Give Me Love (Jesus, Gentle Loving Lamb)
A beautiful Wesley hymn from the 1742 “Hymns and Sacred Poems”. Lovely words about our need for Jesus and His care for us, with an original tune written by Luke Powell.
Welcome to a new series on my channel! I know you guys love the hymns, so I thought I'd do something different this year. I'm going to do a series called Wesley's Hidden Gems. I'm going to do one every month, and I want to take Charles Wesley hymns that are unknown, songs that he maybe published only once, or that were never put to music, but that I think are beautiful - and put my own music to them.
So it's a bit of a creative thing for me, writing some new tunes, but also going back to some of the great Wesley hymns. A friend of mine the other day said he loves a Charles Wesley hymn because that guy could turn a phrase like nobody else! And it's true. He wrote such beautiful poetry.
I went to Hymnary.org, which is a website that I frequent doing the hymn videos I do, and I found if you go onto the Charles Wesley page and look at his different songs, you can order them by how many times they've been published in a hymnal. I ordered them in reverse so that I could see the ones that were only published once at the top, and I looked for ones that sounded compelling to me.
The first one that I saw was this one. The first line is Jesus, gentle, loving Lamb. This was published in 1742 - in the heyday of the original Methodist movement.
There are 301 songs, some of them are classics, but most of them are totally forgotten, including this one at which is hymn number 48. And it is beautiful!
I want to show you why I like it. Let's go through the words before I play it. So this will be the pattern for the series. I'll tell you where it was published, in which hymnal, I'm going to show you the words, and then I want to play my version.
The Lyrics of “Give Me Love”
Verse 1
Jesus, gentle, loving Lamb,
let me call Thee by Thy name.
Well, that grabbed me. Jesus as a gentle and loving Lamb of God, the Lamb who took away the sins of the world, and yet who defeated evil in His innocence.
"Let me call Thee by Thy name" is such an intimate thing, a friendship with this loving Lamb.
Saviour, I have need of Thee
as Thou art, so may I be.
I need to be like Jesus, and I need Him to save me so that I can be like Him. That's beautiful.
Verse 2
Save me, Lord, from sin and fear.
Bring the great salvation here.
So that's the salvation he needs. Sin has messed him up. Fear dominates his life, but he can be saved! The great salvation could come here through Christ, and save him from these things.
Bring into my soul Thy peace
and everlasting righteousness.
So his soul needs peace. His soul needs the everlasting righteousness - right standing with God. And that's what the great salvation is.
What a beautiful verse.
Verse 3
Me to save if Thou hast died,
save me from this self and pride.
So Jesus has died, and His death can save me. It can save me from self and pride. It can save me from all the plague of sin.
All the plague of sin remove,
cast it out by perfect love.
I love this - "all the plague of sin." I love that - 1 John 4:18 talks about how perfect love casts out fear. So he's using that to say all the sin and pride and the plague of sin that has infected me, cast it out, drive it out, that I may be saved. Beautiful!
Verse 4
See me, the reverse of Thee,
only sin and misery.
This is our state before faith in Christ. We are the reverse of God. God is good and we are not. God is loving and we are not. We are the reverse of Him without Christ and that's why we need healing! I love that line. That's unusual wording. Only sin and misery without Him.
Make me willing to receive
all the grace Thou hast to give.
Now, this is quite Wesleyan. "Make me willing." The Calvinist view is you'll never will God. So He will do what He wants and save those He wants. The Wesleyan view is God gives prevenient grace to all and allows us to accept or reject Him. So he's saying, please let me be willing - change my heart so that I'm willing to receive the grace You have to give, because it's only grace that will save me. I want to be willing to receive it.
Verse 5
O supply my every want,
feed a tender, sickly plant.
I love this, by the way, about the plant.
Day and night my keeper be,
every moment water me.
That caught me! I thought what a beautiful picture of the Christian life! In fact I preached on this at my church just last week about how the Christian life is a life of growth, and Paul talks about how people might plant a seed or water it, but only God can make it grow, that Christian life. Psalm 1 talks about the one who meditates on the Word of God is like a strong tree planted beside streams of living water.
So this verse was just so beautiful as I thought about that this week. I'm a tender and sickly plant, but I have a keeper! God is my keeper who waters me and nourishes me and supplies what I need. I love singing that verse.
Verse 6
Hide me, dearest Saviour, hide.
Let me never leave Thy side.
So he wants to be close, hidden in a sense, in that embrace of God, never to leave His side.
O 'tis hell from Thee to part,
press me closer to Thy heart.
Hell is separation from God. And so he says, I never want to be separate from You, because that's what hell is. Instead, "press me closer to Thy heart" - again, beautiful wording. Press me closer. Draw me in closer, Lord!
Verse 7
When Thy love is my defence,
sin shall never pluck me thence.
Okay, there’s some old language. When my life is wrapped in the love of God and His love is my defence against temptation, then sin will never pluck me away, take me away from His heart, from that closeness. Of course, the devil is always trying to get us to fall into sin, which does take us away from God. But if His love is my defence, if I'm covered in His love, sin won't draw me away anymore.
When my heart with love runs o’er,
sin shall never enter more.
Beautiful! When His love is in my heart. When I'm completely overwhelmed with His love, sin won't enter into my heart anymore. And that's typical Wesleyan hope of entire sanctification, where sin truly is drawn out or driven out and doesn't come in anymore because you're living a life of love.
Verse 8
This is where I'm pulling the title of this for my version, "Give Me Love," because he says it twice here:
Only love can end the strife.
Give me love and take my life.
Without Jesus's love I'm in a place of strife as I'm struggling to try and sort myself out. But when His love enters my heart, it ends the strife. So he says, "Give me love and take my life." Let my life be given totally to You.
Do not, Lord, my suit deny.
Or maybe my petition, my request. Don't deny my request.
Give me love and let me die.
Now, at first I thought, what is he saying? Just give me love and then kill me so that I could be in heaven? I don't think so. I think he's saying, "Give me love and let my old self die," which is what the New Testament talks about. My sinful nature dies so that I can be raised with Christ and live in that space of love.
Conclusion
Beautiful. I mean, I read that and I thought, oh, what a beautiful hymn!
So I've written my own tune for it. And what I'm doing is I'm using this last verse, verse 8, as a chorus or refrain. So I'm doing verse 1 and 2, and then verse 8, verse 3 and 4, and then verse 8. And then I've left the verse about the plant, about the nourishing until the very end.
I love it! What do you think? Do you like this type of thing? Do you think that this is a good thing for me to pursue - finding old, forgotten hymns like this and just bringing them back to life? I'm looking forward to it because this has really nourished and enriched my life, reading this hymn and learning it and putting it to music.
Are there any words that really spoke to you? I'd love for you to share that in the comments below. What verse was your favourite in this hymn?
As I sing it now, I hope that you'll sing along. I think it's quite singable, the tune that I've written. And what I'll do as well is after I've done 12 - so I'm going to do one a month - I'll release it as an album so that you can stream the songs on Spotify and Apple Music and all of that.
In the meantime, they will be available on my Patreon. So if you support me on Patreon for any monthly amount, that really helps me to take the time to do this, and really helps me care for my family. If you would be so kind as to check that out, then you can get these songs when they come out.
Thank you for tuning in and I appreciate your support. By the way, your prayer support is also precious to me. On my website in the Support This Ministry page, there's also a place for prayer support if you would like to just say a prayer for me and my family that would be wonderful. I've received many of these prayers from you on my email and it just so encourages me, so please have a look at that.
Let me play you the tune that I’ve written for this song.
