This is SOOOOOOOOOO true. You don't see many Benny Hinn trips to Haiti, but I'll guarantee you there are a bunch of those fundamentalists the press loves to make fun of out there running clinics, drilling water wells and starting schools. Real faith is required to be in those places. BTW, if the name it, claim it, and frame it guys are right, Paul really got a raw deal: "For I will show him how he must suffer for my name"
Hang in there. Brilliant post.
This may sound like a nit pick: but this is a quotation not apropos to the argument. Paul, while still Saul, did his best to trash Jesus Christ to the point of getting Christians violently killed. He had to suffer more than most other Christians, as a matter of poetic justice. Christians must be willing to suffer when God calls them to do so for the sake of Jesus Christ, but they should not idolize suffering itself. Paul didn't; as a Christian he had pleasant times as well as painful.