Lord, Look Inside My HeartSample

Read Luke 6:43-45.

Today we will begin examining our hearts by looking at our outward actions. In Christ, we are good trees, yet the old sin still remains on this side of heaven and sadly continues to produce bad fruit. So let’s zero in on some of the bad fruit in our lives, using our tree graphic. In today's tree graphic, the fruit is represented by hearts. (If you would like to personalize this exercise for yourself, we encourage you to download and print out the blank tree from yesterday and use today's image as a sample for how to fill it out. Alternatively, you can draw a very simple tree for yourself with roots, branches, and fruit.).

The fruit of the tree, depicted by hearts in the graphic we provided, represents outward actions. At this point, don’t focus on your thoughts or your feelings, which we’ll get to later. Strictly focus on outward, observable behaviors and spoken words. So, for example, if you yelled at your husband yesterday, you would write “Yelling” on one of the pieces of fruit (one of the hearts). Or if you told a lie, you would write “Lying.” Or if you have a habit of not listening to people when they are talking to you, you would write “Tuning others out.” Write each outward action on a separate piece of heart-shaped fruit.

Now it’s your turn. Ask the Lord to help you observe your actions and your words. Fill in the fruit of the tree with any ungodly actions and words you observed.