Robert Robinson's wandering soul

Robert Robinson is a name that few today know, but many know one of his hymns, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". Take a look at the second verse:

2. 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.

Robinson was 22 years old at this point, yet already understood the Gospel enough to understood that he was far from worthy of the forgiveness and love of Jesus Christ. He embraced the grace and forgiveness and states that he raises an "Eben-ezer" to God as a reminder to himself and all around him that God alone had delivered him. I think that most Christians would grab hold of this story and want to claim it for their own, but Robinson didn't stop here. The third verse is sort of foretelling chapter:

3. 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.

Robinson, just a few years after writing this abandoned his position as a Baptist pastor (formerly Methodist) and wandered, estranged from God for nearly 50 years. Robinson believed that he was prone to wander, as I know so well that all of us (I know I feel this way) feel the desire to "leave the God we love", even though we love Him.

I think that the one of the primary reasons for this is that we stop feeling the need for the Gospel in our own lives. We need to DAILY preach the Gospel to ourselves. The Gospel isn't a one-time event in our lives that allows us to just try and be moral from then on. The Gospel requires a daily giving of ourselves over to the understanding that we are bigger sinners than we ever thought we were and that requires a bigger Savior than we thought Christ was (and He is!!).

Two great resources that I have recently found and love are this video from John Piper on preaching the Gospel to yourself and this article by Kaleo Church on preaching the Gospel to yourself.

As I walk through this life, I'm ever so thankful for the many people who have gone before me that encourage me to walk in a manner fitting of our Savior. To not leave you hanging, Robert Robinson, after nearly 50 years of wandering, stopped, turned around, and embraced the Savior he had been running from for so long just shortly before he died. What a mighty God we serve!

You're only as close as you want to be.

Today, I had the pleasure meeting with a friend of mine, Chad Hood, who serves the church of Bayleaf Baptist as the College and Career pastor. While we were talking he mentioned the statement: "You're only as close to Christ as you desire to be." That seems monumentally true and can be evidenced throughout my Christian experience. Each and every time I have claimed to have been going through a period of silence, where I could not hear God, it was often in direct correlation to my unrepentant heart or due to idolatry in one form of another in my life. Whether the idol was movies, video games, grades in school, my wife, my job, my daughter, my friends, my pastor...in all, these things come back to me drawing near to myself in pride and pushing myself farther and farther away from Christ. I want to be close to Christ. I know that in order to get to where I need to be, it will take a desire that I may even fear is beyond me sometimes. As sad as that is (and it is horrifying to me), I know that my Heavenly Father desires to have a restored, right relationship with me that only He can provide and I have to want to be close to Him, open my eyes, and see that He's been there the whole time.