Come Thou Fount - Verse 4

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.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!

Every day, I am forced by the Spirit of God, and by the truth of His word, to see how great a debt I owe to the grace of God. Were it not for His Amazing Grace, I'd be lost and undone. Daily, He reminds me, "I love you. I forgive you. I look at you and see the righteousness of my dear Son." I owe Him everything!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

What a picture! God's goodness is like a chain around my leg that keeps me from wandering. I cannot leave, because He keeps me.

John 10:27 "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me,1 is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand."

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;

Romans 7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. My heart is deceitful above all things. God knows I am prone to idolatry, to selfishness, to pride. I don't like the discipline of the Lord at times. I've spent months in the "wilderness", in rebellion against a Holy God. Yet, like the Hound of Heaven that He is, He would not let me go.

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

The Holy Spirit is an earnest, a seal... a promise given to us to assure us that we will be praising God in His courts. Even though we're prone to wander, God keeps us by His grace and seals His promise with the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 1:11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his own will: 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.
13 In whom you also trusted, after that you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that you believed, you were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of his glory.

Praise God!