Date: 18 & 19 July 2015 GKidz Timothy Club Worship & Offering Lesson 3 We Praise God Through Our Giving! Key Verse: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6 (NIrV) Bible Text: Malachi 3:10, 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NIrV) Lesson Objectives: Children will learn that: 1. Our giving is a form of worship 2. When we choose to first give to God, we tell God we are putting Him first NOTE TO LEADERS Series Overview Before the June school holidays, our GKidz children got started on a journey on discovering more about God through reading His Word. We also want to encourage our children to not only have the spiritual discipline of reading the Bible, but to also begin developing a lifestyle of worship. Date Lesson Lesson Focus Family Devotion Focus 4/5 Start of Passionate Worship Lesson 1 Let Everything Praise God! July Challenge 11/12 Share how we can bless others Lesson 2 Our Praise is Powerful! July when we worship God 18/19 We Praise God Through Decide to Give to God as a Lesson 3 July Our Giving! Family Leaders Prayer & Preparation: We have spent the better part of two weeks focusing on one of the more common expressions of worship, and that is through the use of music and song. There is another expression of worship that we would be sharing with the children this weekend, and that it is in our giving. How we give is an act of worship, as we demonstrate through our offering how much God means to us. GKidz Timothy Club 2015 1
When the word giving is mentioned, money does come to mind. But the concept of giving is so much more than that. Consider what it says in Psalm 24:1, The earth is the Lord s, and all it contains, the world, and those who dwell in it. There is so much more that belongs to the Lord, than just our money. Our time, achievements, career, and even family all belong to the Lord, and each of us has to discern what giving to the Lord in those areas would mean for us practically. Having said that, our monetary giving is easily one of the best ways to demonstrate the posture of our hearts to put God first. That is why we encourage every believer to tithe, at the very least a tenth of what they are blessed with financially, to the Lord. Here s what John Piper has to say about tithing: When we release a tenth of our income and give it over to the ministry and mission of Christ in the world, we honor the Creator rights of God who owns everything, including all our income What you do with every cent says something about your view of God and what he means to you. And what your values are in this age. And what you think your few years on earth should be spent for. That's true Giving God a tenth of our income does not deny that all our money is God's. It proves that we believe it. Tithing is like a constant offering of the first fruits of the whole thing. The tenth is yours, O, Lord, in a special way, because all of it is yours in an ordinary way. I believe the tithe should be the first check we write after the income deposit is made in the bank. And when you write it, you put a seal over what's left: GOD'S. The tithe reminds us of that, and proves that we really believe it. - John Piper Giving is not a concept meant for adults. We must endeavour to partner with the parents to teach our children that our whole life is a never-ending act of worship unto the Lord. Our children need not wait until a certain age to experience the joys of giving! They can choose right now to put God first every area of their lives, and to demonstrate that through their giving! To illustrate how children can grasp the principle of giving, here s an interesting video featuring a 4-year old boy and his perspective of giving: https://vimeo.com/7421607 (Elijah Offering Video) a) WORSHIP - Spend time worshipping the Lord on your own during the week. - Wait on Him and allow His presence to refresh you. - Allow this song to minister to you: http://bit.ly/1ks65gn (Lord, I Offer My Life) b) PRAY - Pray for yourself. Are there any areas in your life that you have not put God first in? Ask the Lord for a spirit of humility to come before Him in total surrender. GKidz Timothy Club 2015 2
- Intercede for each of your children by name during the week. Ask the Holy Spirit to prepare their hearts, so that they will be joyful givers! - Use this song to pray over your children: http://bit.ly/1mxzyqf (Offering) - Ask the Holy Spirit to give you words of knowledge that you can release to your children. Come ready to share your reflections during your leaders briefing time! PLATFORM TEACHING (5 MINUTES) Logistics Needed: PowerPoint slides (GKidz to provide) Platform Teacher (PT): Before we get to today s lesson, I want to hear you recite the verse we have been memorizing for the past two weeks. (lead children in reciting the verse, if need be use the slide as a guide) Just to quickly refresh all of us We have been learning that when we worship God, we can be honest to God with our.(let children complete the sentence) That s right! Feelings! In fact there are four ways we can express our worship to God! They are through (show slide) Singing, Clapping of Hands, Dancing, Lifting Up of Hands. That s right! I m glad some of you still remember! Last week we learnt that our (show slide) worship releases God s supernatural power over any difficult situation in our lives! Wow that is a lot we have learnt! Awesome! This weekend, we have one more lesson on worship! Today, we will learn that we can praise God through our giving! Let s repeat that again! (get children to repeat) What is giving? (let children answer) Simply put, (show slide) giving is one way we can tell God how much He means to us! Hang on that sounds a lot like worship! Remember, we learnt that worship is one of the easiest ways we can tell God how much He means to us! So, if worship and giving are both ways we can tell God how much He means to us. That means (show slide) giving to God is a form of worship too! Now I m going to pause here and ask do you know, when we give to God, what is the money used for? (let children answer) It goes to the church, and is used for a few things. It goes towards running the church, like paying for electricity and materials, paying the pastors and others who work in church, supporting other organizations linked to our church, like Touch Community Services and Gateway Entertainment, and supporting missionaries and other churches outside of Singapore. GKidz Timothy Club 2015 3
Now that we know how our gifts to God are used, the next question we need to answer is how are we supposed to give? 2 Corinthians 9:7 (show slide) tells us that Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give. You shouldn t give if you don t want to. You shouldn t give because you are forced to. God loves a cheerful giver. When we give to God, we should give cheerfully, and not give with a lousy attitude! Remember, we can praise and worship God through our giving! But what can we give to God? Should we give him our favorite toys? Or give him chocolate? Or give him my bed? Well before we go into that, let me share with you a story of two brothers by watching this video VIDEO CAIN & ABEL (10 MINUTES) Show children the video from this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkywetrwjqa (Show video from 0:10-1:14. GKidz will provide the file, to be transferred to the laptop) PT: So in the video that we just saw, there were two brothers. Cain who was a farmer, and Abel, who was a shepherd. Both of them decided to give an offering to the Lord. Abel, the shepherd, chose the first lamb that was born to his flock. Cain, the farmer, chose the fruits from his harvest. As we saw in that video, God chose to accept Abel s offering, and reject Cain s offering. Can anybody tell me why? (let children answer) Let me explain, (show slide) Abel gave his first-born lamb to God, even though he wasn t sure if he was going to have any more lambs left for himself. But he chose to give his first-born lamb in faith knowing that God will provide for Him. (show slide) Cain on the other hand, did not give God the first of his harvest. He only gave part of what he got from the harvest. He didn t fully trust God to take care and provide for him. (show slide) Remember, how we give to God tells Him how much He means to us. Through his offering, Abel told God that God is first in his life, whereas Cain, through his offering, told God that there were other more important things in his life than God. Remember, our giving tells God how much He means to us. If we choose to give to God first, then we tell God we are putting Him first in our lives! Before we break into our small groups and learn more about our offering and our giving, let me say a prayer for all of you: GKidz Timothy Club 2015 4
Dear God, thank You for reminding us through Your Word that You love us so much! We know that through our giving, we can show how much You mean to us, and how much we love You too! I pray that even as we learn more about our giving and offering today, may you teach us to be cheerful givers! In Jesus name I pray, Amen. SMALL GROUP TIME (60 MINUTES) A. Connect (5 minutes) Begin by sharing your observations on the following: 1) Children s posture of worship (eg. were they naturally drawn into worshipping God? Did they proactively begin to physically express their worship to God through the 4 ways that were taught) 2) Ability to focus on worshipping God, without giving a thought to what others might be think of them 3) Were they following the modeling of the postures of worship that was done by the worship team and small group leaders? Here are some guiding principles to help you as you form your observations: - Emphasize on the positives! Keep an eye out for positive observations that will encourage the children. - The best way to complete this section is to be observing your children during worship time. Model the ways to worship for those who are struggling to focus during worship time. Do not get caught up in worshipping on your own. - If you do notice negative examples during worship time, step in and guide the child to learn and follow after you as you model the posture of worship. You can use this incident as a point to encourage all the children to keep learning and trying to focus on worshipping God during worship time. - You may choose to video down your children during worship time on your phone. If you do, please do it discreetly. This should also not distract you from your ability to model for your children the posture of worship. Also, bear in mind the downsides of using this video, namely that it could create a performance mindset amongst the children when they know they are being videoed. Activity: Passionate Worship Challenge Update Check with the children if they had attempted to complete their Passionate Worship Challenge. Encourage them to share their experience with the rest of the group. You may choose to share your own experience as well. Successful completion of the Passionate Worship Challenge will earn them a special shaker or banner that they can use in worship during their Family Altar Time or at GKidz! GKidz Timothy Club 2015 5
B. Rapid Recap (5 minutes) Begin by going through the memory verse for this series, and the verse for today: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Psalm 150:6 (NIrV) Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give. You shouldn t give if you don t want to. You shouldn t give because you are forced to. God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7 (NIrV) Ask the children following questions and get them to answer: - What did Abel offer to God? (Ans: First-born lamb) - What did Cain offer to God? (Ans: Part of his harvest) - Which of the two brothers chose to first give to God? (Ans: Abel) Suggested Summary Remind the children that our giving and offering tells God how much He means to us. When we choose to give to Him first, we are telling God that we have chosen to put Him first in our lives. It is not easy to make that decision on our own. In order for us to put God first in our lives through our giving, we must have faith! Let us take a look at Abraham s life and find out how He chose to put God first through his giving and offering. C. Bible Focus: Abraham and Isaac (10 minutes) Props Needed: A set of picture cards (GKidz will provide) Gather the children, and with the picture cards provided to assist you, read Genesis 21:1-5, 22:1-18. After reading the story, ask them the following questions: - How old was Abraham when Isaac was born? (Ans: 100 years old) - How did you think Abraham would have felt when he received God s instruction to sacrifice Isaac? (Let children answer) - Do you think it was an easy decision for Abraham to make, to offer his son Isaac to God? (Let children answer) Explain to the children that Abraham was challenged to give to God his beloved son, Isaac. Abraham could have chosen not to, and sacrifice something else. But Abraham wanted to put God first. He chose to believe that even if his son had to be given back to God, he believed that God would still take care of His family, and provide for him. When we give to God, we tell God how much He means to us. We don t give to God because it is convenient, we give to God because we GKidz Timothy Club 2015 6
want to show Him how much He means to us, and that we want to put Him first in our lives! D. Brain Exercise: Coin Game (10 minutes) Logistics Needed: Cut-out coins of different values (GKidz will provide) Divide the children into two groups. Each group will be given $5 worth of coin cutouts (2 x $1 coins, 4 x $0.50 coins, 3 x $0.20 coins, 4 x $0.10 coins) With the two groups competing against each other, each group must work together to find out how many coins to give to the following statements below: 1) Half of $5 (Ans: $2.50) 2) 2 x 80-cent McDonald s ice-cream cone (Ans: $1.60) 3) 5 + 2 3 + 1 (Ans: $5) 4) 10% of $5 (Ans: $0.50) End by telling the children how impressed you are with their mathematical knowledge. Ask the children whether they have set aside money before to save up for something they want to buy, like a brand new toy or game. D. Application (10 minutes) Explain to the children that earlier, we learnt that our giving tells God how much He means to us. And when we choose to give to God first, we tell God that we are putting Him first in our lives. Have the children read Malachi 3:10 aloud together. Then, explain to the children that one of the easiest ways we can put God first through our giving is by giving to him 10% of our pocket money. We do not give God what we have left over after we have spent everything. But we set aside 10% of what we receive everyday for pocket money. Share with them the example of if we receive $2 a day to eat during recess, then we should put aside $0.20 every day to give to God in our offering before spending the rest! Remind the children that giving to God tells Him how much He means to us and we are putting Him first in our lives. E. Craft Time First Offering Box (20 minutes) Logistics Needed: First Offering Box template, colouring materials, tape or glue (GKidz will provide) Explain to the children that we are going to make an offering box. This box will help us keep all the money that we are planning to put aside to give to God GKidz Timothy Club 2015 7
through our offering. Challenge the children to put into the offering box a tenth of what they receive in pocket money every week, and to offer it to God when they come to GKidz in subsequent weeks. The box comes in a generic design. Let the children add their creativity to the box first before sticking it all together with the tape or glue provided. F. Family Devotion Focus Encourage their children to share with their parents what they had learnt at GKidz this past weekend. When you connect with the parents, do share with them what had been taught to their child at GKidz, and encourage the parents to process with their children on the significance of our giving to God through our offering, during their weekly Family Altar Time. GKidz Timothy Club 2015 8