My Heart Unit 2: “Writing On Our Heart”
Objectives:
Practice listening to the voice of God.
Recognize God's voice in your heart and in dreams.
Describe why scriptural meditation is important.
Describe writing, persuading, planting and watering seeds in your heart.
Recognize how emotions are warning lights for things in our hearts.
Explain what it means: Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is.
Memory Verse:
Psalms 119:11 “I write your word in my heart so I won’t sin against you.“
(What you say to the kids is italicized.)
Teaching Point #1: Meditation
Props/Materials:
1.“Meditation” printed out. .
2.Mirror
3.Trash in a container
4.Cool writing utensil. (examples: A giant crayon, a feather pen, etc.)
Hold up the sign, “Meditation.” What is this word? What is meditation? Meditation is when you just think about something. You focus on it or ponder it. Let's meditate on the word “Meditation.” Pretend to really concentrate on it. Make it funny. The Bible says to think about good, perfect, lovely, true things (Phil 4:7-8) It also says to Meditate day and night. What are some good things to think or Meditate about?
What you focus on is what you Meditate on. That means what you think about is what you Meditate on. If you think about something over and over for a long time, then it gets written on your heart. You think about what you treasure or what you love the most. The Bible says that where your treasure is, that is where your heart is. Whatever is treasure to you in your life, that is what your heart focuses on to. You want to make sure you treasure good things.
The thing about meditation is that it is not weird. It’s a special quiet time that you spend just with God. You can go down into your own heart and visit with God there and see what is written on your heart and let God talk to you about what is written on your heart. It’s a secret hiding place that only you and God go to meet, and visit, and play. God loves you and he is always with you, but sometimes we forget about him if we don’t spend time thinking about him. God is always waiting for you in your secret place. He loves to play and spend time with you. Where does God live? In your heart. Where is our heart? It’s on the inside of us. If we are too focused on our outside, then it can make our heart hard of hearing. Sometimes to have a quiet time or go to your secret place with God, you have to quiet your body. Adults have so much in their minds that sometimes it takes a long time to forget about the outside world and go into the secret place. You kids are lucky because it won’t take you long to see what is in your heart. We are going to practice being quiet and visiting with God inside our own hearts.
Something neat that God does is he opens up our hearts just before we go to sleep and just when we are about to wake up. I think he does that because our bodies are so still, but we are still awake enough to see into our hearts. That is a very special time you can spend with God. I usually pray that my eyes of my heart be enlighten and that I hear God’s voice as I sleep. I pray, “God, help me to hear what you are saying to me tonight.” Because that is such an easy time to write on your heart, you should be extra careful with what you are around when you are sleepy or sleeping. If I watch a movie just before I go to sleep or read a book before I go to sleep, I dream about that movie or book all night long. What if I watched a scary movie? I might have bad dreams. What if I ask God to show me a special movie or tell me something special from his word? I might dream about God’s word all night. (Share a personal dream. Here is an example: I used to dream that I was in a war zone and there were people shooting guns and bullets flying everywhere and right in the middle of this was a couple of little kids. I ran out there to get them and I could see all the bullets coming right toward me. I wasn’t afraid in my dream. I just started saying, “no weapon formed against me will prosper.” And all those bullets started bouncing off of me. That was a good dream. But you know what? I used to listen to this CD and there was a song in it that says, “no weapon formed against me will prosper.” That song wrote God's word on my heart and so I had that dream all the time.
Three things that meditation does for us:
Helps you to see the real you. Show mirror
Helps you get trash out of your heart (hurts out.) Show trash
Helps rewrite things on your heart. Show the writing utensil.
Teaching point #2: Your focus takes you there.
Props/Materials:
1.Bicycle
2.A line in the floor out of tape
3.Baseball and bad
4.Good items like a box of candy or a ten dollar bill or an A+ report card
5.Bad or not as good items like a rock or piece of trash or an F on the report card
How many of you like to ride bicycles? Have a child volunteer to ride the bicycle down a line. After they do that, have them ride the bike again except have them focus their attention on an object to the side of the starting point. Their bike will veer where they are focusing. What you focus on is where you will go.
How many of you play baseball? One thing a coach will tell you when you are up to bat, is to keep your eye on the ball. Pop the ball up in the air with the bat. Why will a coach tell you that? Coaches are really smart. They know that if your attention and focus is on the ball, then you will hit the ball. That is the goal isn't it?
What we mediate or focus our thoughts on drive us to those thoughts. When we think on something so long, it gets written on our heart. Then when it is written on our heart, it comes out in our life. The Bible teaches us that the issues of life flow from our heart. It is really important to think about what you are thinking about. Choose to think on things the Lord thinks about instead of thinking on things of this world. God wants us to focus on things that are lovely, good, pure, (Phil . 4:7-8)
Put one good item on one side of the room or have a child hold it. Put a not-so-good item on the other side. Stand in the middle. Think out loud about the item. Walk toward it as you “mediate” aloud on it. Also do a negative thought like, “I won't make an F on my report card. I won't make an F.” and all ow that focus on the F to draw you to the F report card, for example. Use this to illustrate how what you think about or mediate on drives you to that thing in your life. Give some real life examples. Here is an example: A girl I knew when she was little had a mother who yelled at her a lot. The girl always hated this and thought, I will never grow up and yell at my kids. She mediated on this for a long long time. Then one day she grew up and guess what? She yelled at her kids. Another friend of my had a grandmother who was very kind and always loved to cook and clean for her family. She loved this about her grandmother very much and thought of this often. She is grown up now and loves on her family the same way as her grandmother.
Teaching Point #3: Information + Emotion
Props/Materials:
1.None
It takes two things to write things on your heart. It takes information and emotion. What is information? It’s what our brain thinks. What is emotion? It is how we feel. What are some emotions that we have? I want to tell you two of the things that I have written on my heart, one is good and one is bad.
Give personal example. Here is one that might help: I have a friend that I don’t like to be around much because I know this person to be very dangerous and irresponsible. I just don’t trust this person. That is the information. Well, one time she bought a motorcycle and wanted me to ride on the back of it while she drove. I already didn’t want to because of the information I knew about her. My mind told me she was dangerous and irresponsible and I didn’t trust her. But I got on anyway. Well, nothing happened to us, but I was so scared when I rode it with her. Scared is an emotion. So the information I had about her being dangerous and irresponsible, plus being so scared while I rode the motorcycle BAM wrote something on my heart.
Our hearts only record the information, but it can’t think or reason. When I started to write that on my heart, my heart didn’t say, “You are about to write something bad on your heart. You better not write that on me!” Nope, your heart doesn’t reason or think like that.
Personal example: Now every time I even see someone riding a motorcycle, those scared feelings come up and I still feel that way. My heart tells me that motorcycles are scary and dangerous. That is something bad that is written on my heart and it’s not really the truth. If you are responsible and safe, motorcycles are a lot of fun. But that is not what my heart tells me because I wrote on it with information and emotion. Do you know that I am going to have to go down inside my heart during mediation and repair where I wrote that because my husband really likes motorcycles and wants one. I know that he is responsible and safe, so I don’t want that bad thing written on my heart so I can have fun with him and we can ride together.
That is why it is so important to guard your heart. You guard your heart in your head. When those thought come up in your mind, you need to say, “No, I don’t believe that. It is not going to get written in my heart.” You mind is where your war zone is. Your mind is where you put your guards. You can’t let bad things go past your mind into your heart.
Another thing written on my heart is a good thing. Give an example like this: Ever since I was little, I was taught that God will give me everything I need and more. That is the information. Well, every time he gave me what I needed it made me happy. Happy is an emotion. The information that I was taught plus my happy emotion wrote that on my heart. Remember I told you that if it is written on your heart it comes out in your life? Well, when I grew up, I was going to go on a big long trip to Germany. It was going to be expensive and I didn’t have much money. Did you know that God talks to us in our heart? The offering plate at church would pass by and I would put my money in, and God would talk to me in my heart. I would hear him say, “all of your needs are met.” And then he would bring up the trip I was fixing to take. And I knew in my head that I didn’t have enough money to go, but I knew in my heart that God always gives me everything I need and more. Your heart is stronger than any other sense you have. You know I never, ever worried about going on that trip. I knew so strongly in my heart that God was going to take care of me even though I didn’t know how. I didn’t even try to guess how he would take care of me. I just knew that things were going to be fine. I knew it so much in my heart, that I felt like I already had enough money to go. Well, the day for me to leave came and I only had about fifty dollars. That was not enough money at all to go because I was going to be gone a long time. That wasn’t even enough money to live there the first day. Well, I got ready to leave and my parents were going to drive me to the airport. I was all packed to go. All of the sudden all these different people started driving up to see me and they gave me money. Then people started calling me and telling me they wanted to give me money before I left. I went to pick up my pay check from work, and my employer wrote my check for almost double what I was supposed to get. I saw a patient at my work and she pulled out money and handed it to me. None of these people knew that I didn’t have enough money to go. I went to Germany with so much money that I actually brought back some.
Teaching Point #4: Planting and Watering Seeds
Props/Materials:
1. seed
Show a seed and ask what it is. Inside this little seed is not only a tree, but forest. What needs to happen for this seed to grow into a forest? Everything we put in our hearts is like seeds in our hearts. For it to grow, you water it, just like you have to do this seed for it to grow after it is planted. How do you water things in your heart? You focus on it. Let’s say you plant a seed in your heart that says, “Jesus loves you.” How do you water that seed? You focus on it. You spend time with Jesus letting him tell you how much he loves you. You come to church to hear us tell you how much he loves you. You read it in the Bible. All that waters the seed and it grows and grows and grows in your life until you have a forest of “Jesus loves you” trees in your heart. The same is for things that aren’t so good too. What if you plant a seed in your heart that says, “You are not good.” If you think about how terrible you are, then that will also water a seed. Everyone say, “I will only water the good seeds!” That means you have to guard that heart and not let any bad seeds get in and not water them. That means you have to watch what you let in your mind and come out your mouth.
Teaching Point #5: Listening to the voice of God
Props/Materials:
None
When we have our quiet time or meditation time, practice hearing God’s voice. The Bible talks about how the sheep know their shepherds voice and Jesus is our good shepherd. Do you know that if you were in a room of a bunch of kids and parents and you yelled out, “Mom.” Your mom would probably know it was you that needed her even though their were so many people there. Why would that be? It’s because you spend time with her and she LISTENS to you. You can know God’s voice in your heart even if the world is loud around you. Do you want to be able to hear God’s voice in your heart? Then you need to spend time with him and focus on listening to him. Any time you open up your heart, you can hear God speaking. How do you open up your heart to hear him? You focus on him. What are some ways or times that you can hear your Father's voice?
Teaching Point #6: Heart Box
Props/Materials:
Heart Box (Or use the felt heart.)
Pictures that represent emotions, dreams, patterns, etc. that fit into the box (or attach to the felt heart.)
Get a heart box. In it put pictures that represent emotions, dreams, patterns.
Pull out the pictures and talk about each.
What are emotions? Talk about kinds of emotions. God gave us emotions and they are a good thing. You should be mindful of your emotions or how you are feeling because emotions are like warning lights for our heart. If someone does something to you and it makes you mad, you should stop and recognize, “I am mad. This might be a warning light for something in my heart.” If your heart is not happy, then you should ask God why it isn’t happy. The Bible says “a happy heart does good like a medicine.” If your heart is not happy, then that is a warning sign that something is written on your heart.
Sometimes when you dream, it might be because of something in your heart. If you have the same dream over and over, it is probably something in your heart.
Give personal example of a dream. Here is one that might help: When I was little, I watched a scary movie about sharks. I wasn’t guarding my heart and I let myself gets scared. For years and years I dreamed I was in my grandmother’s swimming pool and there was a shark that was going to attack me. I could never get out of the swimming pool fast enough, but someone on the side of the pool would say, “scream and the shark will go away.” So every night that I had that dream, I would wake up screaming to try to make the shark go away. It took a long time to get over that dream. That dream was a sign of something in my heart which was, that I wrote fear in my heart.
Another thing that might be a sign of something in your heart is patterns.
Sometimes you have things in your life that keep happening to you. Maybe you are late for school everyday. Maybe no matter how much you want to keep your room clean, it is always mess. Maybe you get mad really easy and throw fits too much. Well, if things keep happening to you, you might have something written on your heart that you would want to rewrite.
Teaching Point #7: Heart Is Like lungs
Props/Materials:
optional: picture of lungs and/or cigarettes
Sometimes you have something written on your heart and you may not believe it for a long time. It might be like a Math example. Maybe you used to believe you were bad at Math, but then you wrote on your heart that you have the mind of Christ and you are so smart at Math. But years later when you are in high school, you might be in Math class and the thought come up from your heart that tells you “I’m bad at Math.” Well, where did that come from? You haven’t thought you were bad at Math in years and years. Well I think it’s like our lungs. A man started smoking when he was a little boy. When he was in the military, he quit smoking. He hadn’t smoked in fifty years and started coughing one day and he coughed up cigarette tar. Even though he quit smoking and his lungs had repaired, there was still some of that old bad stuff in there, but didn’t come up for fifty years. Well, when you heart reminds you something old and bad that was written on it, you just persuade your heart of your new good beliefs. Say the good beliefs with your mouth and focus or think about the good thoughts so that you change the writing on your heart.
Teaching Point #8: Jelly Beans
Props/Materials:
Red and White Jelly Beans (or just two different colors of jelly beans)
Having a quiet time or meditating is what you can do to see what is written there. You first recognize that there is an issue in your life. Then you quiet your mind and your body and visit with the Lord. Just ask him to show you what might be written there on your heart. It will be the reason that certain things happen to you all time (good or bad.) Then you can ask God to help you write over that. When I was young I went to a church that made me feel bad if I wasn’t working hard enough for the Lord. They would ask me, “What are you doing for the Lord, lately?” Well, it got written on my heart that I have to “do” something in order for God to be happy with me. Well is that the truth? No.
This jar is my heart and I wrote in it that God won’t be happy with me unless I am working for him. That is the red jelly beans. Drop red jelly beans in the jar. For a while, the red jelly beans are the only thing. The truth is that God is always happy with me and he made me just because he wants to spend time with me. He is my dad and my friend, not by boss. These white jelly beans represent the truth which is what God says. Add white jelly beans. I keep telling my head with my words that God just loves me and is happy with me. And I believe that with my mind, so it starts writing that on my heart. I Meditate on that. I come to church and I hear that. I focus my thought and attention on the truth that God is never ever upset with me. I don’t think about, “What are you doing for the Lord lately?” I write on the truth on my heart. Put in more and more white jelly beans. Are the red jelly beans still in there? Yes, but you can’t see them. Pretty soon, I Meditated so much on the truth that God loves me no matter what. I wrote that on my heart and persuaded my heart so much about the truth, that you can’t see the bad thing written on my heart anymore. It might still be in there, but it’s been diluted by the truth that I wrote on my heart.
Review: To rewrite your heart”
1.Notice patterns, dreams, or emotions in your life.
2.Open up your heart by focusing on God. (Meditate. Quiet Time)
3.Ask God to show you the root of what is in your heart causing you to keep doing that pattern or making you feel that way.
4.find out the truth. Ask God and read your Bible. What does the Bible say about that?
Review Questions
1.Whys is it important to meditate or have quiet time?
2.How do you write something on your heart?
3.How do you persuade your heart or make your heart believe something?
4.How are emotions warning signs for things in your heart?
5.What does it mean, “Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is.”
Quiet Times
See “Quiet Times” section
Add this to the quiet time to go with “My Heart” Unit.
Ask God to show you some fruit or patterns in your life. Maybe you can’t keep your room clean. Maybe you scream really loud when you get mad. Maybe you hit when you don’t get your way. Maybe you keep having the same dream over and over again. Travel down into your heart to your secret place with God. Look around and See what is written inside you that causes you to do those things. Ask God to show the truth to rewrite those things.
