Photo by Jamie Street
Hillsong worship pastor and songwriter Reuben Morgan started with Hillsong in 1995. His first contribution was I Give You My Heart, though he did not himself sing when Hillsong released it that year.
Most of his music is co-written and credited to Hillsong, including Mighty to Save, God Is Able, and I Will Boast in Christ. He released Extravagant Worship: The Songs of Reuben Morgan in 2002 and World Through Your Eyes in 2005.
Note to new users: This is a different kind of review site! Read About the Berean Test and Evaluation Criteria prior to reading this review.
1. What message does the song communicate?
Reuben Morgan yields his will, desires, and life to Christ in worship because Jesus loves him.
Side Note: To those sensitive to massive repetition, this entire song is stuck on repeat, bouncing back and forth between Stanzas 1 and 2 with a small reprieve in Stanza 7.
Score: 10/10
2. How much of the lyrics line up with Scripture?
All of it is Biblical.
This song does not contain a Verse/Chorus/Bridge structure. Therefore, I assigned stanza headings to each paragraph.
Lyrics posted with permission.*
[Stanza 1]
This is my desire, to honour You
Lord, with all my heart I worship You
All I have within me, I give You praise
All that I adore is in You
That is, Morgan worships God with all his heart (Psalm 86:12, Psalm 103:1-2, Psalm 103:22, Psalm 119:10, and Psalm 138:1).
[Stanza 2]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way in me
Morgan surrenders himself to God (Isaiah 64:8, Matthew 10:38, Matthew 11:28-30, Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34-38, Mark 10:28, Luke 9:23, Luke 14:27, John 15:1-11, Romans 6:13, Romans 12:1-2, Galatians 2:20, Philippians 2:5-8, Hebrews 11:6, James 4:7-10, and 1 Peter 5:6).
[Stanza 3]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way in me
Repeats stanza 2.
[Stanza 4]
This is my desire, to honour You
Lord, with all my heart
Lord, with all my heart I worship You
All I have within me, I give You praise
All that I adore
All that I adore is in You
Repeats Stanza 1.
[Stanza 5]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way in me
Essentially repeats Stanza 2.
[Stanza 6]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way in me
Repeats Stanza 2.
[Stanza 7]
This is my desire
Jesus Christ
A Savior that loves You
You’re my desire
Morgan’s desire is for the Christ who loves him (John 3:16 and Romans 5:6-8).
[Stanza 8]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
I give You my soul
I give You my heart
I give You my soul
Repeats portions of Stanza 2
We’ll change the city together
This is because we are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14-16).
I give You my heart
I give You my soul
Jesus
I give You my heart
I give You my soul
I give You my heart
I give You my heart
Work with me, work with me
I give You my heart
I give You my soul
Repeats portions of Stanza 2 with the name of Jesus thrown in there to contextualize it.
[Stanza 9]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way in me
Repeats Stanza 2.
[Stanza 9]
Lord I give You my heart
I give You my soul
I live for You [spoken]
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way [spoken]
Lord have Your way in me
Essentially repeats Stanza 2.
[Stanza 10]
Lord, I give You my heart
I give You my soul
And I live for You alone
Every breath that I take
Every moment I’m awake
Lord have Your way in me
Repeats Stanza 2.
Score: 10/10
3. How would an outsider interpret the song?
Outsiders should easily arrive at the same conclusion as I, although I can’t vouch for how they will feel about refrains.
Score: 10/10
4. What does this song glorify?
It glorifies God in that Morgan surrenders his life to Christ, worshipping Him.
Score: 10/10
Closing Comments
Reuben Morgan’s I Give You My Heart is Scriptural. It glorifies God in that Morgan lays down his life to God. Unbelievers will have little to no problems interpreting this song.
I can’t recommend it for myself; However, those who are fine with multiple refrains may consider using this song as filler for corporate worship.
Final Score: 10/10
Artist Info
Track: I Give You My Heart (listen to the song)
Artist: Reuben Morgan
Album: World Through Your Eyes
Genre: Contemporary Christian Music (CCM)
Release Year: 1995 (Hillsong’s version), 2005 (Morgan’s version)
Duration: 3:44
Agree? Disagree? Don’t be shy or have a cow! Calmly and politely state your case in a comment, below.
*Copyright © 1995 Hillsong Music Publishing (APRA) (adm. in the US and Canada at CapitolCMGPublishing.com) All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Updates:
03/25/2021 – Updated per repetition announcement. I updated section 1’s score and moved my commentary to a side note, raising its overall score from 9.5/10 to 10/10.
09/16/2020 – I forgot to finish the conclusion section!
Comments
Jeff R
Thank you for reviewing this. I can say that this song brought me back to Jesus. I was born and raised a Christian but I choose to fall away and do my own thing for 7 years as I saw some very unchristian things in the church that I was raised in. I traveled the world, got a job as a ship’s officer and lived in sin. One day I walked in to a small church (this was in a country hostile to Christianity and so the service was being held in the banquet room of a hotel) by chance and they were singing this song. I realized that all the things I had done, all my experiences didn’t even compare to the joy of worshiping my savior. I decided to re-consecrate my life to Jesus. Eventually, God gave me the boldness to walk away from my sinful life and my old profession. I got married, moved to a new country,went back to university and was recently was blessed with a child! All these wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had that moment in that small church while this song was being sung ! And my faith is growing by the day, I choose to study the scripture on my own these days. I understand what it means to be a Berean (God is giving me discernment to distinguish the sheep from the wolves). God bless you and the work you do!
Vince Wright
Jeff,
Thank you for sharing and for your compliment! I am glad that it brought you back to Jesus.
-Vince Wright
PastTheMirage
The more I am drawn closer to Jesus the more I am noticing things that I before were blind to. There is an important element to music that needs to be mentioned, tone. Just like with all communication, there is a lot to be said in -how- something is said. That is something that can overlooked when just focusing on lyrical analysis.
I also have been noticing a shift in lyrical focus from Jesus to self. Instead of, “God you are everything and I want to follow you”, it’s more like “I want to follow you because that’s what I want”. It’s subtle but it definitely makes a difference.
Also putting a capital Y at the start of you is not really necessary if it’s clear to whom you are speaking of in the first place.
It could be seen as petty, however, let’s remember we have an enemy who beguiled Eve with adding a small three letter word into a statement said by God that changed its meaning entirely.
Steve Barhydt
I have posted this analysis before in this site but I offer it to you for reflection….
“For those who complain that Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) is too self centered I offer the following quantitative analysis:
There are 2423 words in the English KJV in Psalm 119…
The most used word is ‘thy’ (referring to God) at 209 occurrences.
The second most used word is ‘I’ at 142 occurrences.
Let’s take this a step further…
Nouns and pronouns for God (Thy, Thine, Thou, Thee, Lord) are used 285 times. (or 11.76% of the total word usage.)
Nouns and pronouns for the Psalmist (I, me, my ,mine, myself) are used 312 times (or 12.88% of the total word usage.)
What does this mean and why is it important?
First, to claim that a song is too self centered and, therefore, should not be sung in church because it has too many personal pronouns (I, me, my) is unsupportable in light of the fact that the Holy Spirit had no issues with inspiring the psalmists to refer to themselves multiple times in their songs.
Second, a lot of Christian music is about the relationship the believer has with the Almighty God (or that the unbeliever could have with Him.) Relationships are NOT one-sided. Songs about relationships are not going to have just one side represented in the lyrics.
As long as what the ‘I/me’ in the song is claiming or proclaiming does not contradict what the Scripture says about ‘I/me’, the song should be considered Biblical.”
As to capitalizing ‘Y’ (or ‘H’ in He, Him, ‘T’ in Thy, Thine, etc.) when referring to God, I have always done so and will continue to do so.
An interesting article on ‘GotQuestions.Com’ addresses this… https://www.gotquestions.org/capitalizing-pronouns-God.html
It summarizes as follows…
********************Begin Quote************
If you capitalize pronouns that refer to God to show reverence for His name, fantastic! Continue doing so. If you capitalize pronouns that refer to God to make it more clear who is being referred to, great! Continue doing so. If you are not capitalizing pronouns that refer to God because you believe proper English grammar/syntax/style should be followed, wonderful! Continue following your conviction. Again, this is not a right vs. wrong issue. Each of us must follow his/her own conviction and each of us should refrain from judging those who take a different viewpoint.
********************End Quote************
As a side not however, ancient Hebrew and Greek did not have lowercase letters so, Biblically speaking, the matter is irrelevant.