Mike's Hard Lemonade

One of my favorite commercials right now has been created by the company Mike's Hard Lemonade. If you haven't seen it pretty much there's some geeky guy coming up with stupid ideas for new drinks/bottles, and ends with him being fired and the slogan "In a world gone soft someone's got to be hard." (if you want you can look up the commercials on YouTube, they're there). The reason I love these commercials so much is they got it right. Mike's hard lemonade has figured it all out... Well almost.

They figured out what we as disciples of Christ should have figured out a long time ago. "In a world gone soft someone's got to be hard," just think about that for a second. What could it mean. Think about it in the sense of Christianity. Christianity has followed the world and has even surpassed it in softness. We have become a bunch of people sitting in our homes watching our TV's and thinking, "hey I'm good, I've given money to the church this week so I don't have to do anything else." We have become soft, and afraid to get our hands dirty. We have placed all of the aid we feel required to give in the hand of a select few who understand the "someone's got to be hard" part. Well guess what people, that's not the way it should be. How many times in the Bible does Jesus say, "If you guys just give me some money I'll go and work with the poor?" not once if I'm correct. In fact I am pretty sure that every time Jesus is working with the poor and dirty he has his disciples with him. How about "Alright guys if you just tell me your stories I'll go out and make the disciples and send them back t you?" I'm pretty sure that that's not in there either. Or how about "hey guys I've got a great idea, lets go start an organization that people can give their money to so they can say, look I'm giving to the poor, and look I can stay clean too cause this organization will do everything for me?" Not one single time. In fact Jesus told us as disciples to do the exact opposite. He commanded us to go out and tell our stories to the world in person. He told the disciples, "Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave" (Matt. 20:26-27). Jesus Christ, the son of God himself, dined with the dirty, he touched the leopards, he walked through the masses, he spread the word wherever it would be heard, not just in the safety of a church. So, if the person we call our leader and savior did all this why can't we. Why do we have to be like the world and be soft? Why is it that only a select few still get down and dirty? Why is that Christianity is no longer the fastest growing religion in the world? The question that I want to ask all of you is this, Has God changed? or have we changed? I think that we know the answer to that. We as Christians have become soft with the world. And has becoming worldly helped us gain acceptance? no! not at all, we fell into the trap that we warn ourselves against, the way of the world.

So how do we fix this? I think mike and his lemonade has figured it out, we've got o be hard. We've got to stop being politically correct and start telling it like it is. No more can we try to disguise the truth as a nice little tame beast that can be taken out every Sunday and then put away for the rest of the week. We've got to become hard and it has to happen fast. The world has changed and brought us with it, now its our time to change the world. We as the body of Christ need to stop being the geek and start being the man (please excuse me girls) that god has called everyone to be. Because we are the body and its time to make a difference.It's time that we as Christians return to our foundation. That foundation starts with a love of God. In Scripture, when Christ was asked which commandment was the greatest, he responded "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment" (Matt. 22:37-38). We as Christians must first understand this if we are once again to become harder than the world. Christ continued to say afterwards, "A second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:39). If we can fully learn to love every single person who we meet then changing this world will become very easy. Christ was a man who loved everyone and created ripples in the world still being felt today, so if all of Christianity could fully adopt his beliefs as we claim to imagine how long we could impact the world for. Christ has promised to be with us always in the form of the Holy Spirit, now lets actually use his help and change the world.

Now don't go thinking that I'm trashing the great organizations in the world. They do amazing things in the name of Christ and would not succeed without donations, but giving our money is not enough. We need to start hanging out with those less fortunate than us. That doesn't mean we need to go abroad either. There are plenty of people hurting right here in the good old US of A. Take a walk through Philly some day an just look at all the people living off the streets. There are so many. What would happen if one day just ten people went to Philly picked up ten homeless people and took them out to lunch. And then what if those twenty people kept in touch, and the ten who went to Philly helped the ten homeless back on their feet. Then just imagine if the ten who were helped back on their feet decided to go and help ten others who are like they used to be. Just imagine how fast the world could change. Just imagine how much more the world would realize God's love for them. What could happen to this world.

Here in the United States, we don't want to know what is going on elsewhere. We try block the homeless and poor we see as if they aren't real people; as if we are too good for them. we wonder what we can do to change the world while trying so hard to be the same. live with no reserves, no retreats, and no regrets. "In a world gone soft, someone's got to be hard."

The final paragraph was written by my friend Melody.

I apologize for the lack of grammatical skills but I was just writing this down, comments are welcome. In fact I'd like some feedback please.

btw I have to work on this too