Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

I wouldn’t call myself a hymn person—per-say. Don’t get me wrong, I like hymns as much as the next Gen-Xer, but they aren’t my first choice if I want to listen to worship music. However, I feel like the language and tradition in many classic hymns puts much of our “contemporary” worship music to shame. And, no, this is not a post on worship styles—so don’t worry.

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One of the things that makes some hymns great, in my humble opinion, is how a piece of music, and the message within, will stand the test of time, and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing has surely endured the test of time!

Written in 1757 (that’s 255 years ago, people!) by Pastor, and hymnist, Robert Robinson, Come Thou Fount has gained recent popularity being covered by bands like David Crowder and Jars of clay—just to name a few.

At the age of 17 Roberts, as the story goes, was involved with a questionable group of friends, and started sensing a needed change in his life. So he convinced a group of friends to go see the famous Methodist preacher, George Whitefield, so that he and his friends could heckle the minister while he was giving his message. unbeknownst to his friends Roberts had ulterior motives for the visit, and so did God.

That day Whitefield preached on Matthew 3:7.

After hearing that message Roberts left feeling a deep sense of conviction and dread. That message remained with Roberts until the age of 20, when he publicly declared that he would enter the ministry and live a life dedicated to the message of the cross.

Two years later, at the young age of 22, Roberts penned the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

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
I’ll praise the mount I’m fixed upon it
Mount of Thy redeeming love

Here I raise my Ebenezer
Hither by Thy help I come
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Jesus sought me when a stranger
Wondering 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 wandering heart to Thee
Prone to wander Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above

My favorite stanza from this hymn is:

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 Lord, take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above

This last verse may have been foreshadowing a season in Roberts life. Although unverifiable— the story goes that one day, many years after writing the hymn, Roberts boarded a stagecoach in which a young lady happen to be humming Come Thou Fount. When the lady asked him what he thought of the hymn she was humming— he responded, “Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then.”

Do you have a favorite hymn? what is it? what is your favorite line from it? Do you know the story behind your favorite hymn?