Welcome to Week 4 of our Family Bible Study in the book of Proverbs! Our focus will be on the importance of guarding your heart and what that looks like in your day-to-day life. The heart matters. Let’s spend today talking about it and learning to live it out!
Proverbs is a book of wisdom for real life–helping us make good decisions, work hard, and choose wise friends. But it’s not merely good advice. Biblical wisdom is knowledge applied to everyday life for the glory of God. The goal of this Bible study series will be to lead our kids in building practical skills to live by God’s rules in God’s world. Let’s inspire our children to embrace these timeless truths and deepen their understanding of God’s purpose for their lives!
Click here for week 3 of our Proverbs study – The Importance of Wise Friends
Let’s Study the Bible Together: For Parents
Read Bible Passage
Proverbs 4:23 – “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.“
Big Idea: Everything you allow to come into your heart and mind will shape how you live–And that’s why God wants us to guard our hearts.
In Proverbs and throughout the Bible, the heart isn’t just referring to our emotions; it’s where the feeling, thinking, and choosing take place. It’s the center that everything comes out of. What happens in your heart eventually shows up in how you live. It directs our lives. And that is why the writer of Proverbs tells us to “keep it with all vigilance” or guard it. It’s worth protecting!
Our Deep Heart Issue
It is also worth noting that guarding our hearts and minds involves more than just behavioral modification. Teaching our kids to watch what goes into our hearts will indeed point them in the right direction. And we should be doing that. But according to the Bible, all of us are born with sinful hearts and minds, and that is an even bigger problem–sin. The problem from which all of our issues stem.
Romans 3:23- “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.“
At first glance, this is discouraging news.
But God provides a remedy to our sin problem!
Romans 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.“
God the Father gave us His Son, Jesus, to come into the world on a rescue mission to save us from our sin problem.
The prophets of the Old Testament anticipated the day when God would provide this solution that dealt with the heart issue that every human being experiences.
Read Ezekiel 36:26
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
Teaching our children the importance of guarding their hearts, even before they come into a saving relationship to Jesus, is a good thing. But we don’t want to deal with the symptoms without addressing the actual disease, which is sin.
Guard Your Heart
Once our children have experienced the redeeming work of Jesus, they will be prepared for the day-to-day responsibility of guarding their hearts. Everything that we allow into our minds and hearts–the things we watch, listen to, and spend our days thinking about–shapes our words and actions.
When our kids are little, we have the responsibility of planning what they watch, listen to, and spend their days thinking about. This is a great time to teach them in anticipation of the day when they will have more control over what they consume. And moving forward, we trust that their relationship with God, along with the Biblical wisdom they are learning to rely upon, will give them what they need to guard their hearts over a lifetime.
Wise living involves letting God lead our hearts and the hearts of our children.
Luke 6:45 – “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.”
“The matters of our heart are the things that actually matter.”
Additional Reading: “A Catechism of the Heart” from The Gospel Coalition.
Family Bible Study: The Heart Matters
Opening Prayer
Dear Jesus, thank you for giving us the book of Proverbs to study and teach us the wise way to live. Please help us to understand the importance of guarding our hearts. We want to think about things that help us to live for you. Amen.
Read Bible Passage
Proverbs 4:23 – “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.“
Discussion Questions
Here are two sets of questions: one for younger children (7 and under) and another for older children (8 and up). If you have kids in both age groups, I encourage you to mix it up to reach the whole family!
Younger Kids Questions
What does your actual heart do in the body?
Working together with your parents, how is the “heart” that the writer of Proverbs is talking about different from the heart that pumps blood in your body?
When you make a choice throughout the day, where does that choice come from?
How can God help your heart choose the right things to think about?
Older Kid Questions
Why do you think that God tells us to guard our heart?
What are some things that we let into our hearts that might lead us away from God?
What are some things that we let into our hearts that might lead us towards God?
How do you think God can help you to make wise decisions about what to watch, listen to, and talk about?
Note for Parents: You know your kids better than anyone else, so feel free to adjust the questions to work for your family. Enjoy!
Memory Verse: Luke 6:45 – “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.“
Family Life Application
Game – Heart Treasure Hunt
Supplies: Paper hearts (cut out of construction paper), a marker, and tape.
Instructions:
- Write different Godly “heart attitudes” on the paper hearts (kindness, truth, patience, love, wisdom, courage. Maybe even write out the Fruit of the Spirit.)
- Hide the hearts around a room or rooms of your house. You set the boundaries.
- Let the kids go on a treasure hunt to find the hearts.
- As each heart is found, take turns reading the word out loud and talk about what it means.
“The inclination of your heart directs your life.“
Closing Prayer: Ask a different family member to end your time in prayer each session.
Note for Parents: Please share a comment to let me know how the Bible study went!
Additional Resources:
Click here to check out our Family Bible Study in Colossians.
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