‘Has my heart’ is a lovely idiomatic expression that describes the way we feel about something or someone.
Like the word ‘love’ in the English language, we can use it for a wide range of things or people that inspire affection or devotion in us.
So, whereas I might claim that pizza or the beach or Jane Austen novels have my heart (and they do!), what really has my heart are those people I adore, who walk through life with me.
My husband has my heart.
My children and the people they have brought into my life have my heart.
Beloved family and friends have my heart.
I mean something different and deeper when I talk about the hold these people have on my heart.
They are the ones who are known and know best; the ones who are trusted to see all of my parts; the ones for whom I would give and endure all things.
They are the ones who I don’t want to go without, ever.
It makes me wonder if the reason God asks us to give our whole hearts to Him, is so that we will develop those same feelings, and the willingness to do all things those feelings engender, for Him.
Not for His own sake, surely. But for ours.
Because when He ‘has our hearts’ we will be in a place for Him to teach and guide us, to grant us the grace He knows we need.
We will seek Him for companionship and peace and strength and help; for truth and correction and light and wisdom.
And He knows what He has to offer us is more than any other thing or person in the world.
So He wants our hearts.
The beautiful realization is that when He has our hearts (as in, we have given Him our love and devotion), He also has our hearts (as in, He holds them in His possession).
Protected and cherished.
Expanded and healed.
Made capable of a love we can only imagine in our mortal limitations.
And we come to see, because of His plan for our progress and exaltation, because He sent His Son to atone for us, because He even wants our hearts that we have His heart.
Knowing that truth makes giving him ours the most natural thing in the world.
‘We love Him, because he first loved us.’ (1 John 4:19)
He has my heart in the deepest, most powerful meaning of the phrase.
And we have His heart in His even more perfect, constant, everlasting way.
Hallelujah.
