I can't explain the genesis of my anger. I have no idea where it came from. I didn't have a troublesome childhood. I wasn't abused. By all accounts, I should have been a pretty amiable person! Anger has just been my thorn in my side that has been with me all the way. I have had to deal with it since I was young, and I still have to fight the urge to let myself become angry.
Jesus had an opinion about anger. In Matthew 5:22, Jesus said, "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire." Ouch, Jesus. That's an incredible take on something that most of us face every day.
Now let me get something straight, and hear me as someone who struggles with anger and wishes it could poof away. No one, and nothing can MAKE us angry. That was a hard pill for me to swallow when I first heard it. It really came across as arrogant. "Of course things or people can make me angry", I thought. "How else am I suppose to react? Aren't I entitled to be angry?"
Okay, let me put it another way. Nothing can force us to loose our peace. Peace is a precious gift from God. When we walk with God, we have the ability to enter into a peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7). We have to fight to keep our peace rather than pick up the anger we have tried to put down. We can be in control of our emotions. We can, by God's grace, choose which emotions that we want to keep experiencing; the ones we know God wants us to walk in.
I have read before that when we express an emotion because of what someone does to us, it is a lot like if you're holding a drink and someone bumps into you. What happens? The drink spills out. But the fact that it was red wine, and not water is not the fault of the person who bumped into you. They did not force you to choose the wine over the water in the first place. See what I'm saying? When something in life happens that causes you to react, what is already in the inside is going to come out. We are responsible for our reactions, inside our mind and out side of our mind.
Growing up, my dad was always pushing my brothers and I to not give up and doubt our abilities. He expected a lot from us, but that was because he believed in us. My dad held my siblings and I to a much higher standard than I think most parents hold their children to. He didn't take very many excuses at all. As a result, we also believe in ourselves, and we are far more disciplined than a lot of the others in our generation. We were never allowed to just lay down and act defeated. Now, as adults, we have the strength to stand up.
Anger and acting out has been a massive battle of self-control for me. For the longest time, I never addressed my anger. I wouldn't stand up against it at all. I don't know that I ever fully realized that it was something that needed attention until I entered my adult life. This was partly due to the fact that I didn't have much, while growing up, that would challenge my peace. As a kid, I went to school, and hung out with friends every now and then. There was not a whole lot that I was subjected to that pushed my buttons.
After I moved out, I got married, got a job, got some pets, and had to face traffic every day. Everything that I just listed in the previous sentence was a brand new opportunity to let myself be swept away with anger, and a lot of the time I cracked. I began to feel like a monster, because I realized that almost every opportunity that I was given to either choose anger or peace, I failed and choose to lash out in anger. For a while, I was a horrible driver! I would drive very aggressively, and completely embarrass myself. Two times since I have moved out, out of my pitiful inability to cope with things that would trigger my anger, I smashed a window (that's two separate windows).
This is some real humble pie, I'm choking down. It is incredibly mortifying to admit that I was so weak. But I know that God is glorified through my weakness. And if I can relate to even one person- if I can help just one person know that there is a way out, and that they are not alone, then I will open myself up to embarrassment. So if you're anything like I was, and you're struggling to choose love over anger- if you have a short temper, then I can assure you, there IS a way out. The turmoil in your soul is not a permanent fixture with God! Here is what I found helped:
1) Let someone know.
This is one of the fundamental steps in overcoming any great struggle. I urge you to find an accountability partner. Find someone whom you can trust to care about you and walk with you through the fire. Anything that is kept a secret will become far bigger than it really is and cause you double the pain, because you're going at it alone.
I tried very hard to keep my struggle with anger a secret. I was terrified of what people would think of me if they knew. I am not sure what I thought would happen if someone found out the truth, but once I broke down and let someone know the situation, God finally was able to bring some light into the situation. The pressure immediately lessened. And my problem looked a lot less like a giant because I was no longer trying to do it all by myself. Letting someone know about your situation allows the lies that Satan has told you in the dark to be exposed. God will honor your step of faith, and speak through the person to whom you went. In the end, the devil is left powerless.
2) Get ready to forgive.
The path to peace, is also full of forgiveness. I know it's not easy. While in the process to removing the anger in my heart, God had me forgiving constantly. It was not always deep wounds either. Much of the time, it was something like forgiving a driver on the road who felt the need to tailgate me. It was and still is a daily process of letting peoples actions against me out of my clutches and trusting God with them. And I'm not saying that we don't face real things that are incredibly unfair. Without exception, we will all have to deal with someone treating us completely unfairly! But when God is the one we trust with the injustices in our lives, we are able to accept the peace that God has to offer.
3) Be choosy about what you subject yourself to.
After deciding that I didn't want to be such an angry person, something that God showed me was that I would read certain things on the internet, or go to the comment section of certain articles just because I knew that they would be something that I disagreed with. I would read a title and think, "That doesn't sound right", or "I'm sure someone had to say something I won't agree with". Then I would click it purely for the sake of reading something that I disagreed with! I was looking for opportunities to get riled up. How mental is that?!
When we decide to be uncompromising about our peace, we have to make decisions differently. The things that we use to do that fire up our anger can't be the same things we let into our minds anymore. I had been seeking out things that would trigger my anger without really thinking about it, and God showed that to me. He helped me realize that peace is an active choice. There are hardly any times in life when we will stumble on peace accidentally. We have to be intentional about keeping our peace.
That's not to say that we just turn a blind eye to everything that might upset us. There will be important issues in the world that will be upsetting. But don't go in to situations looking to get angry. When reading about an issue in order to educate yourself, put on compassion. Love and compassion don't shake hands with anger. Love and compassion walk hand in hand with community, and they're the only way that real, God-level progress is achieved.
4) Rely on God, and not yourself.
After finally getting low enough that I knew something had to change, I finally gave myself over to God. Up until I realized that I couldn't fix myself, I had been trying to go it on my own. I felt like if I struggled enough- if I tried hard enough, I could beat my anger. I could live in peace and act kindly towards others if only I worked harder. All that sort of thinking did was discourage me, because it is only through Christ that we are overcomers. Romans 8:37 says "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." It was that last part that I was forgetting. I was believing the lie that said I needed to struggle, when I really needed to just let God continue his work in me.
When I got ahold of that, I learned to confess and trust God. After another mess-up, my prayer would go something like this, "Hey, God. I just messed up again. I acted out in anger. I don't want to be that way. I want to follow you! I can't do this on my own, and I don't want to. Please forgive me, and give me the strength to obey you. Thank you, God. I love you, and I know your love for me is so much more amazing. I trust you to complete the work in me!" It was that simple, and even more simple than that sometimes, but it was what I needed. I was not strong enough to replace the anger in my heart to peace and love. I needed Jesus to come in for me and change the angry red wine in my heart to soothing and peaceful water.
Gradually, God did a major work in me. It was and is nothing short of a miracle that I act and behave the way that I do now. Believe me, if I had been on a reality TV show, viewers would have had a hard time believing that I could have changed the way that I have. It was not immediate. Remember, there were two windows. The things that use to bother me still stirred me up sometimes, and I fail a lot. But God did not leave me. Eventually, he replaced my anger with love. Now, it is peace that spills out of me instead of a torrent of anger and insecurity. All that I did was stay connected to God. He was my source. He was the one that accomplished this great work. And now I can look back and glorify God because he didn't leave me in the mess that I was in.
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