Living Out Our Faith

We need to live what we believe. If we believe that Christ has defeated death, that Christ's peace surpasses all understanding, that we wrestle not against flesh and blood, that at God's rebuke both horse and chariot lie still (Psalm 76:6), that the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world (2 Cor. 10:4), and that they will one day "beat their swords into plowshares" (Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3) and if we believe that the church is to be the foretaste and the implementation of those truths then our mission is and must include working for peace with the same energy that nations put into fighting wars.
"Over the past 450 years of martyrdom, immigration and missionary proclamation, the God of shalom has been preparing us Anabaptists for a late twentieth-century rendezvous with history. The next twenty years will be the most dangerous—and perhaps the most vicious and violent—in human history. If we are ready to embrace the cross, God’s reconciling people will profoundly impact the course of world history . . . This could be our finest hour. Never has the world needed our message more. Never has it been more open. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way to peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken." _Ron Sider
There is a slogan used by Christian Peacemaker Teams (thanks to Aaron Taylor for referring to their website) that goes, "What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?" It's an intriguing and challenging thought isn't it?

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