Goal: To engage our children in the sermon. We want to encourage an open dialogue with our children about the Sunday sermon.
Today we will learn about our hearts. In the Bible, people are said to use their hearts for many things. They use it to understand, to think, to fear, to feel joy and pain, to discern between choice and to love.
In the Shema prayer, God calls us to love him with all our heart. But what if your heart is broken? If you can’t love with a broken heart, then what? How can we obey this command if we live in a fallen world where hearts get broken all the time?
Materials for today’s lesson: (Don’t give these to your children until the very end of the lesson.)
Watch
Read & Discuss
Deuteronomy 6: 1-9 Read here
We want to focus on loving God with all your heart. When the Bible refers to the heart, it’s usually referring to that spiritual part of us that feels emotion, thinks and makes decisions, not the organ that pumps blood.
- Why do you think it is important to look at your heart?
- How does your heart steer you to do things?
Jeremiah 17: 9 Read here
Deceitful means to trick someone. To be beyond cure means to be so sick that there’s no medicine anywhere to help. Jeremiah had some pretty bad things to say about the heart.
- Why do some hearts go bad?
- Can you think of a time your heart led you to a bad decision?
- What are some things that make you stop trusting another person’s heart?
- How can we love God with all our heart if our heart is deceitful, sick and essentially broken?
Matthew 11: 28-30 Read here
Jesus came to fix the broken hearts. He knew we couldn’t do it alone.
- How do you allow Jesus into your heart so he can fix it?
- When people encountered Jesus, he healed them, he explained things clearly, he fed them, he loved them, thus healing their broken hearts.