According to Wikipedia, “Rodney “Gipsy” Smith MBE (31 March 1860 – 4 August 1947) was a British evangelist who conducted evangelistic campaigns in the United States and Great Britain for over 70 years. He was an early member of The Salvation Army and a contemporary of Fanny Crosby and acquaintance of G. Campbell Morgan and H. A. Ironside.” Isn’t amazing how any life can be summarized down to a couple sentences with birth, a dash, and a death.
It’s what is done with the “dash” that is important. It turns out that Smith was an evangelist and led many to the Lord. Revival’s broke out where and when he preached. Skip Heitzig said, “I love what Gipsy Smith said when somebody came up to him and said, how do you start a revival? He said easy. Go home, walk inside your house, kneel down on the floor, draw a chalk line around you. When revival has occurred within that chalk line, revival is on. Pray that God would revive you. Now, if you can look back to a time in your walk that was full of life and vibrance, and you don’t experience that today, and that wondrous excitement of intimacy with Jesus is a pastime event, you need revival.”
Each first Thursday of the month, since May 2010, Bezeugen Ministries has hosted “First Thursday Prayer” meetings at businesses and city halls in Texas. We use the A.C.T.S. (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) model for prayer to pray for our nation, leaders, and revival. When I heard the sermon referenced above recently I was struck buy this idea that revival starts with each of us.
We started the First Thursday prayer on the First Thursday of the month because the United States National Day of Prayer is the First Thursday of May each year. After attending the event in Carrollton, Texas in 2010, a couple of us asked ourselves why we only pray once a month. So we decided to start doing it every month. And we’ve done it every month since then not only in Carrollton, but also in Dallas, and expanded to Athens, Rockwall and Denison. Maybe your city is next. Would you consider hosting a prayer meeting monthly to pray for revival in your town? For more information see www.praylearngo.org. If you’d like to be included in a monthly email with suggested verses for hosting your meeting please contact us at btc@bezeugen.org
This month we are providing two seasonal tracts for your to distribute.
Easter is Sunday, April 9th. The Hoppy Easter Tract started as a joke, but has proven popular and easy to hand out for years. Ever been to the mall and seen the easter bunny?. Hoppy Easter!! While the world thinks Easter is about bunnies and chocolate eggs, they miss the biggest event in the history of all mankind. Jesus, the incarnate God, predicted his own death and resurrection fulfilling hundreds of years of prophecy! Now that is worth celebrating! Worship Him! Sometimes letters are said to contain “Easter Eggs”. Well, here is one. Be one of the first ten people to email or tag us on social media a picture of a mall Easter Bunny holding a Hoppy Easter tract and we will send you 100 Gospel tracts to hand out. Bonus of an additional 100 tracts if you are in the picture with the Easter Bunny!
April (well, March 30th actually) marks the beginning of Major League Baseball season. Therefore we have included our Baseball Trivia tract. Baseball has been called the great American past time. Millions of people attend games and follow their teams. They also love to prove they know their trivia when it comes to the sport. The trivia tract tests their knowledge. A little secret for you as you hand out any of our trivia tracts. The answers are A, B, C, B, and death. That’s right. The back of all Bezeugen Ministries trivia tracts are the same. So whether it’s this baseball trivia, or our football, basketball, NASCAR, soccer, or rock n roll trivia the answers are the same. Why? Because that way you can quiz people and tell them if they got the right answer without even looking on the back to find the answer yourself.
Baseball season also presents a great opportunity to go to the ball park and hand out tracts. Check the Bezeugen BLOG for some ideas on how to do this. But generally you can just take a stack of tracts, stand on a public sidewalk where people come to the game, hand out the tracts by saying “did you get one of these”? One our YouTube channel you can find videos showing how we have done this at many events. You can request more tracts at Bezeugen.myshopify.com by donation and then get your friends and go hand them out at the ballpark!
If you are not a member of the Bezeugen Tract Club you can enroll online and receive 30 FREE Gospel tracts per month.
