flesh is bent on getting out of tune.

When I stop and wonder at the marvelous love God has shown me in sending His Son, [I wonder…how Jesus the Savior did come for to die/for poor, orn’ry people like you and like I] my wondering is not so much, “Hum, that’s interesting” as much as “Wow! why would He do that!?!” When I stop and wonder at His grace toward me, I am overwhelmed by it all. The issue is not my wondering, but my wandering.

See, if I would stop long enough to wonder, in other words if I would just stop wandering, my mind might be able to slow down enough to allow my spirit to be taught by His Spirit. I mean wandering in the sense of meandering, going to and fro purposelessly, pictured by the above image. I think this is a rampant condition for many souls. I think Robinson was acknowledging that through his words.

I do not want to wander anymore. I want to be bound, settled, centered in God’s goodness. A fetter is chain used to restrain a prisoner, typically placed around the ankles. Generally fetters are not thought of as a good thing. But when the fetter is not a chain, but an awareness of God’s goodness, and that fetter constrains my wandering heart to the singular purpose of embracing the grace of God, that fetter is a very good thing.

I do not want to wander. I want to wonder. Help me Jesus!

Video Log, Come Thou Fount – Episode 4

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November 13, 2018 by smattern Leave a Comment

Will I Always Be This Sad?

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
By: Robert Robinson, 1735-90

Listen as you read. This version from In Reverence by David Tolk.

In short, absolutely not!

It sure feels like it sometimes though. I mean, we have some really hard days. And sometimes the hard days string into hard weeks, months, even years.

And it makes sense. Flesh and sin are trouble makers. If it were not for the flesh, sin would not be an issue for the believer because we have a new nature in Christ. If it were not for sin, our flesh would have only righteous things in which to engage. But we have not been freed, or released from the curse.

Even though we are given a new nature when we were in Christ, that new nature still takes up it’s residence in the residue of our sinful nature, the flesh. As long as there was flesh, there will be sinning, even without the influence of the devil and the world, because we have simply grown so adept at it, at least for now.

And there is absolutely this hope not only that we will arrive safely at home, not only that God’s great help will continue to lead us along, not only that we can begin to praise him now even while we wait on our inheritance, but ultimately in the confidence that one day we shall be free of flesh and sin, no more sorrowing in spirit.

And that is the very thing that helps us deal with our sorrow in these days. Not only the sorrow that comes from our own sin, but also the sorrow that comes as a result of the consequences of the sinful, fallen world. It may seem like circular logic good let me spell it out.

The end of sorrowing is coming
That confidence helps us until our sorrowing ends

The fact that an end is coming to this sorrowing, helps us to deal with the sorrowing. God helps us to move along through this weary world, filled at times with great blessings, as we await on the one to come. Choose today to set your hope on Christ, to cry out to him for His help to deal with whatever grieves your heart today, and then to praise Him as the help comes.

Fount of Every Blessing, what I seek from You today is a relenting from the sorrow caused by my flesh. I choose to praise You in advance of my Deliverance, knowing full-well that you will bring it to pass. Help me to fix my eyes on You as I long for the day when this struggle comes to an end. As I wait for that Day, give me the grace in this day to offer You my worship.

Do you have a habit that helps you turn the sorrow into praise? Maybe it is something that would be helpful to others. No idea is unwelcome.

Video Log, Come Thou Fount – Episode 2

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Prepared to Sing

Uh huh. Your point?

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