Mark 16:15  “And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

     You were probably shocked as everyone else to learn that a 34 year old Walmart worker was trampled to death under a crowd of selfish bargain shoppers in New York. The irony is, the guilty throng that stampeded over the helpless man wasn’t even fighting for food or escaping from the throes of death. They were in a frenzied dash for deals on televisions, tools, and toys.

     Each year our church holds what we call “The Hot Chocolate Giveaway” on “Black Friday”, the day following Thanksgiving. With store permission we set up tables in front of a local shopping mall to hand out free hot chocolate to cold shoppers in the early morning. The tables were ready for 5am as hundreds of bargain hunters turned out to stand in line.

     In addition to the hot chocolate, this outreach provided an opportunity to give out gospel tracts, talk with people about our church, and in some instances show some people from God’s Word how they could be saved. So far I know of 2 people that prayed for salvation that morning after being shown how they could be saved. One of the people was a young man who’s father was saved in the Iraq war. He told his son to listen very carefully to what was being told him. He responded eagerly the gospel.

     We thank the Lord that in this day and age we are still able to do something like this in the public forum. It may not always be so. Change for the believer could be soon on the horizon. Persecution is not even a thought in most American churches. Maybe it’s time that we experienced some. Apathy runs rampant in our churches today. We’re more concerned with our kid’s piano lessons than we are souls. We don’t appreciate what we have in our freedom to worship the Lord as we do. If that were to be taken away or restricted, we might be a more praying body of believers. We might be more thankful to our Lord. We might spend more time going instead of gazing.

     All in all the Hot Chocolate Giveaway was a success. Anytime people are presented with the gospel, we are doing the Lord’s work. When someone gets saved we get to see the Holy Spirit work. If you’d like to know more about how to do a Hot Chocolate Giveaway, email me…  marc@pathwalkpublishing.com.  I’d love to help! It was a good day.