Approach My Soul, The Mercy Seat

This is a beautiful new song from Jamie Barnes of Sojourn Music. You can stream the entire album, which is comprised of two EPs, for free at Sojourn Music’s Bandcamp site.

Approach my soul, the mercy seat
Where Holy One and helpless meet
There fall before my Judges’ feet
Thy promise is my only plea, O God

Send wings to lift the clutch of sin
You who dwell between the cherubim
From war without and fear within
Relieve the grief from the shoulders of crumbling men

O God — Pour out your mercy to me
My God, Oh what striking love to bleed.

Fashion my heart in your alchemy
With the brass to front the devil’s perjury
And surefire grace my Jesus speaks
I must. I will. I do believe. O God.

O God — Pour out your mercy to me
My God, Oh what striking love to bleed.

Approach my soul, the mercy seat
Where Holy One and helpless meet
There fall before my Judges’ feet
Thy promise is my only plea, O God

—Jamie Barnes
Based on a hymn by John Newton

Via: Tony Reinke

I Am Not What I Once Was

I am not what I ought to be. Ah, how imperfect and deficient!

I am not what I wish to be. I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good!

I am not what I hope to be. Soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.

Yet, though I am not what I ought to be,
nor what I wish to be,
nor what I hope to be,
I can truly say, I am not what I once was;
a slave to sin and Satan;
and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge,
‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’

—John Newton

Via: Tony Reinke

Godly Fear

The Lord bids me ‘fear not’& #8212; and at the same time he says, ‘Happy is the man who fears always.’ How to fear and not to fear at the same time is, I believe, one branch of that secret of the Lord which none can understand but by the teaching of his Spirit. When I think of my heart, of the world, of the powers of darkness — what cause of continual fear! I am on an enemy’s ground, and cannot move a step but some snare is spread for my feet. But when I think of the person, grace, power, care, and faithfulness of my Savior, why may I not say — I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge. I wish to be delivered from anxious and unbelieving fear, which weakens the hands and disquiets the heart. I wish to increase in a humble jealousy and distrust of myself and of everything about me.

—John Newton

Via: A Puritan At Heart