I Will Possess Your Heart

I’m working on a talk about prayer for our New Student Leaders’ Retreat this weekend, and this song came to mind. I wrote a post about it a while ago for my old, now-defunct blog. I thought it’d be great to re-post here at truegoodandbeautiful.

I Will Possess Your Heart, one of the singles from Death Cab for Cutie’s album, Narrow Stairs, is a wonderful song. One of the new things I’ve done in my Bible studies over the years is listening to non-spiritual songs in a spiritual way. Looking for a holy message among everyday things. A lot of songs can be listened to as if it’s God speaking to us, or us speaking to God. It’s a wonderful exercise to go through as it helps us look for God everywhere. Love songs are pretty easy to use because our human love is but only a pale reflection of God perfect love. And guess where I found Him. That’s right. In this song! (It’s about love!) Here’s the video, along with the lyrics and a short discussion. Please be sure to add your two cents in the comments!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsCV61zsdtA

Lyrics

How I wish you could see the potential
The potential of you and me
It’s like a book elegantly bound, but
In a language that you can’t read just yet

Chorus
You got to spend some time, love
You got to spend some time with me
And I know that you’ll find, love
I will possess your heart
You got to spend some time, love
You got to spend some time with me
And I know that you’ll find, love
I will possess your heart

There are days when, outside your window
I see my reflection as I slowly pass
And I long for this mirrored perspective
When we’ll be lovers, lovers at last

Chorus

You reject my advances and desperate pleas
I won’t let you let me down so easily
So easily

Longer chorus with last line repeating three times

Discussion

I find it interesting to listen to this song as if God is singing it to us at those times when we turn away from Him. Or He’s singing it to all the prodigal sons and daughters that have yet to come home. Let’s take a look at it from that perspective. I’ll discuss the verses first, and then the chorus.

How I wish you could see the potential / The potential of you and me
This line describes so well God’s longing for a personal relationship with each one of us. God wants to have an intimate relationship with everyone. He created us to love us.

It’s like a book elegantly bound, but
God continues to tell us how wonderful things will be if we take a step toward Him. He we say “yes” to Him. Our relationship with Him is beautiful, a work of art.

In a language that you can’t read just yet
But because we aren’t in the relationship with Him, because we haven’t/aren’t experiencing that personal relationship with Him, we can’t understand it. It might be nice when we see it in other people, but we don’t understand it. It doesn’t mean anything to us. Yet. It’s as if God is saying, “I want to be in this amazing relationship with you, but you don’t quite understand how wonderful it can be or why you’d want it. I’ll help you see why it’s so great, why you’ll desire it. You don’t know now, but you will.”

There are days when, outside your window / I see my reflection as I slowly pass
And I long for this mirrored perspective / When we’ll be lovers, lovers at last
As if He’s saying to us, “I swing by to see how you’re doing. When I’m there I slow down and watch for a bit. I am amazed by you. Mesmerized. I love you. And I hope for the day when you’ll look back at me. When you’ll come see how I’m doing. When you’ll get caught up in the love we’ll share between us. I long for that day. I await the day I’ll love you and you’ll love me right back.

God wants a relationship with each of us, but He can’t force it. He can’t help but love us, but He can’t make us return that love. In His infinite love, He gave us free will. We have the choice. We can accept His love and love Him back, or we can reject both Him and His love. The verse describes someone rejecting God’s love.

My advances and desperate pleas. As if God saying, “I’ve tried all sorts of ways to get you to love me. I’ve done so much. I’ve given you my Son. And still you reject me.

I won’t let you let me down so easily / So easily
He continues, “I’ll keep trying. I still love you. You can reject me all day, but I’ll still come back tomorrow and love you more. I love you.”

The chorus clues us into how we enter into that deeper relationship with the Lord. It gives us the instructions as to how to get to know our Heavenly Father:

You got to spend some time, love / You got to spend some time with me
We have to spend time with God. We need to pray! We might not want to spend time with God. We might not want that relationship. But the Lord wants it. He wants us. He just asks for a little bit of our time. You got to spend some time, love. We need to do this. It’s not “you should spend some time,” or “you should think about spending some time,” but “you got to.” We have to pray. We have to spend some time with our Creator. Prayer is how we can grow closer to the Lord!

And I know that you’ll find, love / I will possess your heart
If we pray, if we spend that time with God, we’ll grow to love Him. We’ll love Him more and more each day. He will possess our hearts. But first we have to know Him. We have to pray. We have to come to Him each day and talk. Spend some time with Him just like we would with any other friend. He asks us to give Him a little time, because He knows that we’ll want to give Him a little more time and a little more time. He knows we’ll love Him a little more and a little more.  We will come to know the Lord, and we will come to love Him, and we will give our hearts to Him. He will possess our hearts, but only if we take the first step and enter into prayer.

Love this song? Check out the album!