Praying for faith over Ukraine conflicts

[SnEptUne]

Please pray for my faith in Christianity over this issue in Ukraine, when all the world leaders, especially those who claims to be Christian, such as Russia, US, Canada, are all judging against other and continue to escalate the conflict in the form of violence, sanctions, and intolerences.

"When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? ... So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?" (I Corinthians 6:1-6)

With the history behind Crimea, where Kievan Rus was baptised to in Orthodox Christianity, and Oleksandr Turchynov who is a baptist Protestant, this conflicts perpetuate the hostility between two branches of Christianity. Religious support on either sides are setting up dichotomy between the Church of the East and of the West. Just like in Syria, such dichotomy gives raise to the Islamic when the Church would rather be killed by Muslims than be subject to each others.

"Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)

Please pray that Ukraine will not become another Syria, and pray that both Harper, Obama, Putin and other Christain leaders will listen to God instead of trying to "help God out" using secular means. Please pray that the Church of the East and the West will find unity in God over the issue in Ukraine, for there is no life apart from Christ - no salvation in EU, Russian Federation, in NATO, but in Christ and only Christ. Amen

[Nate]

Please pray that Ukraine will not become another Syria, and pray that both Harper, Obama, Putin and other Christain leaders will listen to God instead of trying to "help God out" using secular means.

Well from what I've seen it's pretty unlikely Ukraine will become another Syria. While there are certainly some shady things going on and I'll bet more than a few people have "disappeared mysteriously" in the goings-on, from what I understand Crimea was always a lot more culturally close to Russia than the rest of Ukraine anyway, and that there was at least some desire to become part of Russia even before this situation (though it was by no means unanimous).

While this obviously doesn't justify Putin's actions in any sense, what it means is that while nobody is condoning what's happened and in fact many are very against it, since it was hardly an aggressive military invasion into Crimea there isn't really a very compelling reason to actually use military force against Russia. So at least in that sense, you can rest assured that at least for the time being, no one is going to start firing shots. Since a big thing in Syria was the accusation that al-Assad was using chemical weapons on his opponents and that was why Obama was talking about potential military action, there's probably no danger of that happening here either. After all, Russia was instrumental in getting Syria to give up their chemical weapons. I doubt Russia would turn around and use their own after that, especially knowing that chemical weapons used on civilians is a pretty big no-no.

I don't think that we should relax and ignore it and it's definitely a situation that needs prayer, but I think you can maybe be a bit less worried. The odds that Obama is going to decide to send military force to Russia is pretty much nil at this point, and assuming Russia doesn't do anything too stupid after this, should remain at zero for some time. While this is not an ideal situation considering what happened, all we can really do is hope the sanctions wear out Putin enough to make him change his mind.

[mechana2015]

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Already a thread on the subject. Please use that and keep political discussion to a minimum.