NEW ORLEANS ----- MARDI GRAS

Can you imagine 2,000,000 coming to a city to party? College students, businessmen, housewives and families joining in with people from the streets, runaways, homosexuals, alcoholics and drug users to participate in America’s open-air orgy —— Mardi Gras.

By Scott Hinkle

The Largest Mardi Gras on record! That is what the news media stated about the recent 1999 Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans.

Can you imagine 2,000,000 coming to a city to party? College students, businessmen, housewives and families joining in with people from the streets, runaways, homosexuals, alcoholics and drug users to participate in America’s open-air orgy —— Mardi Gras.

Year after year I’ve been asked is Mardi Gras getting better or worse? I would have to answer worse.

While that in itself is a tragedy, the increasing immorality, nudity, potential for violence and "who cares about life anyway" attitude is enough cause for alarm in itself. Yet there is another perspective to look at and it is this...

Mardi Gras, like America in general, creates a perfect opportunity for Jesus to be lifted up and the Good News preached. After all, light work best in darkness. The backdrop of sin seen throughout Mardi Gras sets the stage perfectly for the light, love and grace of Jesus Christ. "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Romans 5:20)

The ability of God to move through simple means of ministry is always amazing. When you consider several of our workers would stand in the middle of Bourbon Street and become a "magnet" for people. Bourbon Street is constantly jam-packed with people drinking, partying, going in and out of bars and strip joints. SHOM’s Holy Ghost foot soldiers would stand in the midst of the crowds holding a cross or sign with a gospel message. People would come up and initiate conversations. Sometimes they were sarcastic and mocking and other times they would be genuinely hungry for God. Several people were led to Christ this way.

Valentines Day fell right in the midst of this years outreach. We took this as a God ordained opportunity sharing the message of God’s love and handed out thousands of the tract we print (written by my good friend Don Day) "Love Takes a Change of Heart." The tract looked like a Valentines Day card. Thousands of lives were touched with the Word of God this way .

So often our team members would have "divine appointments" sharing Christ with people in situations that you know were divinely orchestrated. The steps of good men and women are directed of the Lord! When we pray and ask the Holy Spirit to lead us to people to share the gospel with, He does.

Joy, one of our team members from Phoenix shares this story:

The picture in my mind that Mardi Gras has left is so sobering and still horrifying. I was ready to go home after the first night, until I saw this mother and child. There in the midst of all of this evil was a little girl clutching on to the hand of her very drunk and hardly clothed mother. I knew immediately why God had brought me to this place. It was for her and for all of the children. My heart nearly broke. I tried in my mind to figure out how a mother could justify or even just explain to a child what was taking place there. I decided to devote the rest of my time at Mardi Gras to finding children and sharing some of God’s love and light with them.

This outreach not only has an impact on people who do not know Christ or are backslidden but the Christians who are there to minister as well. So many of their lives are radically changed when they realize God can use them to make a difference in somebody else’s life.

I have always believed God will use anybody who is willing to do it His way!

While every community does not have a debauched celebration like the Mardi Gras, every town is filled with people who desperately need Christ and Christians who have never understood how God not only desires but is able to use them to bring God’s love to others.

The divine mandate that Nancy and I are joyfully working to fulfill is to reach our world with the life changing message of Christ and to help raise up a fresh army of Holy Ghost filled soulwinning workers to flood the highways and byways of America.

Scott Hinkle Ministries, .P.O. Box 30642, Phoenix, AZ 85046 - Phone number: (602) 404-9757 E-mail: Shom2@AOL.com