As I sat across the desk from the man who was my so-called anger counselor, I could feel the rage raising up in me. As if reading my mind, he asked, “Why are you so angry? Who is it that you are angry with?” At that moment I focused all my internal rage at him and with all the calm ferocity I could manage I said, “Why am I angry and who is the object of my anger? Is that what you so want to know? Ok, I am angry with you! I am angry with your smiling assistant! I am angry with the judge who said I needed to waste my time talking with you. And why…. It is pretty simple, I hate self-righteous people like you, who can sit there and judge me!”
There was so much more I wanted to scream. Instead I bowed my head and clenched my fists. Oh, what I really wanted to do was wipe the knowing smirk off his face. I wanted to break the picture of his o so perfect family sitting on his desk so neatly arranged with all things in their place. I wanted to break up this office and then I really wanted a drink or maybe ten. Yet even that was being taken from me. My system was filled with Antabuse, the drug which supposedly curbs the drinking urge by making some who take it violently sick. As with the counselling, it too was court ordered. If I had not hit that guy none of this would be happening, but you know he deserved it!
Three weeks before I had been sitting in a bar minding my own business. Just getting off of work, I needed to unwind and down five or six whiskey and cokes. After two of them a guy had come in and sat on the barstool next to me. I mean, there was a whole bar to sit at why did he have to sit next to me? I guess that is not what set me off. I think it was because he was whistling to himself. Maybe that would not have even been so bad, but it was the same tune over and over. Finally, I decided I am just going to get up take my drink and go to the other end of the bar. But it irked me. So, no if anyone was going to move it needed to be him!
I raised my hand and hailed Tim the bartender and as he drug himself away from the TV above the corner of the bar where he was sitting, I said, “Give me another one of these and tell this jerk to move somewhere else.” Pointing at the guy next to me. Tim just shrugged and said, “It’s a free country, man, he can sit wherever he wants.” and began to mix my drink. That irked me even more. So, I turned to the guy and said, “Listen, pal, why don’t you move down there by Tim and let him listen to your whistling for a while. You are driving me nuts.” The guy just looked up and smiled and began to whistle louder. That is when it happened. I hauled back with all I had and hit him as hard as I could. He went down. Tim called the cops and I now sat across this desk from another guy I wanted to hit, raging!
When I have talked to people in recent years about my addictions, many times it seems that it was my problems with alcohol and drugs that caused me to follow the many wrong paths in my life but it is not true. The truth is all my problems, including my addictions stemmed from anger. For many years as I was coming to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, I had a hard time seeing or as I saw it admitting that I had a ‘rage problem’. It was not until I read these verses in God’s Word, the Bible, that I finally saw and could confess what had driven me for years. There is a lot to this but please read it and let it sink in:
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he has caused to dwell in us?” (James 4: 1-5)
When I read this, I knew God was talking to me! I could see that all my life I had battled with selfish desires. Coveting and doing without restriction. No, I never killed but there were many times I had in my heart. And even after I began to pray and think I was in a relationship with God I could see my motivation was the same as it had been all my life. “Give ME!” “Help ME!” ME, ME, ME! Always in my asking it was still self-centered. When I finally said, “Lord, it is YOU, not ME, who can change this broken, angry man into a new creation!” It finally did change.
Soon I found I no longer needed to yell into the phone a string of swear words at construction people I was dealing with. I no longer had to sit in resentment as someone else was doing what bothered me. And I no longer needed to drink to quell the anger which had held me captive forever! I finally found a freedom I never knew.
For years I found myself in situations I have described in this blog. I was sentenced to anger management at least three different times. It never helped because I could only find my life managed when I surrendered it to the One who gave everything to save even me. I cannot say that the old rage never flairs in me anymore, but I can say I know Who can handle it. The Apostle Paul knew it to when he said,
“I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13)
Today, my friends, in this world where anger and rage rule, so can you if you are willing to turn it over to Him.
Blessings
John
5/18/20
