Giving to God

In our fifty five years as officers of The Salvation Army, (almost 43 in active service and 12 plus years retired) we held different types of appointments - Corps (church as pastors), social, training and administration. We ran three Boys' Homes at different times - Kuching, Penang and Ipoh. Whether in church or social appointments we always tried to teach our people the importance of giving to God. As Christians we should not be dependent on non Christians to support our church. We don't need to if every Christian practises Christian stewardship and one of the ways is the giving of our tithe - one tenth of our income.

Even when running Homes, we taught our children the importance of sharing with others what the Lord provided. During our time, we received much help from Christian Children's Fund apart from donations from the public and grant from our Headquarters. Besides regular contribution for the upkeep of the children, the sponsors would often send birthday and Christmas gifts. We always taught the children to tithe their monetary gifts and the amount collected would be shared with the other children who had no income at all except the little given by the Home.

This enabled our children when they attended church to participate in giving their offering, certainly a part of worship. The amount they were able to put into the offering bag may be small, perhaps only five cents, but they all participated.

When it came to Self Denial time, the Home would go without something for the week - perhaps fruit, or biscuits and the amount saved would be added to the amount raised through sale of old newspapers etc and kept for Self Denial Appeal. Now when came to Altar Service Sunday all the children were able to join the rest of the congregation in taking their gifts to the Altar. They all participated in Self Denial.

We send our children to school, we employ staff to teach our children lessons in life. Don't you agree it is equally important to teach them their responsibility to God and their fellow beings?

Let us all be good stewards of our time, our talents and treasures. Let us also set the example and teach others the importance of giving to God.