Login / Signup

Free Access

Advent Sale - Save $131!

Give Your Life To The Lord

Children's sermon
John 10:11-18
Wesley T. Runk
The Giant Book Of Children's Sermons
Matthew To Revelation
Object: 
a doll or teddy bear
Good morning, boys and girls. How many of you have a very special doll or stuffed animal that belongs to you? (let them answer) Almost all of you. What do you call your friend? (let them answer) A lot of people have a friend that looks like this. (hold up your teddy bear, hopefully one that is well worn) I call him Teddy. Do any of you call your bear "Teddy"? (let them answer) A lot of you have Teddy bears. That's wonderful. How many of you sleep with Teddy? (let them answer) Does your friend ever eat with you or watch television with you? (let them answer) A Teddy bear can be a very good friend and a lot of fun to share good times with.

I guess the best part of having a Teddy bear is that the teddy bear belongs to me. No one else owns Teddy. Teddy does what I want him to do, goes where I want him to go, sleeps when I want him to sleep and eats when I want him to eat. That's what I mean when I say that Teddy belongs to me. Since Teddy belongs to me, I can share him with you if I want to. I can even give Teddy away if I want to. Of course, if I gave him away, then he would belong to someone else and that person could do the same things with him that I do with him now.

God the Father loved Jesus even more than I love Teddy or more than you love your friend. Jesus belonged to the Father and the Father belonged to Jesus. They shared life together. The Father and Jesus had a plan about how they were going to share the life of Jesus with all of the people in the world. It was their life and they could do whatever they wanted to with it. Just like you can do whatever you want to with your friend Teddy. God decided to offer the life of Jesus for our sins. It was God's plan to have Jesus die for our sins and use up his life so that we would not die forever. God could do this with Jesus' life because it belonged to him. Now there was more to the plan than just dying. God also decided that after Jesus suffered and died he would give him back his life. God could do that also because even when Jesus was dead he belonged to God. So God gave back to Jesus his life.

The same thing can happen to you and me. If God owns your life like he owned Jesus and you own Teddy, then he can give you back your life after you die. God is so good that he will only do what is best for you. So you can belong to God like Jesus did and just like Teddy belongs to me and your friend belongs to you. That is a super plan and one that all of us should follow.

Remember, God will take even better care of your life, if you give it to him, than you take care of friends like Teddy.
UPCOMING WEEKS
In addition to the lectionary resources there are thousands of non-lectionary, scripture based resources...
Baptism of Our Lord
29 – Sermons
120+ – Illustrations / Stories
40 – Children's Sermons / Resources
25 – Worship Resources
27 – Commentary / Exegesis
4 – Pastor's Devotions
and more...
Epiphany 2 | OT 2
30 – Sermons
120+ – Illustrations / Stories
39 – Children's Sermons / Resources
24 – Worship Resources
30 – Commentary / Exegesis
4 – Pastor's Devotions
and more...
Epiphany 3 | OT 3
30 – Sermons
120+ – Illustrations / Stories
31 – Children's Sermons / Resources
22 – Worship Resources
25 – Commentary / Exegesis
4 – Pastor's Devotions
and more...
Plus thousands of non-lectionary, scripture based resources...

New & Featured This Week

The Immediate Word

Katy Stenta
Mary Austin
Dean Feldmeyer
Tom Willadsen
Nazish Naseem
George Reed
Christopher Keating
For January 18, 2026:

The Village Shepherd

Janice B. Scott
Jackie thought Miss Potter looked something like a turtle. She was rather large, and slow and ponderous, and her neck was very wrinkled. But Jackie liked her, for she was kind and fair, and she never seemed to mind even when some of the children were quite unpleasant to her.

StoryShare

Keith Hewitt
Larry Winebrenner
Contents
"The End and the Beginning" by Keith Hewitt
"John's Disciples become Jesus' Disciples" by Larry Winebrenner
"To the Great Assembly" by Larry Winebrenner


* * * * * * * *

SermonStudio

Mariann Edgar Budde
And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God." And now the Lord says, who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him ...
E. Carver Mcgriff
COMMENTARY ON THE LESSONS

Lesson 1: Isaiah 49:1-7 (C, E); Isaiah 49:3, 5-6 (RC)
Paul E. Robinson
A man by the name of Kevin Trudeau has marketed a memory course called "Mega-Memory." In the beginning of the course he quizzes the participants about their "teachability quotient." He says it consists of two parts. First, on a scale of one to ten "where would you put your motivation to learn?" Most people would put themselves pretty high, say about nine to ten, he says.
Charles L. Aaron, Jr.
The first chapter of John bears some similarity to the pilot episode of a television series. In that first episode, the writers and director want to introduce all of the main characters. In a television series, what we learn about the main characters in the first episode helps us understand them for the rest of the time the show is on the air and to see how they develop over the course of the series. John's narrative begins after the prologue, a hymn or poem that sets John's theological agenda. Once the narrative begins in verse 19, John focuses on identifying the characters of his gospel.
Dallas A. Brauninger
E-mail
From: KDM
To: God
Subject: Enriched
Message: I could never be a saint, God. Lauds, KDM

The e-mail chats KDM has with God are talks that you or I might likely have with God. Today's e-mail is no exception: I could never be a saint, God. Lauds, KDM. The conversation might continue in the following vein: Just so you know, God, I am very human. Enriched, yes; educated, yes; goal-oriented, yes; high-minded, yes; perfect, no.
Robert A. Beringer
Charles Swindoll in his popular book, Improving Your Serve, tells of how he was at first haunted and then convicted by the Bible's insistence that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45)." The more he studied what the Bible says about servanthood, the more convinced Swindoll became that our task in this world, like that of Jesus, is not to be served, not to grab the spotlight, and not to become successful or famous or powerful or idolized.
Wayne H. Keller
Adoration And Praise

Invitation to the Celebration

(In advance, ask five or six people if you can use their names in the call to worship.) Remember the tobacco radio ad, "Call for Phillip Morris!"? Piggyback on this idea from the balcony, rear of the sanctuary, or on a megaphone. "Call for (name each person)." After finishing, offer one minute of silence, after asking, "How many of you received God's call as obviously as that?" (Show of hands.) Now, silently, consider how you did receive God's call. Was it somewhere between the call of Peter and Paul?
B. David Hostetter
CALL TO WORSHIP
Do not keep the goodness of God hidden in your heart: proclaim God's faithfulness and saving power.

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Emphasis Preaching Journal

William H. Shepherd
"Who's your family?" Southerners know this greeting well, but it is not unheard of above, beside, and around the Mason-Dixon line. Many people value roots -- where you come from, who your people are, what constitutes "home." We speak of those who are "rootless" as unfortunate; those who "wander" are aimless and unfocused. Adopted children search for their birth parents because they want to understand their identity, and to them that means more than how they were raised and what they have accomplished -- heritage counts. Clearly, we place a high value on origins, birth, and descent.
R. Craig Maccreary
One of my favorite British situation comedies is Keeping Up Appearances. It chronicles the attempts of Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced "bouquet" on the show, to appear to have entered the British upper class by maintaining the manners and mores of that social set. The nearby presence of her sisters, Daisy and Rose, serve as a constant reminder that she has not gotten far from her origins in anything but the upper class.

At first I was quite put off by the show's title with an instant dislike for Hyacinth, and a

CSSPlus

Good morning, boys and girls. Do you remember a few weeks ago when we were talking about the meaning of names? (let them answer) Some names mean "beautiful" or "bright as the morning sun." Almost every name has a special meaning.

Good morning! What do I have here? (Show the stuffed animal
or the picture.) Yes, this is a lamb, and the lamb has a very
special meaning to Christians. Who is often called a lamb in the
Bible? (Let them answer.)

Once, when John the Baptist was baptizing people in the
river, he saw Jesus walking toward him and he said, "Here is the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" Why do you
think he would call Jesus a lamb? (Let them answer.)

To understand why Jesus is called a lamb, we have to go back
Good morning! How many of you are really rich? How many of
you have all the money you could ever want so that you can buy
anything you want? (Let them answer.) I didn't think so. If any
of you were that rich, I was hoping you would consider giving a
generous gift to the church.

Let's just pretend we are rich for a moment. Let's say this
toy car is real and it's worth $50,000. And let's say this toy
boat is real and it's worth $100,000, and this toy airplane is a

Special Occasion

Wildcard SSL