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.

L.O.V.E.

Weddings are one of those services that we as ministers provide to people, outside of our Sunday and Wednesday duties...
I really see it as a privilege, that two people would entrust to me the beginning of the most significant human relationship they will ever have. That's pretty heavy stuff...
Except, I guess, if you view marriage through the lens of our culture...where anyone can go online, and in about 15 minutes, be ordained to perform marriages through any number of sanctioning "churches". For some reason this doesn't seem right to me...

It doesn't bother me that you don't have to actually be a pastor to perform marriage ceremonies. I think what bothers me is that this is just another symptom of how we in America have trivialized the significance of the union between a man and woman.

Even if you don't believe in God, there is something pretty amazing about the level of faith and commitment two individuals are placing in and toward one another when they take up the responsibility of uniting in marriage.
Maybe that's the whole issue right there...commitment is so fleeting and relationships treated as utterly disposable, that we take the path of least resistance when entering in to what essentially is a covenant between the man and woman.
Here I go...it's not just the marriage ceremony that's been corrupted, the whole idea of love is completely polluted. Love has become a means to an end, we use it to satisfy our selfish desires and twisted sense of entitlement and gratification. Love is no longer love...it is a vehicle that is bound to the servitude of self.
Love without strings attached...how quaint.
When you talk about deference and sacrifice for the sake of the highest good of your partner, people almost scoff with disdain and disbelief at the "unenlightened, irrelevant and antiquated", idealism and naivete that you possess.
You know what? I'm perfectly content to stay naive, idealistic, unenlightened, antiquated and even irrelevant, if it means that the love i give and receive is unfettered by the freedom genuine love supplies.
The measure of genuine love is just that: it is both freely given and freely received...just as God intended.
Man, i could go on and on, but the bottom line is this:
Love doesn't do what we feel like doing, true love is bound to the character of its creator and in that, we find all that we're looking for and more.
I Corinthians 13) says something like this: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
Indeed, how quaint...