What Is Generosity?Sample

Unstuff your heart. 

Do you have a spot in your room where things pile up and get a little messy? Most of us have at least one space—a drawer, a messy closet, underneath our beds—that collects some junk. And then, of course, your mom usually finds out about it and asks you to clean it a million times, but somehow, it just keeps collecting more and more stuff. 

Sound familiar? We start collecting all this stuff that maybe was cool or special at one point in our lives, but then we just hold on to it instead of throwing it away or giving it to someone else. So, our stuff gets shoved into places where it grows and collects dust—making everything look crowded and messy. 

Our hearts can be kind of like that. We collect a lot of emotional junk and carry it around with us, not realizing it’s weighing our hearts down. What is emotional junk? It can be a lot of things—pain from things that have happened to us, insults from people in our lives, unhealthy habits—all sorts of things. Check out today’s video to learn more about emotional junk. 

When our hearts are carrying a bunch of junk, we end up wanting more and more junk. And then we can’t be surprised when junk starts coming out of our hearts. Because think about it like this. If all you think about is how you want more stuff, then you’ll always need more. And then you start acting selfishly and having a bad attitude toward other people in your life. 

But that’s how generosity can free our hearts from the need to have all this junk. If instead of wanting more stuff for ourselves we start thinking about ways we can help others, then we don’t want as much stuff. 

What you put inside your heart will grow. So, what kind of heart do you want? 

Loving stuff will make your heart fill up with junk, and you’ll never have enough. But when we stop trying to get so much stuff for ourselves, our hearts fill up with God’s love and love for others. 

Unstuff your heart. Having and wanting some stuff isn’t bad. But wanting stuff more than things that matter—like loving God and loving people—puts junk in your heart that keeps on growing.