The other week I was in Florida, enjoying the fact I was back in the Sunshine State after a six-year absence (my sentimental favorite place on earth is the stretch of ocean behind the long-demolished art deco Surfside Hotel in Miami’s South Beach—the first place I ever swam in the ocean at five years old).

In having lunch at the Cocoa Beach seafood joint “Barrier Jack’s,” with a friend who now lives in Orlando after being displaced by Hurricane Rita, he ordered “sweet tea,” and, for me, it was like hearing someone ask for Cincinnati Chili or a Chicago Red Hot.

It’s just something you NEVER hear of in New York because it doesn’t exist.

But down South, sweet tea, affectionately known as the “nectar of heaven,” is common place.

My friend’s drink selection instantly reminded me of a sermon my pastor, a native of Alabama, once gave on how when a person trusts in Jesus Christ, they become sweet tea—which, in essence, is a totally new compound created through the application of heat to the sugar in the tea.

“The Christ life is not sweetened tea; it’s not my life sweetened by having Jesus Christ in it—it’s a whole new compound,” explains Richard Jordan, pastor of Shorewood Bible Church, Rolling Meadows, Ill., in this old sermon I have on tape. “That’s why when people tell you the way to get saved is to, ‘Invite Jesus into your life,’ that’s sweetened tea. People say, ‘What you need is to let Jesus into your heart.’ That’s sweetened tea.

“You don’t want sweetened tea, because you know what happens when you got a big old jar of sweetened tea? You let it sit long enough, and all that sugar settles to the bottom, and you drink that tea off the top, and you know what, it’s bitter again.

“Your nature, your very identity, the spiritual compound of who you are, has been changed. You’ve been wedded together, placed into a spiritually, supernaturally created union with the Lord Jesus Christ, and that’s the difference between just having Christ in your life and Christ being your life.

“You can let that sweet tea sit out on your counter for a month, and it might grow moss on the top, but it'll never have sugar granules in the bottom. Because it isn't tea with sugar in it, it's sweet tea. You can never separate it!”

From a simple Google search, I found a recipe for sweet tea that says you simply add sugar to water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. 

“It doesn't matter how much water you boil; just make sure it gets really hot and bubbly,” informs the recipe. “If you remembered to put the sugar in already, you're doing great. Now get your tea bags ready so that when the water comes to a boil you can just toss them in… Cover the pot and let the tea steep for as long as possible. It will be good in 20 minutes, but even better in an hour or two. Then pour the tea syrup (that's what it's actually called when made this way) into your gallon-sized pitcher and fill with water, making sure to gently squeeze the tea bags to get as much tea as possible into the water.”

In Jordan’s sermon, he explains, “While tea is boiling in water, you take the tea bag out, and you take that hot water, and you put a cup of sugar in that hot water. When you put that sugar in the hot water, that sugar experiences a chemical catalyst that causes the sugar and the water, at a molecular level, to combine. And, literally the molecules of the sugar connect to the molecules of the water—the tea—and now there is literally—analyzable in a laboratory—a chemical change, and you no longer have sugar, and you no longer have tea, you have sweet tea.

“It's literally a union and you have a new compound. The very substance of the tea has been altered into a new substance.

“I think, ‘Wow, that's what it is when I got saved!’

“I went to church all my life. When I was a baby, I don't remember it, but the records are there. They threw water in my face, and crowned me and christened me, and I got a God-momma and a God-daddy, and I was raised in a church. When I got to be 12, I took catechism, got me a certificate that said I'm a fit member of the kingdom of heaven and with all the rights and privileges thereof, but I was lost on my way to hell.

“I realized for six months I was lost on my way to hell. I used to go to bed at night, pull the cover up over my head in my bed, and pray, ‘Lord, now I lay me down to sleep, I pray o’ Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake… Oh, God, don't let me die tonight because I'll die and go to hell.’

“Dec. 31, 1962, I heard and understood the gospel for the first time in my life. I'd been in church all my life, and I never doubted a day in my life that Jesus Christ was God who died at Calvary for the sins of the world, but I just never personally trusted Him.

“I had a life with Jesus in it, just like you got tea with sugar in it. But that night I got saved my life didn't have Jesus in it, Jesus BECAME my life. And I was baptized by the Spirit of God into living oneness and union with Jesus Christ.

“I was put in Christ. I know today people don't like the concept of positional truth—you know, you got to talk about identity, and not position—but the preposition ‘in’ means it’s a positional preposition. You are in Christ. That's your new identity, but you got it in Christ. You're sweet tea—this new compound, this new thing.

“Before I got saved, I read my Bible every day; I took the little denominational monthly and every morning, read the little devotion. I prayed every morning at 10 minutes after 8 because I had a prayer partner, and he was praying over yonder and I was praying here, and we knew we were praying together, and we knew that if more people prayed, God blessed them. We knew by ‘much speaking’ God would hear us, just like the heathen ‘know’ that according to Matthew 6.

“And I had a relationship with God. I had Him in my life. When I was 14 years old, I had won a $100 U.S. Savings Bond in my church because I was the ‘Christian Teen of the Year.’ My point is, I had God and Christ in my life, but He wasn't my life.

“That night of Dec. 31, I realized not just that I was lost, but that it was ‘not I, but Christ,’ and I quit trusting myself and what I was going to do, and I relied exclusively upon Him. That night, I became ‘sweet tea.’ Being ‘sweet tea’ is a miracle worth experiencing. You understand it's just a metaphor, but it’s being who God makes you in Christ.”