The Joy of Giving
Pastor KC Liu / Hebrews 13:5 / November 13, 2015

Event: Operation Christmas Child  
Audience: Kids who packed Shoe boxes
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Good evening, boys and girls! How are you doing tonight? Did you have fun packing the shoe boxes?  Where did you go shopping for your toys? How many of you gave away some toys you really loved? Tonight, I am going to talk about “THE JOY OF GIVING!”

Can anyone tell me one thing that you really love? What do you love? I will share something I love, dogs! Especially Corgies! I wish I had one or two.  Who is a person in your life whom you really love? My favorite people in the world are my family! Because you love these people, how do you act toward them, and what do you do for them? It’s good to love people, isn’t it? God blesses us with many wonderful people to love.

I have here a dollar. This is my dollar. Can I get 5 volunteers to come up? I have one dollar for each of you.  Now if I told you that I really loved this dollar, and that I had a special place for it to sit at my house, and that I held my penny every day and sang to it and kissed it, what would you think? That would be pretty weird, wouldn’t it? I shouldn’t be spending my love on a dollar.

Tonight’s Bible reading is from Hebrews 13. It talks about that sort of foolish love: “Keep your lives free from love of money, and be content with what you have; for [God] has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you’” (Heb. 13:5 NRSV). And it also says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (v. 16 NRSV). In other words, the Bible says, “Don’t love money,” and “Share what you have”. Do you think that’s hard to do sometimes? It can be hard to share, especially if you only have one of something—like one dollar or one best friend, can’t it?

But do you know what? When we love Jesus and when we love other people so much that we want to share just to make them happy—we feel happier, too. And we feel “richer” than we did before!  We are rich in love, rich in compassion, rich in giving!
Let me ask you, who was the biggest giver you have ever known?  It is our Heavenly Father! “For God so loved the world, He gave His only Son!” To Whom? To you!  Why? Because He loves you so very very much! So that you would not perish, but have everlasting life!

You can go back to your seats now, but I want you to do something that might be difficult. On your way back to your seat, give your dollar to someone else who you think needs it more than you do. Give that dollar away, and I know that you will get lots of smiles in return. And then see if you don’t feel better.

Let’s bow our head and pray:  Dear Jesus, help us to love you most of all, and help us to share what you have given us with people whom we love and you love. In your name we pray, Amen! Now let’s watch a video of someone receiving love. This is the story of a boy named Ralph; he lives in a dump in the Philippines. Let’s watch together.