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Raise Your Ebenezer!

  • Writer: Joe Hawkins
    Joe Hawkins
  • Jun 13
  • 3 min read

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 God’s unchanging love!


How honest the hymn writer is. There’s no sugar-coating the battle within. The same heart that sings of grace, of mercy streams that never cease, also confesses its own wayward tendencies. If that’s not the perfect portrait of the believer’s walk in these last days, I don’t know what is.


We live in a generation where wandering hearts are the norm. Our culture has tuned its affections not to the melodies of grace, but to the clamor of self, sin, and spiritual apathy. This hymn is a cry to be retuned—"tune my heart to sing Thy grace." It reminds us that our default frequency is off. It must be recalibrated by the Spirit, constantly.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;

hither by thy help I’m come;

and I hope, by thy good pleasure,

safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

wandering from the fold of God;

he, to rescue me from danger,

interposed his precious blood.


In 1 Samuel 7:12, after a great deliverance, Samuel raised a stone of remembrance—an Ebenezer—saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” In a prophetic sense, we’re called to raise our own Ebenezers in these darkening days. The Lord’s faithfulness in the past is the anchor we look to as we await the blessed hope (Titus 2:13). He has brought us this far—not to abandon us now.


This hymn doesn’t just look backward—it looks upward. “Mount of God’s unchanging love.” That mount is Calvary. It’s where mercy and justice met. Where the “stranger” was brought back into the fold. Where the blood interposed and the rescue mission was complete.

“O to grace how great a debtor

daily I’m constrained to be!

Let that grace now, 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.


We are debtors—not to the law, not to religion—but to grace. And that grace, like a fetter, holds us fast in a world that pulls at every spiritual seam. The writer isn’t celebrating his tendency to drift; he’s surrendering it. “Here’s my heart. Take and seal it.”


That should be the cry of every believer who recognizes the lateness of the hour. In a world preparing itself for a false messiah and a counterfeit peace, we long to be sealed—not with the mark of this world, but with the Spirit (Eph. 1:13). We are not sealed for this age—we are sealed for His courts above.

In these days of increasing deception and falling away (2 Thess. 2:3), this hymn calls us back to the essentials: the fountain of blessing, the finished work of Christ, and the sealing power of the Spirit. We are prone to wander, yes—but God is prone to pursue. The time is short. Our calling is clear. Stay anchored. Stay tuned to grace. And raise your Ebenezer while there's still time.


Maranatha. Stay Awake. Keep Watch.


Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing - Robert Robinson

 
 
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