I do have a bad temper, but I don't get mad too easily. I also have
been praying about my anger. I also have been praying about my
irritability as well.
Thanks much.
Jesus Lives! He Reigns Forever!
Lovingly,
Patricia Ferguson
At 06:40 PM 7/20/2007, you wrote:
>This doesn't feel to me like I'm finished with it but enough that I felt it
>was ok to post. It likely will be proofread enlarged and expanded a little
>before I link it up to my website.
>
>Phil.
>
>Burning Anger Which Kindles Rage
>
>
>By Phil Scovell
>
>
>
> I used to always say, and was quite proud of it, too, that it
>took a lot to make me mad. When I did get mad, it was over in
>seconds and I was fine. Somehow, and for some reason, I thought
>this was a good Christian character trait to have. Besides, I
>never got mad often. I felt as if I had my anger under control,
>you see, and the fact that I never stayed mad, well, that proved
>that anger wasn't a problem for me. Boy, was I wrong.
>
> Most people, yes, Christians, too, have a problem with anger.
>Oh, we express it in different ways and for different reason, but
>regardless, it is anger even if we don't know how to identify it.
> Sometimes anger is express by being sad and sometimes by being
>mad but either way, it is anger. Manifested guilt can trigger
>anger. Condemnation, fear, shame, resentment, and just about
>anything you can name allows anger to surface in various ways.
>Just depression itself can trigger anger.
>
> I know what some of you are thinking, and that is, "isn't
>some type of anger a good thing, or at least, naturally
>expressed?" Since we are human, even if we are born again
>Christians, something that someone says to use can, of course,
>create what feels like a natural anger. It is hard to
>differentiate what might be called natural and would be abnormal.
>So let me explain both in one story.
>
> A few years ago, and I have written about this elsewhere on
>my website so you can read about if you are of a mind, my daughter
>was a meth addict. She basically lived on the streets. I finally
>got tired of always calling a half a dozen places, leaving
>messages for her to call, and I eventually told her that under no
>circumstances could she keep her two boys with her any longer. I
>additionally told her I would legally take them from her if she
>didn't leave them with us. This was the result of one morning
>when one of her boys called, using his mom's cell phone, and said
>he and his brother were hungry and couldn't find anything to eat.
>I discovered she was sleeping with a bartender at his house. I
>finally got the boys to put their mother on the phone but they
>said she kept falling back to sleep and couldn't get up. She was
>sleeping off a meth high. She eventually answered the phone but
>by this time, I was hot. I was mad, angry, you might say, due to
>the unsafe situation of my grandsons. I made things quite clear
>to her and she did start leaving the boys with their grandparents.
>However, the anger I expressed didn't go away but deepen.
>
> One 4TH of July, she promised her two boys that she would
>come home and share in the celebrations and fireworks afterwards.
>She never showed. She never even returned any of the many calls
>we put out for her. My anger balloon. I went to bed angry, never
>a good idea under any circumstances, besides, this was normal
>anger. Right? Regardless, the little boys had been cheated once
>again.
>
> Years later, I discovered my anger was still there but at
>least now it was under my control. One evening, as I prayed
>about my anger toward my daughter, the Lord revealed the source.
>It was 11 years earlier the first time my daughter ran away. The
>Enemy took advantage of the anger I had at that time and
>established a strong hold in my life.
>
> Over the years, I still saw the evidence of anger than often
>stood on the very edge of rage. this bothered me greatly as a
>Christian. I began praying and asking the Lord. I am referring
>to anger that develops into rage to the point you might punch a
>whole in a wall, preferably missing the stud, throw something
>against the wall or on to the floor, driving your car over 100
>miles an hour and taking a 45 mile an hour curve, kicking a chair
>to pieces, or even more serious acts of violence. As I prayed, I
>asked the Lord to take me to the first event where I displayed
>such deep anger and rage in my life. I was positive there was no
>such place in my life and what I was experiencing was normal but
>under Biblical and Christian control.
>
> Almost instantly, I saw myself in the family car, mom
>backing out of our gravel driveway, when I remembered that I had
>not locked up my new bicycle. I told mom and she stopped the car.
>I jumped out and ran to the tool shed where I had been parking my
>new bike. I opened the door to the shed, ran to my bike, unlocked
>the padlock hanging from the seat and attempted to bolt my bike to
>our table saw. Something wasn't working right and I was having
>trouble getting the lock to snap close. Without warning, anger
>flared in my mind, and I stood up and began making small animal
>like sounds as I repeatedly kicked the padlock until, to my
>amazement, it broke into several pieces. I hurried out of the
>tool shed and back to the car. Later, my mom would buy me a much
>stronger and better made padlock for my new bike my uncle had
>purchased for me following my dad's death.
>
> As I looked at this memory, feeling the anger rise, my loss
>of self control, and even the animal sounds I made as I kicked
>violently at the malfunctioning lock, it didn't seem all that
>harmless any longer. I was, to say the least, a little amazed at
>such a strong display of anger because I had never once done any
>such thing in my life until then. "Lord, that was pretty bad," I
>admitted, "but I don't see how this is the origin of my anger."
>I knew, of course, this display of rage would have been the
>perfect time for a demon to step into the picture and speak a lie
>so I prayed and asked the Lord, if such were the case, the Lord
>would reveal the presence of the lying spirit and what he said to
>me at that time. Nothing happened in the memory and it all stayed
>the same. That was odd because I was sure, as had happened so
>many other times, this would be the perfect point for a lying
>spirit to implant some type of a lie in my thinking.
>
> I heard and felt nothing. I focused on the memory, letting
>the feelings intensify, because I recognized this display of anger
>wasn't natural, and asked the Lord, "Where did this anger come
>from, Lord?" I suddenly saw a teenage neighbor who lived down the
>street. I scanned many of the memories I had of this 16 year old
>boy come to mind and there were several.
>
> Dan was funny. All the kids liked him and looked up to him.
>He was the first kid in the neighborhood to get his own
>motorscooter and he even gave us rides around the block. When he
>got his first car shortly thereafter, a Junker to be sure, he was
>always working on it. It was a convertible and Danny bought spare
>tires from the junkyard because he burned so much rubber at every
>corner, tires never lasted very long. We were all 5 and 6 years
>younger than Danny but when he let us, we followed him everywhere
>and he never seemed to mind.
>
> I fondly remember the day he and some friends decided to
>convert his car into an on-the-floor 3-speed stick shift. They
>worked on it all day. It was summer and they were still working
>on it when the street lights came on that night. Danny got all of
>us to help push his car back from the garage where they had been
>working on it all day. We finally got it pushed into the street,
>Danny started the engine and tried to get the gears to
>synchronize. It wasn't working so he yelled for us to keep
>pushing him down the street as he tried to mesh the gearing. You
>never heard such horrible grinding in your whole life as that old
>ugly olive green car slowly rolled down the dark street and under
>the bright street light. No, they never got it working that night
>but eventually they did and Dan became the hot rod king of the
>neighborhood; burning rubber for several yards around every
>corner. Of course, when your tires are bald, you do a lot of
>slipping before you gain any traction.
>
> "Lord?" I queried, "What does Danny have to do with the first
>memory event? I don't get it."
>
> "Think more about Danny. What else do you remember about
>him," the Holy Spirit encouraged me in my thoughts as I focused on
>praying.
>
> Then I saw it. Danny had a temper. It took him awhile to
>get mad but when he did, he became very destructive.
>
> One day, his brother, Ron, who was in my grade at school, and
>I went down to their basement to play ping pong. I think this
>was my first time playing against my schoolmate because they had
>just gotten the table installed recently. Ron took the other end
>of the table and as I picked up the paddle at my end, I noticed my
>end of the ping pong table was marred and chipped and fragments of
>wood were literally broken off. I looked at my paddle and it was
>marred and chipped, too. "What happened down here, Ron?" I asked;
>puzzled.
>
> "Oh, that's Danny's end of the table. Every time he misses
>the ball, and especially when he loses, he beats that end of the
>table with his paddle. That's why we always make him play from
>that end so he doesn't completely ruin the table."
>
> I remember laughing, as did Ron, Danny's younger brother,
>because we always thought Dan's display of anger, and fits of
>rage, was put on, that is, he really wasn't mad but just playing
>like he was. We were wrong.
>
> As I walked around through my childhood memories, I remember
>many other times Dan showed off his anger and rage. Still, I
>wasn't convinced this had anything to do with me and I told the
>Lord as much. Then I remembered.
>
> Ron and I were playing basketball one day. He had a hoop
>hanging over the main entrance to the garage and we played
>basketball a lot. The Lord showed me something I had not
>understood at the time. I had noticed Dan was gone for awhile. I
>asked Ron about it and he said, "Oh, he is at a school." It was
>summer so I figured Danny was in summer school but I still didn't
>understand because he wasn't coming home nights. Ron explained it
>was a special school. That's probably what Ron's parent told
>him.
>
> Ron's dad came out and we stopped shooting baskets. His dad
>wanted to get something out of the garage so we walked into the
>garage with him. during the short time we were in the single car
>garage, Ron's dad was digging around in some boxes and moving
>things around as he hunted for whatever it was he wanted. In one
>box, as we watched, he pulled back an oily grimy rag. He
>uncovered an off white plaster form of a skeleton head with its
>empty eye sockets and toothy grin peaking out at us. We all
>laughed. Ron's dad was a funny man and we all liked him a lot.
>He said, "Well, hello Dan. I guess your back. You are looking
>much better than when you left. How have you been, son?" Ron and
>I laughed and laughed and returned to playing basketball once his
>dad had returned to the house.
>
> "Do you understand now?" I heard God's thoughts in mine.
>
> "Yes, I said. Danny was on medication, I remember now, for
>his anger and depression. I remember hearing the adults
>discussing it or something," I said. "He was at a mental health
>facility for his depression and rage."
>
> "That's right," the Lord confirmed. This anger you are
>looking for came from Danny."
>
> I had no doubt believing what I had just seen and heard in my
>thoughts through my memories. Danny's rage was no act. They had
>hospitalized him trying to gain control of his depression. I no
>longer needed to see a demonic manifestation of a lying spirit
>because I knew they had to have been there.
>
> Danny was like a hero to me. My sharpest and most
>gratifying memory of Dan was the day he was working on his
>motorscooter. The chain kept coming off and he was trying to
>adjust the tension. "Wanna ride to test this chain out, Scov?" he
>asked.
>
> "Sure!" I said with honest enthusiasm. Dan had never asked
>me before, although he had given other kids rides in the
>neighborhood. He probably figured my folks wouldn't have allowed
>it. I didn't bother saying, "I should go ask my mom first."
>Instead, I helped him turned the scooter around, climbed on behind
>his seat, and listened to the engine as Dan fired the machine up.
>He slowly rolled out of the driveway, turning right, and headed
>down toward my elementary school. He drove several blocks around
>the neighborhood. Eventually, he seemed satisfied the chain was
>working properly so we headed home.
>
> Driving passed the school, he stopped at a busy street and
>waited till the light changed. Twisting the throttle hard, he
>tried to lay rubber as we turned out on to the four lane busy
>street. The scooter gathered speed and Dan pushed the low gear to
>the limit. The motor wound up to a high pitch and at the right
>moment, he slammed the gear shift into second gear. The chain
>instantly fell off and with the chain dragging on the ground, he
>allowed the bike to coast. As it lost momentum, he pulled into a
>parking lot. We both jumped off and Dan kicked the kickstand
>down. He then threaded the chain back into place and we climb
>aboard. He didn't try any more burns the rest of the way home. I
>talked about my ride with friends for weeks. I was bonded to Dan
>that day, in some respects, and I knew in my heart, I wanted to be
>just like him when I grew to be his age. There was my lie; I was
>like Dan. After the Lord showed me the connection, I prayed
>against the unholy bond that had been developed during childhood.
>
> Does this mean I no longer get mad or angry? Of course not.
>The anger I expressed concerning my daughter was legitimate but
>allowing it to expand gave place to the Enemy to work against me
>and so he did. Any time I get mad or angry in any way, I begin
>looking to see if their is a source. There are many areas of
>exposure we face as Christian which anger is used to throw up a
>wall of protection. It masks the true nature of the fear we
>really feel deep down inside. As I mentioned before, there is a
>natural anger but few ever recognize the difference.
>
>
>How Big Is God? The Size Of Your Mouth.
>WWW.SafePlaceFellowship.com
|