Charity (Having a giving heart)

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Adapted from Seara Espírita Infantil - Without charity, there is no salvation
and
Youth Group Lessons on Giving | Ministry to Youth

Use this game to help students understand the importance of a giving heart.

MATERIAL

  • Different sized jars, cups, and bowls
  • Pennies
  • Colored Tape

How to Play Opening Game

Set up the jars, cups, and bowls on the floor. You can put some close to each other and some spread out more.

Mark several lines with the tape in front of the jars. Make the first line right in front of them, the next line a few feet back, the next line further back, etc. Do this until the final line is all the way across the room from the jars.

Give each student five pennies. Explain that the goal is to get the pennies into the jars (and cups or whatever else you have put out).

For each penny they land in a jar, they get two more pennies. If they don’t make it in the jar, they get nothing.

Have the students line up behind the first line and let everyone toss a penny. Give the students who make it into a jar two more pennies. The ones who don’t are down one penny.

Once everyone has gone, have them move to the next line and repeat this. Again, give the winners two more pennies.

Continue going through all the taped-off lines. Once a student runs out of pennies, they are out.

Once you get to the last line, have the remaining students compete until there is just one student left. The last student to still have any pennies wins.

After the game, discuss the following questions:

  • Was that game harder than you thought it was going to be?
  • Do you think you would have had a better chance of winning if you had stayed at the first line the whole time?
  • Did it make it harder to win since the only way to get more pennies was to give up the ones you already had?

After the game, say:

That was a pretty interesting game, right?

To win, you had to get more pennies than anyone else. But in order to get more, you had to give up the ones you already had. That made it difficult!

That’s kind of how it is in life, isn’t it? God gives us things—money, talents, time—and we have the choice of what to do with those things. We can have an attitude that says it’s all about us, and we can choose to hold tightly to everything we have, making sure we never give anything away.

Or, we can choose to have a giving heart.

Which one do you think will work out better for us in the end?

EXPLORE THE LESSON

"Without charity, there is no salvation" Write on the whiteboard and discuss the meaning of these words

Chapter 15 – The Gospel according to Spiritism

Charity: practicing love as much as we can.

Salvation: progress, spiritual evolvement, happiness

See, God has already blessed you. Think about it! Sure, some of you probably have enough money, but that’s not all He’s blessed you with. He’s given you time, talents, friendship, compassion, and so many other things that you have to give.

What are some things that you have that you can give?

ALLOW STUDENTS TO THINK AND WRITE ON THE WHITEBOARD

Examples:

  • Friendship
  • Kind words, hugs, smiles
  • Money
  • Prayer
  • Toys or something some needs
  • Food
  • Intelligence, trying to solve problems that will help others

You can choose to hold onto those things and keep them for yourself. You can choose to not have a giving heart.

Or, you can choose to have a giving heart, and in turn, things will be given back to you.

ASSESSMENT

Does it make sense to you that giving leads to getting more than you had in the first place?

Would you describe your attitude right now as one that has a giving heart, or one that is all about yourself?

Has there ever been a time before when you’ve been blessed because you chose to give?

CONCLUSION

Let’s say there’s someone at your school who doesn’t have any friends and who’s kind of an outsider

God has given you friendship, and you get to choose who to give it to. Imagine that you befriend this person, giving of your friendship and time. In turn, God blesses you with the best friend you’ve ever had, because you were willing to give.

That’s the heart of God. He wants to give back to you, pressed down, shaken together, and still overflowing. But He can only do that if you have a giving heart.

Having a giving heart blesses others and it blesses you. I’d say that’s a win-win situation, wouldn’t you?

AFFIRMATION

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