I start my mornings with drip coffee. This has involved grinding the beans then trying to balance our old Melitta filter thing on one of our narrow travel mugs. This precarious arrangement has led to spilling the beans more than a few times. I figured I needed a mug wide enough at the top to accommodate the 4" filter and small enough at the bottom to fit into the holders in our Toyota. I stumbled upon the perfect mug at the prestigious shopping establishment, Walmart. God was with me; it was marked down on clearance. For this week's installment of my Messages About Purpose and Strategy, I'll tell what this new mug has to do with representing Christ in our world.

Little did I know, but my mug is not just a mug, but a product in a diverse line of products marketed as Bubba Kegs. They even have a cool website. A little manual came with the mug (imagine that). And I read it (stranger still). The literature provided promises that this Bubba Keg would make me smarter, more popular, and something else great, but I can't remember the third guarantee. It may have been something about being better looking.

All this made me think about how easy it is to misrepresent Christianity with false advertising. We tend to make, or at least imply, some pretty wild promises that Jesus never made. "Come to Christ and you will be happy. Just have faith and you will prosper financially." Is that how we market the faith? What did Jesus say, but that we would be hated if we follow him. Paul wrote that all who want to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution. Let's be sure that we don't make silly promises when we attempt to lead people to Christ. The truth is that we come to follow Christ because the gospel is true, not because drinking from that fount makes us smarter, more popular or better looking.