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