The Formed Heart

Getting started

• Stones in Southend or scorching sand in Durrës: what's the most uncomfortable beach you've ever had to cross?
• What made your highlight reel this summer, and what didn't make the cut?

Read 1 Samuel 15:13–30

Read it together, slowly. Then, before any of the questions below: what do you notice about Saul? About Samuel? About God?

1 Honest about our feelings

• "Our hearts take the shape of the environment we leave them in." Which environments are you standing in most days — anxiety, hurry, comparison, fear, people-pleasing? What are they doing to you?
• Dan asked, "Who is it we're becoming?" If nothing changed for the next five years, what shape would your heart be in?
• Read Psalm 13. David starts with 'How long, Lord?' and ends with 'he has been good to me'. What happens in between?
• Where do you usually take your feelings: social media, friends (where it can slip into gossip), or nowhere at all? What has that been forming in you?
• Dan's root canal taught him to love anaesthetic. But emotional numbness "blocks everything." Have you been 'just managing' for a while? What has it cost you?
• When someone at Vale asks how you are, it's easy to say, "Yeah, I'm good." What would help us be a church where people don't have to show only their highlight reel?
• Just you and GodWhat feeling have you been editing out of your prayers? Name it to God now. That's not weakness; it's worship.

2 Honest about our sin

• Annie asks her patients, "Tell me when it hurts," and they say they're fine. Why do we do the same with God?
• "God hates sin not because he's against us, but because sin is against us." How does that change the way you think about confession?
• Look at verses 13, 20–21 and 30. Saul denies, deflects, then half-confesses. Which of those do you recognise in yourself?
• "Saul was more worried about being honoured than being honest." Where are you tempted to protect your image more than your integrity?
• Integrity means whole, undivided: the same person in the dark as in the light. Where are your hidden life and your seen life furthest apart?
• Just you and GodRead Psalm 32:3–5. Is there something you've kept silent about? Bring it into the light. He is faithful and just, and he will forgive (1 John 1:9).

3 Honest with ourselves about God

• "Our feelings, though real, are not always right. They tell us what we're experiencing. They don't tell us what is true." Where do you need to hear that today?
• Read Psalm 23. David doesn't describe a perfect season; he describes a perfect shepherd. How might that change the way you describe your own valley?
• Read Psalm 103:1–5. David is talking to his own soul, not to God. Which of God's benefits do you most easily forget?
• "He's not waiting to feel faith. He's forming faith." What truth do you need to speak to your own soul this week?
• Just you and God"God doesn't just tolerate us. He treasures us." Which of those do you really believe about yourself? Ask him to help you believe the second.

Placed in God's hands

• The children in Albania were in the same water, with the same disabilities. What changed was the hands holding them. Where do you need to stop trying to form yourself, and put yourself in God's hands?
• "Don't let our pain narrate our faith. Let truth narrate our pain." What would it look like for truth to tell your story this week?
• Try it together: pray Dan's closing prayer slowly, in three movements — our real feelings, our sin, our declaration — with a real silence after each.

Praying together

• Pray for anyone who is 'just managing' right now, that they would feel again in God's hands.
• Pray for Vale to be a place where people can be honest about where it hurts.
• Close together with Dan's prayer: "Lord, take our hearts out of the environments that have been deforming us, and hold them in your hands that formed them."