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LIVING HOPE FAMILY & PERSONAL DEVOTIONS
LIVING HOPE FAMILY & PERSONAL DEVOTIONS
~ Use the parts that are appropriate to your situation.
~ Spend some time weekly to reflect on the previous week’s theme and try to implement suggestions from the sermon for real-life application.
~ Use the sermon & class notes for individual study found online: livinghopebranch.org
Date: Sunday, March 15th, 2026
Theme: Change of Heart
Scripture: Psalm 51:10-11 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Song ideas: “Change My Heart” “The Potter’s Hand”
Story: Have you ever really taken a look at your heart? How it’s made and how it works? The human heart is a muscle. It has four chambers, two upper, smaller ones called the left and right atria and two lower ones that are called the left and right ventricles and pumps blood around the body. Unlike some muscles in the body, when the heart beats it is not a “voluntary” action. It is not something our conscious mind controls. So what tells the heart to beat? Interestingly, any cell in the heart can make a beat start.
But there is a small cluster of cells called the sinoatrial (SA) node that is supposed to be in charge of telling the rest of the heart cells when to beat so that they can all work together for the most efficient heart beat. When a random cell in the heart decides it wants to be in charge, and sets off the heart muscle, that beat is not as efficient. If this just happens every once and a while, it isn’t really a problem, but if this keeps happening, it can lead to many different problems, some of them serious.
Sometimes the rest of the heart does not listen well to the SA node. This might be just a little annoying to the heart, or it might make the heart have to work harder. Sometimes this can be improved by taking certain medications. And on rare occasions, some of these changes can cause issues that require a device called a pacemaker to be implanted into a person so their heart will beat closer to the way it was designed to.
Now let's take a look at our spiritual heart. Who should be in charge of it? Just like the SA node should be what is making our heart beat, our spiritual heart should be controlled by God. But sometimes we are not listening to Him like we should. Maybe it takes longer than it should for His instructions to get us to act. Or maybe we are not listening to them at all. Sometimes we might need to listen to the medicine of the words of scripture to help our heart improve the way it is acting.
But unlike the physical heart, we do not have to implant extra devices to make our spiritual heart do what it is supposed to do. All we have to do is ask Jesus to change our heart, to turn it back to working the way it was designed, and He will do it.
Discussion questions: What things could you change in your heart? A spirit of complaining? A spirit of unforgiveness? A spirit of selfishness? How do we make our hearts clean?
Activity: Use a coffee filter (or paper towel) and cut out a heart. Use markers to color the heart, and drip water by dropper full (or small spoon) to see the colors change (or use color changing markers).
Directed Prayer time related to the theme: Ask the Lord to help your heart to change to beat the way He wants it to.
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