We are more dependent on the Lord than we will ever realize. How wonderful that out of His great love, He provides for us in so many ways, and so much of the time when we’re not even aware of it. The Bible encourages us to call on the Lord continually to show His sovereign fatherly care for His children. He loves us so much that He wants to bless us by entering into our lives to make our days full of joy. His desire is more than just to save us from our sins and give us eternal life in heaven. He wants for us to see each day that He is the one who finds great joy in meeting our every need. Such is His glorious infinite goodness. We honor Him when we recognize that we need Him and therefore trustingly call on Him to meet those needs in our lives.
When it comes to hymns, we have ample resources to provide us the words to sing such longing musical prayers to Him. We would immediately think of hymn phrases like “I need Thee, O I need Thee,” “guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” “all I have needed Thy hand hath provided,” “all the way my Savior leads me,” and countless others. They find great support in the many Psalms that remind us that God hears and answers prayer, such as in Psalm 34:17-18, “When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
One of those hymns in which we confess our needs and ask Him to meet those needs is “Teach Me, O Lord, Thy Holy Way.” It was written in 1866 by William Tidd Matson (1833-1899). Born in West Hackney, London, he was educated first under Rev. J. M. Gould and then at St, John’s College, Cambridge. Subsequently he studied under Professor Nesbitt at the Agricultural and Chemical College, Kennington. In 1853, he was powerfully converted out of nominal Christianity to genuine saving faith in the Lord Jesus. Leaving the Church of England, he first joined the Methodist New Connexion body, and then the Congregationalists. After receiving theological training, he was ordained to ministry, and served several pastorates, including Havant, Hants; Gosport; Highbury; Portsmouth, and others. No further details remain to public access, other than the fact that he was a skilled poet with a number of works attributed to him.
Matson’s hymn was written with significant literary as well as theological skill. Each stanza makes a distinct request of this Lord who has the desire and the ability to meet each need that every single one us has. Isolating each of those verb-requests shows us what incredible resources belong to our wonderful Savior. As we sing it, we need to remind ourselves that our words are not spoken about Him, but are addressed to Him. It’s a very sweetly personal hymn in these requests … teach me, guide me, help me, guard me, bless me.
We ask Him to teach us in stanza 1. Jesus not only has all knowledge and wisdom. He is also a master teacher, as He repeatedly demonstrated during His earthly ministry with those who followed Him. He was known as “Rabbi,” which means “My Teacher.” His hearers were often amazed at His teaching. That extends even to His enemies, as His answers to questions confounded, and sometimes infuriated them. Their attempts to trick or embarrass Him routinely failed. Through the Holy Spirit and by His written word, He works to teach us, planting truths into our minds so that we can choose wisely.
We ask Him to guide us in stanza 2. He is the one who guided His people through 40 years of wilderness wandering. In Psalm 119 we read that His Word is a lamp to our feet and a guide to our path. Psalm 23 promises that He will lead us to quiet waters and through paths of righteousness. How often do we need to pause and pray that He will guide us in a decision that we need to make? And if we pause and think about our past, how often did He guide us to a result that was beneficial to us and glorifying to Himself?
We ask Him to help us in stanza 3. That’s because we are weak in the face of evil and temptation, in the face of sorrow and fear, in the face of loneliness and opposition. Psalm 139 assures that our God is omniscient (knowing all things), omnipresent (with us always), and omnipotent (all powerful). He is the God who created and is sustaining all things simply by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). Paul reminded the Corinthians that it is when we are weak that His power is magnified. So we ought never to hesitate from asking Him to help us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves.
We ask Him to guard us in stanza 4. He is the one who has promised never to leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:8). He stands guard over our soul, assuring us that nothing can separate us from the Father’s love (Romans 8:38-39). Perhaps we think too often only of Jesus as a gentle shepherd, which He is. But this is a shepherd who guards us from the lion of hell. We forget that Jesus is a mighty warrior who has done battle with the devil, has already defeated him, and will return to vanquish him as He gathers up all His elect.
We ask Him to bless us in stanza 5. This means that we want the one from whom every blessing comes to touch everything we do and say so that genuine good results from it. Jesus correctly told us that without Him we can do nothing. We may “do” some things, but they will not result in lasting good without His blessing. When we ask for His blessing, we are not asking that He give us the good things we desire. We are asking that He will bring from our actions the good things He desires.
In stanza 1, we pray specifically that He would teach us to have a mind that functions in obedience to His will, one that would function in a holy manner. When that happens, we will find that serving the Lord will bring a fullness of delight to our soul that cannot be found in any other way.
Teach me, O Lord, Thy holy way,
And give me an obedient mind;
That in Thy service I may find
My soul’s delight from day to day.
In stanza 2, we pray specifically that He would guide us with His hand, not just in outward actions, but so as to control our minds so that what we think as well as what we do would be pleasing to Him. Our goal in that is that we might follow Him in those paths of righteousness of Psalm 23 that will lead us “right onward to the blessed land.”
Guide me, O Savior, with Thy hand,
And so control my thoughts and deeds,
That I may tread the path which leads
Right onward to the blessed land.
In stanza 3, we pray specifically that He would help us to do what we cannot do in our own strength and wisdom, to trace His “sacred footsteps,” stepping, as it were, at each place He stepped, as if tracing it on a paper before us. When Jesus instructed His followers to follow Him, this is a way of visualizing what that would look like. The result will be that, like Him, we would be “meekly walking” and growing “in goodness, truth, and grace” (the fruit of the Spirit).
Help me, O Savior, here to trace
The sacred footsteps Thou hast trod;
And, meekly walking with my God,
To grow in goodness, truth, and grace.
In stanza 4, we pray specifically that He would guard us from ourselves, our own self-directed sinful tendencies. We are too prone to backslide and turn away from what we know is righteous and virtuous. Jesus taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” That certainly includes the request that He would guard us in those moments when temptations come, that we might not only resist, but also use those moments to grow stronger in our resolve, that we might not “forsake the right, or do the wrong.” We need God’s “sheltering care” to protect us not only from all forms of hostile attack, but also from the tempter’s snare that would entice us to sin.
Guard me, O Lord, that I may ne’er
Forsake the right, or do the wrong:
Against temptation make me strong,
And round me spread Thy sheltering care.
In stanza 5, we pray specifically that He would bless us “in every task.” Our new heart wants to serve the Lord in gospel work that builds up the church and the people of God. That involves changing other people’s minds and hearts, something only the Lord can do. And so in this hymn, we conclude by asking Him to work through our work, our deeds, our counseling, our evangelizing, our teaching, our praying, so that His will would be accomplished in ways that bring all the credit and glory to Him. We depend on His “abounding grace” as the way for this prayer to be answered.
Bless me in every task, O Lord,
Begun, continued, done for Thee:
Fulfil Thy perfect work in me;
And Thine abounding grace afford.
What a wonderful triad of requests to make of our Lord regularly.
We sing the lyrics to the tune PENITENCE. It is found in the 1867 St. Alban’s Tune Book. It was written by Cornelius Elven (1791-1873), pastor for fifty years of the Baptist Church at St. Edmunds, Suffolk. During his time there, the congregation grew from 40 to over 600 members.
At Charles Spurgeon’s first, and brief pastorate at Waterbeach, Elven was invited to preach for his first anniversary, in 1852. Mr. Spurgeon met him at the station. Noting what a large man Elven was, Spurgeon wrote, “His bulk was stupendous, and one saw that his heart was as large as his body.” He could not go into the river for the baptismal service connected with the anniversary, for he said that “if he got wet through, there were no garments nearer than Bury St. Edmunds that would fit him.”
Elven exhorted the young pastor to “study hard, and mind and keep abreast of the foremost Christians in your little church; for if these men, either in their knowledge of Scripture, or their power to edify the people, once outstrip you, the temptation will arise among them to be dissatisfied with your ministry; and however good they are, they will feel their superiority, and others will perceive it too, and then your place in the church will be very difficult to hold.”
Here is a link to Matson’s hymn, with the PENITENCE tune.