When we give out of love for Christ and others, we experience dramatic & lasting returns for the investments we’ve made.

While shopping online for a bike as a present for her dad, ten-year-old Riley and her mom followed a video link about an organization that provides specially engineered bicycles for individuals with disabilities. Seeing the happy faces of people riding the bikes, Riley told her mom, “I’m going to buy a bike for one of those kids.”
Riley’s mom loved her daughter’s heart, but the cost of just one special bike was a few thousand dollars. Two days later, Riley showed her mom a letter she’d written explaining how the bikes could help those in need and requesting donations.
After Riley sent the letter to seventy-five relatives and friends, money started pouring in. Word spread, and as Christmas neared, more donations came. On Christmas, Riley donned a Santa hat and delivered bicycles to three girls: thirteen-year-old Ava, who has spina bifida; fifteen-year-old Jenny, who has cerebral palsy; and four-year-old Rose, who has a rare genetic disorder.
“This is the best Christmas I ever had,” Riley declared.When our missions pastor returned from Sudan, he told our church about enslaved Christians in that region. Spontaneously, several families decided to forgo giving Christmas presents that year and instead give toward freeing slaves. The fourth-grade class at our school raised thousands of dollars for this purpose through work projects. One sixth-grade girl took the fifty dollars she’d saved up to play on a basketball team and gave it to help Sudanese believers.
One family had saved several hundred dollars to go to Disneyland. Their child asked if they could give the money to help the slaves instead. Before long, people had given sixty thousand dollars to redeem slaves. We never even took an offering, but the giving was contagious. People told each other their giving stories. And when they did, it thrilled and encouraged the body to give more. It was one of the church’s finest hours, and an essential component was people sharing how God had led them to give.
Money won’t make us happy, but giving away money can make us profoundly happy! When we give out of love for Christ and others, we experience dramatic and lasting returns for the investments we’ve made—far more than if we’d kept or spent it. Therefore, it’s not only receivers who come out ahead—it’s givers, too.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES See more resources on money and giving, as well as Randy's related books, including *Managing God's Money *and Giving Is the Good Life. *Image used with permission. *March 6, 2026
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