My Heart Unit 1: "What Is My Heart?"

My Heart Unit 1: What is My Heart?

Objectives:
1) Define what the heart is.
2) State why it is important to guard your heart and identify what you guard your heart from.
3) Describe how the heart sees what it believes and creates the world around it to justify those beliefs.
4) Describe how your words and thoughts affect your heart.
5) Explain how your heart has senses that are more potent than our real senses.
6) Explain that man looks on the outside, but only God can see the hearts, (but there is fruit. ---The mouth lets us see a little peak of the heart.)

Memory Verse:
Proverbs 4:23 Guard your heart with all diligence for out of it flows the issues of life.

(What you say to the kids is italicized.)

Introduction to this unit: What Is My Heart?

Who can tell me what your heart is? Why is it important? The Bible talks a lot about our hearts. Our hearts are like the brains for our whole lives. We will learn about the heart and how important it is to guard our hearts. God talks to us in our hearts and we will learn how to hear his voice. Raise your hand if you want to have a happy life. Well this week we will learn how our hearts tell our lives how to be happy. It is one of the most important things you will ever learn. Aren’t you glad you are hear?

Teaching Point #1: My Heart Is Like a Well

Props/Materials:
1)Well made from a cardboard. (Possibly a well picture on a projector.)
The well should have a bucket and a spout or hose coming from it.
2) Picture of a mouth with an arrow to your brain with an arrow to your heart with an arrow back to the mouth so it shows a cycle.
3) Trash (ex. Rocks, crumpled paper, tin cans, etc.)
4) See “Guard your heart game” from previous post.

You can’t see your heart with your eyes. It is hidden deep inside you. To help you understand, I have this well here. (Have a well on stage. Also possibly a picture of it on the big screen.) What is a well? Imagine with me an underground river deep down inside the earth. We need water so the way to get it out is by building a well. We see the top part of the well like this one, but really only a small part of the well is on top of the ground. Most of it lies underneath the surface until it gets to the water. Your heart is like a well and the river of water under the well is like The Spirit of God. When you get saved or born again or ask Jesus to come into your heart, the Holy Spirit lives inside of you just like a river lives underground and gives you a brand new clean heart like this well.

Now, if you had a well, how would you get water out of it? You would stand here and maybe lower a bucket down, or you might turn a faucet and the water would come up from way underneath the ground and out of the well. The Holy Spirit in us, is like the water in this well. To let God shine through your lives, he comes through your heart just like water comes through the well to get in the bucket or out the faucet.

Our thoughts and feelings are like the opening to his well and our mouths are like the faucets on the side of this well. (Show cycle illustrations.) You can’t see in someone’s well---you can’t see someone’s heart, but you have an idea of what might be in there because it comes out there faucet or their mouth. Our brains (have the kids point to their heads), and our mouth (kids point to their mouths) and our hearts (kids put their hands on their hearts) work together. Your mouth says what is in your heart. When your brain hears what your mouth says, it drops it down into your heart again. It’s like a circle (show illustration.) It is like you have water in this well, but you turn on the faucet to get water out and fill up your bucket, then you dump the water back in the well.

Did you know in our own hearts, God is not the only thing that can be in there? The Holy Spirit is the river and it is perfect. Our spirit is perfect. Everyone say, “My Spirit is perfect!” But we can make our heart dirty just like you could make a well dirty. You can do things to contaminate your heart or in other words make your heart hard. I can drop this trash inside the well. It doesn’t get in the water. It just makes your well dirty or clogged or harder to get the water out.

How does it get inside the well? I drop in it this opening. Remember, this opening is like our brains. How do you get things inside your heart? You might start believing some trash with your mind (point to your brain) Trash for our hearts is something other than what God says. You believe the trash with your mind, then PLOP (throw rocks/trash in the well) You start believing it with your mind, then it goes straight to your heart. It doesn’t make your spirit dirty, but it might clog up you heart and make it harder to get the spirit out or harder to hear what God is saying to you. Believing trash makes your heart hard.

When you believe something with your mind, it writes it on your heart. To get your mind to believe something, you use your words. So when your mouth says things, your mind starts to believe it and when your mind believes it, you write it on your heart. If it’s in your heart, where might it come out? Your words! Your thoughts too, actually. (Refer to the cycle illustration.)
You don’t want trash in your heart. That is why the Bible tells us to guard that heart just like in our guard you heart game from things that are not Godly. If you put a bunch of trash in your heart, it makes your heart hard.

Teaching Point #2: My Heart Is Like A Recorder or Computer.

Props/Materials:
1) An object that records your voice (ex: Toy telephone)

Your heart is like your brain because it is the control center for your life, but it is not like your brain because it cannot think. We think in our mind. Your heart is more like a recorder or a computer. Can a computer think? Nope. But you can write or store things in it, and a computer can control other things like video games or printers. That is the same with our heart. Whatever is written on our heart is what we believe and it comes out in every area of our life.

Your heart is like a recorder. It records things that you think. If you think it and you have emotions, it will record or write it on your heart. This is a toy telephone. Can this toy think? No, but it can record. (Record something on the phone.) When something is recorded in your heart, it plays out in your life even if it is not the truth. (Play the recording on the toy.) Sometimes your heart records things that not true. The only true thing is what God says about you. That is why it is so important to guard your heart because you don’t want bad things being recording your heart. If it is in your heart, it will come out in your life. (Record something negative like “I am not smart.” then have it play back. Record something positive like, “I have the mind of Christ.” then have it play back. And discuss how each might play out in your life.)

Teaching Point #3: Heart like a Mirror and a Magnet

Props/Materials:
Mirror
Magnet

The Bible says that as a man thinks in his heart so is he. (Prov. 23: 7.) Your heart is like a mirror. The way you see in your heart is the way your life will go. It’s so important to guard your heart from bad images in your heart. If you looked in a mirror and you saw dirt on your face, you would wash it. Well, if you see dirt in your heart, you need to wash it too.

Your heart is like a magnet. Your heart attracts like things to it. So if you have a pure heart, then you will attract pure things and people to your life. If you have a crooked heart, then you will attract crooked things to your heart.

Teaching Point #4: My Heart Is Like A Filter

Props/Materials:
1) A coffee filter
2) Pitcher of water
3) Glass
4) Cocoa powder

Your heart is like a filter. It filters information. If your heart is pure or clean like this filter, then (pour the water through the filter) your life will come out pure and clean. But what if your filter is dirty? If you don’t guard your heart or if you let your heart get hard (dip the filter in cocoa powder,) then it makes your heart dirty. (Pour the water through the filter.) A dirty heart makes your life dirty.

Teaching Point #5: My Heart Can Wear Tinted Sun Glasses:

Props/Materials:
1)Red or color-tinted glasses (make sure you look through and you see things in that color. Blue-tinted sunglasses sometimes looks clear.)

Have a kid volunteer wear the glasses. The kid puts on the glasses. Hold up a white object and ask: What color is this object? We can all stand here and say that this object is white, but you will never see it that way because you have on red glasses. That is the way our heart is. Our hearts can’t think, it just sees what it believes. The things you have written on your heart is like red sunglasses for your heart.

Will God ever be mad at you? No way! But some people actually have it written on their heart that God is mad at them. Their heart believes that God is mad, so every time a storm comes, they think “Oh God’s mad.” Every time they read the Bible, all they can see is that God is mad. Isn’t that sad? Even if we tell them the truth that God is never mad at them, they might still think he is because that is the way their heart sees it.

Something might happen that writes something on your heart. This is a true story. Something happened to a girl at our church that wrote on her heart that the other girls at church don’t like her and are mean to her. See, your heart can’t reason, it is like a recorder and sometimes it writes things that aren’t true. Other girls really did like this girl, but she couldn’t see that. For some reason a wrong message got written on her heart. After that bad thing was written on her heart, every time the other girls would even talk to her, she couldn’t hear what they were really saying. She always interpreted it that “they don’t like me.” Even when the girls did really nice things for her she always thought, “they are just being nice to me because the teacher made them.” But what was really true is that the other girls just were trying to be nice because they liked her. This girl had colored sunglasses on the eyes of her heart. She couldn’t see the real thing because her heart told her something different.

Can you see what is in someone’s heart? Nope. Who is the only person who can see in someone’s heart? Sometimes we think we can know what in someone’s heart. Anytime you think you know the reason why someone acts a certain way, you are saying you can see in their heart, but really you can’t.

A friend saw another friend at a big store. She was waving and thought he looked right at her, but was ignoring her. She told him later that she thought he was mad at her. But the truth was, he just didn’t have his glasses on. He just didn’t see her. If he had seen her, he would have run up and given her a hug. She judged his actions by her own heart. In her heart she thought if she ignored someone it would be because she was mad. Because she would have done that, she thought that is what he was doing.

You see people the way your heart sees yourself. Tutus 1:15 says “to the pure all things are pure, but to the crooked all things are crooked.” That means if you have these pure glasses on your heart, then you see everything as pure. Just like when you have these red glasses on and it makes everything red. If someone thinks that everything is bad, then they probably have a bunch of bad things written on their heart. You think things the way it’s written on your heart. Can you see why it is so important to guard what is written on your heart?

Teaching Point #6: My Heart Is Like A Bobo Doll

Props/Materials:
1) Bobo doll. (an inflatable toy that when you knock it down, it comes right back up.)

Your heart wants to make your world around you the way it believes. If it is written in your heart, you might pretend that you believe something else, but it always makes you come back to the level your heart is. It is like this Bobo Doll. This doll wants to be standing like this (straight up), but I want it to lay on the floor. (Knock it over) but it automatically comes right back to where it wants to be. That is just like your heart. If you have it written in your heart that you are not good at math, but you say, “When school starts back, I’m going to make an A in math.” (Hold down the doll) Well, even if you are smart and good at Math, but your heart tells you that you are not good at Math, you will be nervous in Math class and your heart won’t let you do your best. (Let the doll go back up.) You have to go down into your heart and fix it so that you start believing “I have the mind of Christ and the Holy Spirit helps me remember everything, so I am so smart at Math.” You have to write that on your heart instead.

Teaching Point #7: My Heart Has Senses Just Like I do(Heart Head)

Props/Materials:
1) Large felt heart (or use the one in the “Guard Your Heart Game”)
2) The following Body parts for the heart that are made out of felt: eyes, nose, mouth, ears, hands.
3) Piece of blue paper
4) Picture of a piece of pie
5) Picture of a mouth with an arrow to your brain with an arrow to your heart with an arrow back to the mouth so it shows a cycle.

Our heart has senses just like our bodies do. What are our five senses? Our heart is more sensitive to things than our bodies are, but sometimes we focus on the outside rather than the inside and it makes us lose sensitivity in our heart senses. You should trust your heart more than your senses. (Hold up a blue piece of paper.) What color is this paper? Your eyes in your body see that it is blue, but if God tells that this paper is green inside your heart, then it is green.

(Show a picture of a piece of pie on the projector.) This pie looks yummy. Our eyes in our body see that it looks so good. Our nose in our body sees that it smells so sweet. Our mouth in our body starts watering for it and we taste it and it IS so yummy. But what if you go to take a bite and you hear with your heart ears inside your heart and God says “Don’t eat it.” The thought from your heart comes again. “Don’t eat it.” Your body senses is telling you to eat it, but your heart senses is telling you not to eat it. What should you do? DON’T EAT IT! There is a story of a family who went to eat at a restaurant. The food looked so yummy and everyone was so hungry, but when the dad looked at his food, his heart was sensitive enough and he heard with his heart ears “don’t eat it.” So he didn’t take one bite. That night everyone in his family got sick from the food except for him because he paid attention and listened to what God said to him in his heart. We will talk about how to strengthen the senses in your heart more later.

Your heart has eyes. (Put the eyes on the felt heart.) We can see things with our heart. We sing that song “Open the eyes of my heart.” Sometimes when God shows pictures with the eyes of our heart. (Give an example of pictures God showed you in your heart. Here is an example:) Once I was focusing or meditating on God things and he showed me a picture of my friend standing on top of a waterfall. I couldn’t figure out in this picture how she was doing that. I saw a big bolder on top of the waterfall, but I couldn’t figure out how she got there. I called her and told her on the phone and she said she got cold chills because just the day before she looked at a picture in her e-mail and it was a waterfall with a bolder on it and when the people stood on the bolder it looked like they were standing right on the waterfall. It was a dad and his kids standing on it looking over the edge. When she saw the picture, she said to herself, “I would never be able to do that. I am afraid. My kids would miss out on something beautiful because I could never stand on the waterfall. “ Well God wanted me to tell her that picture I saw with my heart because he wanted her to know that she COULD do that and that she doesn’t have to be afraid. He is with her even if she stood on top of a waterfall!

Your heart has ears. (Put the ears on the heart.) You can hear God with the ears of your heart. You may not be able to hear with your ears on your body, but you can listen with your heart. Although, some people do actually hear with their physical ears, most of the time God speaks in your heart. It is very important for you to practice listening to your father’s voice. He is talking to you all the time. He cares about little things and big things. (Give an example of a time you heard God's voice in your heart. Here is an example:) When I was packing for vacation, I kept getting this thought in my head to pack a certain thing. But I kept dismissing that thought thinking, “I won’t need that, it will take up space.” But that item kept coming back up. Those thoughts were God talking to me in my heart, but I wasn’t listening with my heart ears. Boy, I wish I had. That very day and almost the whole trip I needed it. I needed it so much that we had to go to the store to buy it. It was a lot of trouble for us because I didn’t pack it. God even cares about those little things and if you listen, you can hear him talking to you.

Your heart can smell and feel. (Put the nose and hands on the heart)
(Give a personal example of feeling or smelling with your heart. Here are examples:)
One time I was very very sad for a whole year because of something that happened. That was a very long time to be sad. Remember sad is an emotion so it was a warning light of something in my heart. I prayed to God to help me not be sad anymore. After a long long time, I was praising and worshiping/focusing on God and my heart began to open. It was opening so much that it became very sensitive and God took me on a tour of something very special. I was standing on a mountain and I could feel the wind in my heart and I could smell the mountain air with the nose of my heart. God showed me all kinds of neat things and it was the answer to my prayer. I couldn’t stop crying, not because I was sad anymore, but because I was so happy that God would do that just for me. It was very special.

You can also feel with your heart the way someone else might be feeling. One time a child came to me to pray for him about something. When I put my hand on him, my heart felt the same way that he was feeling. He was very sad. God let me feel what he was feeling so that I would know how to pray for him.

Your heart also has a mouth (put the mouth up.) Your heart tells your mouth and your mind things. Remember we talked about how your mind and your mouth and your heart work together? (Show illustration.) Your physical mouth talks and put thoughts in your mind. When you believe those thoughts, it drops down in your heart and writes it there. When something is written on your heart, it comes out of your mouth again. It’s like a cycle.

Your heart can even taste! The Bible says to “taste and see that the Lord is good.” (Ps. 34:8) It also says that God’s word is sweet tasting. (Ps. 119) Really that means to experience and enjoy him just like you would if you were really into your favorite candy. He is the most yummy thing ever!

Review Questions
1.What is the memory verse?
2.What is your heart?
3.Why is it important to guard your heart?
4.What kinds of things should you guard your heart from?
5.If your heart believes something will it come out of your mouth?
6.If your heart believes something will it play out in your life?
7.How can you change what your heart believes?
8.How does God talk to us or show us things?
9.Can you see what is in another person's heart?
10.Who is the only person that can see in your heart?

Quiet Times
See “Quiet Times” section

Add this into your quiet time to go along with this Unit #1.

Picture the heart. See how you got a new heart when Jesus came in. Everything that Jesus is you became. Jesus gave you his perfection and goodness for anything bad that was in there. You are a new creature. Everything about you is new. Your spirit is perfect. God sees you just like he sees Jesus.
Invitation