Step up your game!

Hi, my name is Troy and I'm a recovering American Christian.
I've been an American Christian pretty much my whole life.
Oh, I've had measurable periods in my life where I was less dedicated to Christ than others...but I've never really not been a Christian.
Growing up in church kind of has a strange effect on a person...especially in America.
We have this really odd perspective on what it means to be a Christian.
In America we tend to think that the church is for us, that the church exists to serve our "needs", cater to our whims and always make sure we are comfortable.
I'm not proud to say it, but, I bought in to that perspective for a while...a long while. Oh, I served in the local church,"did ministry" and paid my tithe...but it wasn't until 1997, when I had my first opportunity to step across the borders of America and see Christians, real Christians, thriving in conditions I found abhorrent, that my perspective began to change.
Since that time I've had the privilege of visiting some other countries and inter-acting with Christians in places like Eastern Europe, Central America, The Caribbean, Southeast Asia and been able to see what Christian life outside the American matrix is like.
Did you know that people actually have to walk to get to church? (uphill both ways) And once they get there, they don't have cushy chairs or pews on which to rest their weary legs...they might even have to sit on the floor...
Wayne Cordeiro, in his book The Divine Mentor, tells a story about visiting China and speaking to a group of pastors and church leaders who rode a train 13 hours to get to where he was speaking. Once they got there, they sat on a wooden floor with no air conditioning for 3 days and listened intently to Wayne speak. Only a few of these Chinese church leaders actually had a Bible, so they would share scraps of paper on which they had written portions of scripture that they had memorized. Out of the 20 leaders Wayne met with, 18 of them had spent time in prison because they were Christians. (gathering in a non-government sanctioned church in China carries with it a mandatory 3 year prison sentence.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, what have we become? Over-indulged? Yes. Self-righteous? Yes. Self-indulgent? Check. Entitled? Absolutely. We are most certainly, lazy, pathetic excuses for what Christians are called to be...and I am one.
At the end of his visit with the Chinese church leaders, Wayne asked if he could pray for them. The most amazing thing occurred in that moment...They wanted Wayne to ask God to help them become like him. What they meant was, that they would be able to enjoy the freedom of religion that we have here in America. But Wayne, in a moment of great wisdom, said; "No, i will not pray that you become like us. But I will pray...that we become like you."
As a recovering American Christian, my prayer for myself and for the American church is that we do grow to become more and more like our Christian brothers and sisters around the globe who live like what the Apostle Paul described in his letter to the church in the city of Philippi: "but whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but that which is through faith in Christ - the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection from the dead."
My name is Troy and I'm a recovering American Christian.

God - or vending machine?

I've had some conversations lately that have caused me to really think about what I think about...I know, that's a rough beginning to this post, but, bear with me.
We, as human beings, have this startling capacity for self-deception.

We can talk ourselves in to believing just about anything, as long as we agree with ourselves... I've taught the last couple of weeks in our Wednesday night youth gathering about this subject. And last night, I camped on the point that we have to be careful, because we can give in to the tendency to use the Bible to support our facades or errant opinions, because they help us create the "reality" we desire instead of the one of which we are actually a part.

So, without getting too deep into the proper interpretation of scripture and the need for context when doing so, here is the best way I know to avoid our subtle tendency to twist God's promises into our plans or false reflections of what they really are.

That tendency is held at bay if we commit ourselves to seek God. Seeking God isn't always going provide instant solutions to life's problems. However, it will cause us to realize that there is much more going on around us than the silo of ourselves. We are involved in a much bigger story! A story in which God resolves the disappointments of life in ways that far exceed our shortened line of sight.
God's ways are not like our ways, His plans, though always for our good, often don't match our consumer - get it now, mentality.
Our difficulty is that our sight is just limited enough that we can't see past the end of our own nose.

"We will seek Him, and we will find Him, when we seek for Him with all our heart."

(a couple of thoughts for this post were borrowed from an article in Relevant magazine; The Most Misused verse in the Bible, by Chris Blumhofer.)