How About a Delicious Beverage?

I like chocolate milk.

There are several brands/kinds of pre-made chocolate milk that are pretty good (NesQuick is my personal favorite. I like that rabbit.), but there is nothing as good as making your own.

The recipe is quite simple:

- 1 glass of whole milk (2% is acceptable...I guess...but anything less than that...I mean, come on...if you can't drink REAL milk, you probably don't need to drink CHOCOLATE milk...sissy.)

- 1 bottle/container/tub of chocolate sauce/powder/syrup (I usually use Hershey's, but I have used NesQuick, Ovaltine, and others as well. This recipe will proceed with a bottle of Hershey's as the example)

- Place glass of milk on hard surface and hold bottle of Hershey's syrup with:

     - 1 hand & be prepared to stir with the other as you squeeze OR...
     - 2 hands, for maximum squeezing power & you can stir later
    
[Personally, I like to watch the milk turn chocolate all at once - I feel like a low-level magician - so I squeeze with both hands. The time that you save by doing the two-handed squeeze more than makes up for the fact that you haven't stirred yet; this is simply my opinion and not chocolate milk doctrine]

- Squeeze syrup into milk & stir until you reach the desired level of chocolate infiltration (you want the milk to do a "reverse Michael Jackson", if that helps).

- Take a sip (not a gulp, mind you, because if you haven't made it chocolatey enough, you have gulped down a big waste of some potentially good chocolate milk)

- Add syrup, as needed.

My wife made a glass this morning and I seriously thought that she had left the milk out and had just used syrup. It was the darkest glass of chocolate milk I have ever seen.

My wife don't play around when it comes to chocolate milk. She just don't.

Granted, she used Hershey's Special Dark syrup, but regardless...I seriously doubt that we will get more than a "wheeze & a sputter" out of that bottle next time we try to use it.

You can believe that she enjoyed that chocolate milk, though. She didn't really need to do the "Pre-gulp Sip" that we talked about earlier. That milk was definitely chocolate.

Technically, I suppose that a person could put just a drop of Hershey's syrup into their milk and call it "chocolate milk", but why would you do such a thing?

Why would you settle for a DROP of chocolate syrup when two INCHES of it makes it so much better?

Why would you even bother making chocolate milk if you don't want it to taste like chocolate? Here are some possibilities:

1. You are being pressured by others to drink chocolate milk, although you would rather not.

2. Your entire family drinks chocolate milk and, at family gatherings, they bring huge tubs of Hershey's syrup and look at you funny if you don't join in.

3. You have heard that chocolate milk is really good, but you're afraid to go "all in", so you're just dabbling in it.

4. You are tired of people asking you "Do you drink chocolate milk?", because when you answer "No", they always say, "Oh, you've GOT to try it! Come on over to my house and I'll make you the absolute best glass of chocolate milk you've ever had! Get in the car!" So you have given in...but not wholeheartedly.

Let's make an application:

How much Jesus do you put into your life?

How much of His teachings, His example, His Word, and His mind have we put into our lives? Our answer will tell us the reason why we even bother with Him at all.

Do we just want a little "drop" of Jesus, so that we can call ourselves a "Christian"? So that we can fit in with other "Christians"? So that we can say that we have Jesus without having Him really affect our lives? So that we can ease our conscience a bit and not be as afraid of eternity? So that we can experience a taste of God, but no more?

Let me encourage you - metaphorically - to grab onto Jesus with both hands and "squeeze" Him into your life. If we want to experience the abundant life that He has promised, there is no substitute for having Him "infiltrate" our lives...in large amounts.

In fact, if we DON'T give Jesus everything; if we DON'T die to our own desires and live for Him; if we don't have a "glass of milk" that has visibly "changed colors"...we really shouldn't call ourselves "Christians", should we?

In the Bible, they called people "Christians" who were actually following Jesus. They were His disciples. They wouldn't settle for a "drop". They wanted to drain the bottle. 

No analogy is perfect, but maybe you get the point of this one:)

So pour, squeeze, stir...squeeze again...and enjoy! 

[And by the way, no offense meant to Michael Jackson. I have all his albums.]