tune my heart to sing Thy grace

so it's been awhile since i have blogged. but you have to understand. school and work and finals almost killed me. but everything is okay because CHRISTMAS BREAK IS HERE! i have been meaning to write this blog post for almost a month. but the truth in the thoughts still ring true. even if it has taken me awhile to verbalize it. 

one thursday night at BCM, the band played the song "come thou fount". i have grown up in church, let me remind you. i could probably sing this hymn in my sleep, as could most of you readers. but this time i actually listened to the lyrics. wow. talk about a rude awakening. i had to stop singing. i literally couldn't sing anymore because i didn't know if i could wholeheartedly sing the words. my heart was being spiritually wrecked as everyone was singing around me. i left BCM really touched by the song. but what do most christians do when they are touched by something? exactly. they do nothing. side bar: the rich young ruler left the temple feeling convicted but jesus said he couldn't enter the kingdom of heaven. another blog post for another day. i kinda forgot about what jesus had revealed to my heart during that song at BCM. uhhh that was until i went to church on sunday and what was the first song played? "come thou fount". talk about another slap in the face. this time i was not going to forget why i was spiritually wrecked. and i haven't forgotten it ever since that day.

for those of you that need a refresher on the lyrics, i'll put them below. and really take time to read them. you might find yourself wrecked like i was. 

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, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above

okay we are going to break down my thoughts on this verse by verse. cause let me remind you. this song WRECKED me. so this blog post might be longer than most. sorry not sorry.

verse #1: the line in this verse that hit me the hardest was "tune my heart to sing thy grace". obviously seeing as it is the title of the entire post. when i heard this for the first time, i immediately thought of a guitar. now for everyone that knows me knows i'm not in the least bit musical. but i at least know this: a guitar cannot tune itself. someone with greater knowledge about the instrument has to come along and manually fix the guitar. and obviously it is not a beautiful process. no one sits down and wants to listen to someone tune a guitar. there will be some really gross and painful notes played. they won't sound like they are supposed to. but once the musician is finished? the chords are beautiful. and music is created. when i heard this line, my heart broke. why exactly? because this means that inside, my heart is not bent towards playing beautiful chords. i want to sing God's grace but sometimes i come out of tune. because i'm not making myself available or i'm just playing some AWFUL notes. but God, rich in grace and mercy, tunes me back to be able to sing beautiful notes all about His grace. i'm left here in awe towards Him at this thought.

verse #2: first off, what in the world is an ebenezer? i love this song but when i'm singing this, i skip over that line cause what if an ebenezer is $1000 in old english and i'm supposed to lift it. i couldn't be held to that cause i don't have $1000. but that's not spiritual. so moving right along..

the fact that "jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God. He to rescue me from danger interposed his precious blood." can we just stop and thank a beautiful and sovereign savior that that line is true? i can't imagine being willing to sacrifice my life for someone else's crimes. but He did it for us all. even my grossest sins. he died for all of it. and backtracking a little bit in the song, jesus came after us and pursued us even when we hated him. when we were strangers to him. when we mocked him and threw him on a cross and killed him. if that's not true love, then i don't know what is. 

another sidebar: just looked up what an ebenezer is. it's a monumental stone meant to symbolize all of God's goodness and provisions in each of our lives. okay. i can lift that up. 

verse #3: "oh to grace how great a debtor daily i'm constrained to be. let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee." again with the wandering and tuning. i guess the guy who wrote this song gets that even if we love jesus with everything in us, we are still human. we still sin. and we will still desperately need some one to tune us back to making beautiful notes for jesus. oh and btdubs i looked up the word "fetter" and they are shackles. so basically, i'm asking to be chained to jesus. if i was to be chained to anyone, i would choose jesus. he bought my soul with his own blood after all. he tunes me daily. he doesn't despise me even though so often i disappoint him. yes. i choose to be chained to jesus. and even though i know i'm "prone to wander and prone to leave the God i love", i choose to give jesus my heart because he deserves way more than that anyway.

okay. told you it was gonna be long. i could write WAYYY more about this song. but i will spare you all and let you go on with your lives. if you have stuck with me this far, then rock on! i pray that this song saturates your life and leaves you wrecked. God likes using the wrecked anyway. it shows the world who deserves the glory and honor. always jesus.

stepping out on faith.

stepping out on faith is one of the most terrifying and freeing things you could ever do. let me explain.

faith is completely terrifying. just think about it. when you step out on faith, you are basically saying that you believe that the other person has your best interest in heart and will take care of you. you are completely relenting control. for the control freak in me, that is a foreign concept. in my sinful nature, i believe that only i can make clear decisions about my life. giving someone else that power is absolutely terrifying.

but faith is also so freeing. you don't have to worry about anything because you know that someone always has your back. someone always has your best interest at heart and wants the absolute best for you. you know that you can trust this person.

it is so amazing to me how even though it is completely terrifying for me to relent control of my life over to God, it always turns out better than i could have ever imagined. i submitted my application today to spend next summer in uganda. most terrifying moment of my life... okay just kidding. there have been worse. but now i have to wait. and pray that God would make his plan for my summer completely obvious. but i know that whatever happens is going to be God's best for everyone involved. because He promises it. He assures me that everything will work out for my good and for His glory.

i was reading in acts 4 a couple days ago. great stuff by the way. in this section, peter and john are before the sanhedrin after being thrown in jail for preaching the gospel. pretty terrifying if you ask me. i don't know about you but i have never been thrown in jail for telling a friend what God has been doing in my life. i can't imagine the stress they would have gone through. but even in the midst of the unknown and stress, the bible says they were still faithful. peter and john were given a chance to speak before the sanhedrin after their jail time. in acts 4:13, the bible says, "when they [the sanhedrin] saw the courage of peter and john and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with jesus." when the sanhedrin saw peter and john, they undoubtedly knew that the strength they possessed was not their own. what a TESTIMONY to how great our God is!

later on in the chapter, there are two verses that just jump out at me. the first is acts 4:20, "for we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." peter and john said that to the sanhedrin after they were asked to no longer preach the truth of jesus. they basically told the men of the sanhedrin that they could try to shut them up but our God is so good that there is no way that they could stop sharing the good things He had done in their lives. and the second verse is acts 4:31, "after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. and they were all filled with the holy spirit and spoke the word of God boldly." i pray that i can have the same god-given strength that peter and john had. that God would give me the courage to pray so boldly for the salvation of my friends and neighbors. that God would give me the courage to never stop speaking about what i have heard and seen. because where people make themselves available, the lord moves.

i just want to leave you with this video. it's a video of chris tomlin and all these people from all around the world singing How Great Is Our God (just click the song title). it is enough to move anyone to tears and i have a feeling that this is what heaven will be like. hope this is finding y'all in a good time. be encouraged by these words!

finding God in the details.

some days i am utterly blown away with how detailed our God is. can you relate? creation alone screams that God cares about the little details in life. today i was reminded of just how faithful and sovereign God is. 

at the beginning of the semester, AU leadership had a mini-retreat and in one of the sessions, the speaker told us to write a letter to ourselves and it would be delivered to us later on in the semester. honestly, i could not for the life of me remember what i had written. well, i got my letter today in the mail. it was the greatest God-thing that could have happened today. side note: if you haven't read my previous post, go check it out. it will make the next part make more sense. in my letter to myself, i wrote, "..love the place that God has put you so that the people you encounter see it. be jesus everyday and in order to do that, you have to know Him intimately." wow. thanks past hannahbeth. to think that i had no idea what i would be going through two and a half months ago. God placed that on my heart knowing exactly when i would receive this encouragement. man. GOD IS SO GOOD. God sees the details of your life and he knows just what you need to move forward. He will not leave you empty-handed. the strength that i have now is only because of Him and He is the one who keeps replenishing it. hope that encourages you today as much as it has encouraged me. 

are you feeling spiritually restless?

i am at this really awkward point in my life right now. i feel like i am supposed to be doing more for the Kingdom than i am at this point. i feel like i am just in a really spiritually stagnant place. i want to be able to pour into and minister to people but i feel like i am just missing opportunities. 

 from that spiritual restless state, i have been looking forward to what i could do in the future, especially this summer. i have several possibilities that are up in the air (more info to come) but one is an international trip. for TWO MONTHS. so of course the gears in my brain start going immediately. and when i hear of something that i want to do, i latch onto it. so what have i been doing for the past three days? looking up and obsessing over anything and everything africa. which only fuels my spiritual restlessness more. 

 but two things happened today that have just completely changed my attitude. one was a phone call with my mother. by the way, she and my dad are my greatest cheerleaders and i have no idea where i would be without them. she always speaks godly truth into my life which i have learned more and more is rare these days. holla to my mom! anyways. she just opened my eyes to the fact that maybe God has me at AU to reach out for opportunities here. which i think i knew all along; she just had to remind me. God would never lead me/you somewhere and not complete the good work He has for you. He is that good of a God. the second thing that happened was that i found this song by a band called united pursuit band. i have never heard of them before or ever heard of this song so it was definitely a God thing that i found this today. the song is called "Set A Fire". the lyrics are so simple and yet so profound that as i sit here and listen to it, i have no choice but to be in awe of an amazing God. 

Set a fire down in my soul

That I can't contain and I can't control

Cause I want more of You God

           I want more of You God

There's no place I would rather be

        But here in Your love, here in Your love.

        Fill me up God. Fill me up God. Fill me up God.

the song lasts for six minutes and honestly, it has been on repeat ever since i found it. this song is exactly what my heart has been crying out for this semester; i just didn't realize it yet. what i really want, more than knowing my life's purpose, more than a place of mission, more than anything else in this world, is to just be consumed with Jesus. and what i want, at the end of the day, is for my heart to be able to say that it doesn't matter where i am as long as i am standing in the love of Christ. this song is officially the anthem of my semester and possibly my life.

so that explains the name of the blog. i want my life to be aflame of all that God is and stands for, including missions. hopefully y'all can join me on my journey as i figure out what God wants to do with my life but especially this summer. it is all still up in the air so i am praying and waiting in expectation. who knows what's going to happen next?

-- HannahBeth