Rage and anger has been discussed, but brawling is a new area to discuss that also damages relationships.

Brawling is where people get past just the verbal arguments, into the area where physical force gets used. Yes! Christians also use physical force sometimes, and Paul is advising against it. This is not going to be part of a successful life coping strategy and should be suppressed according to him. Using physical attributes to enforce our will on others is the lowest and most demeaning form of relationship with someone else. It’s not in Gods plan for us!

 

“He or she deserved it!”

 

These are words we often hear. Are they true? Perhaps in the heat of the moment we believe what we say, but really, if we are honest, we ourselves deserve a lot as well and we get forgiven. God forgives us any sin we have committed (remember SIN=selfish, ignorant and nasty things we do). Maybe we need to forgive others for things they deserve. This is called having mercy on others!

I like to think of those words put together by that English playwright, Shakespeare, where the character Portia says that we cannot force someone to show mercy, but that it blesses the person who gives it, and the person who receives it, and it is so noble that we become like God when we show it to others!

 

Mercy is really what others deserve and what we deserve! If you want to raise yourself to the level of an exception human being, mercy is a key attribute to enabling this. It builds you and builds others.

How about it? Shall we aim to be exceptional?

Marriages fail due to what gets termed to be “Irreversible breakdown in relationships”. Child parent, family relationships, and friendships often fail for the same reason.

Almost everywhere we go we hear of people that have relationship problems. Some are more severe than others. Most are because one person fails to understand or care for the perspective of another.

 

Healthy relationships are like healthy plants, they need nurturing and attention. You don’t have to do much to damage a relationship. Just do nothing! That will probably be just as effective. Do the wrong thing and you are sure to damage the relationship. So how can we succeed?

 

A short piece of advice from thousands of useful pieces in the bible goes as follows:

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

 

Resentment or bitterness is that feeling of deep anger and ill-will towards others. In spiritual terms it is spiritual poison to a healthy life. Like poison, which often has a bad taste when swallowed, bitterness in the beginning is recognised to be unhealthy, but we don’t spit it out. We accept it! Wow! That’s the first mistake!

We should get rid of it as soon as we recognise it. If we accept it, like poison it will be dormant for a short while before it starts killing us. It will churn our emotions into a mess! It will destroy relationships with others because they don’t want to hear our negativity and nasty comments. It will sometimes injure our physical health, causing ulcers and other unpleasant physical problems. What does it achieve in re-orienting the other person? Very little!

 

If the object of our resentment comes into contact with it, they will in all likelihood become more imbedded in whatever we are finding offensive. Nobody gains from this behaviour! So, to get rid of it! Hand the person over to God and remember revenge is his, that God is just, and that nothing goes on without being paid for in spiritual terms. Rest in that and forgive! 

This is the tough love approach, but it’s the best we can do for ourselves in these circumstances.

Interesting how we react in traffic isn't it?

If you can drive, have you experienced those parked lanes of cars on a highway that seem to edge forward far less than they stand around expelling noxious fumes like a bunch of grumpy metallic men smoking cigars in an overcrowded room. If you don't drive,have you sat in a passenger seat wondering which year you will get to the destination, or trying to push back those bored thoughts, or turning up a new song on your iPod.

Doesn't the way people react say a lot about them? 
 
There's the aggressive pushy, goal oriented, "got to get there at all costs" types.(I don't appreciate them) Then there's the "I must look beautiful so let me pluck my eyebrows (with the parkway watching) and do my make-up" types. There's the glowering "I'm stuck in the mud" types.  There's the folk who are so "busy with each other that they even don't see the traffic starting to move"  types, and then there's a relaxed contented "We will get there when we get there, let's just relax, keep others calm and enjoy the moment" types(not so many of them).

Lot's of different people with different objectives, desires, and wants, but all going the same way.

Rather like life isn't it? The interesting thing about life is that our final destination is not known by everyone, and all we know is that we all get to one point(death) on way, and then the road divides in two streams of traffic with God switching which car goes in which stream. i.e. the final destination is death with a reward or long term pain!

Since we are heading in the same direction, we should at least make it pleasent. We should avoid cutting off, damaging or frustrating those we live with, shouldn't we. I remember one of those traffic occasions where the delay was so long that people switched off their cars and got out. Soon they were chatting with each other. After the grumbling due to the conditions, they were soon getting to know each other. People started talking with strangers, jokes started to fly, stories found their way into the open, and laughter filled the air. When the traffic started to move it was with some relunctance that we all went back to our cars.

Let's make our life journey worth while! As Christians we want to improve our lives and those around us. Let's remember that as we drive along! Give others space, it makes you safe.

Have a wonderful day! 

How do we deal with anger? Paul quotes “In your anger do not sin" and then explains this as “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

So, those guidelines says don’t let anger follow us to sleep! We must forgive others and clear away anger before we sleep!

Why?

Maybe scientist will find proof of the fact that going to bed with negative thoughts damages us, I don't know, but God says it does. He wants the best for us. So that we don’t open ourself to the pain described in some of my previous blogs. Let's be wise, and let our anger go before we sleep.

Why?

Firstly, my experience is that it's easier to get to sleep. Secondly, we need to understand that anger normally hurts the person who has it, more than the person that we aim it at. Often they don't even know about our anger. Right?

So how do we "let go" of anger?

Perhaps the best solution is to let go of it before it errupts! It is a fact that only we can give others the right to make us angry, they cannot make us angry without our permission. We have to decide to let them do it.

Yes, they may be obnoxious pigs, but we have to actually have give them some respect before their words can hurt us. Right? (Actions are more direct, but then you have the law on your side). We generally decide to take their words to heart, and engage our mind to react (generally due to pride, which may be a sin), then we let our mind trigger our emotions, and our emotions trigger our body (i.e. mouth, fists, etc).

There are lots of opportunities to disarm the anger bomb, but  often we don't even try!

The first thing to do is to decide whether what they are saying is true. If it is, we shouldn't get angry, we should put it away in that part of our mind to consider, pray about, and look for ways to improve ourselves. In this case, we probably should be thanking them instead of getting angry (I do KNOW thats asking a bit much, but it's what we should be doing! I also KNOW, that I often fail there! :) Isn't pride a pain in the brain that tends to make us all the same!) 

Okay, so let's say they are straight WRONG in their attack on us as we perceive it! What do we do? REVENGE????

Revenge is a strange deal. It is only helpful to add to our pain. If we succeed, we may think we have won, but often all that we do is drop down to the other person's level. Satisfaction doesn't take away the pain of what they did, and while we plot and plan, we rob ourselves of peace, happiness and the joy of life!

As the years have gone by, I have seen more and more, that it is sometimes better to do nothing! Simply let their words and intent slide off my ego. What?...you say! Are you NUTS? 

Yeah! you heard right, I said do nothing! This has some significant benefits. As a good friend of mine says, generally "Sanity will prevail". People who abuse others, are quickly identified as bullys and straight out piggish people! Often, they wallow in the pain of their own lack of self respect, and take it out on others. Picking on you will only mess them up futher. Doing nothing will give them more pain (if they are stupid), or a chance to heal (if they are wise), since you are pointing out they are not respectable (and they know that already or they wouldn't be demanding respect). People will see this, give them time! Others will generally see them for who they are, and then, sometimes they pick on someone who has the "clout", both metaphorically and actually, to easily take them down.

Personally, I look past their poor behaviour and try to see a person who must have been badly hurt at some time to get so bad. Often, I pray for them. Then, I hand them over to my big brother and Father. God says " Vengence is mine" and "I will repay", and so I ask Jesus to take care of the poor misguided soul, and pray that the Father will make sure that justice gets done. That's bringing out the big guns!

That also saves me from having to get overly worked up. That in turn, enables me to sleep! This means the other person doesn't get to hurt me more than once! If I didn't do this, they would probably hurt me by keeping me awake half the night, loading my body with toxins, and stealing my peace!

Okay, what else can we do?

Well, haveyou got a carefully kept set of special happy memories that you can bring out and think of when the need arises? 

Before I go to sleep I pull open my memory drawer and think of special things that have made me very happy and glad. People who are really important to me, that I love, and that love me. I thank God for them! I try to think of a song that describes that happy feeling and mentally sing part of it. I allow these to be the things that lead me into sleep. Maybe even a verse from the bible that is uplifting can help.

This all means tomorrow I get to be able to study, work, and live in a fresh and comfortable way. It's really worth it! All because I choose to not give the nasty person the ability to hurt me more than they already have. Isn't that a good decision?

 

Now, let’s get it straight, we are not perfect and do fail, but the application of God’s love and spiritual support clears the failures away. Our decisions need to be tailored to do the best for ourselves and for others.

If we aim for this we will reduce our failures daily! Thats my objective! Want to join me in this goal?

This brings us to that little word that everyone thinks they understand, but none of us do, “Sin”. (Selfish or stupid, ignorant and nasty things we do).  This word is not used much anymore. Particularly not in everyday life! So what does it mean? Many of us think it means disobeying Gods rules and regulations. We have this internal idea of a huge book of rules and God as a cosmic policeman who will hand out fines as we cross the line.  “Nothing is further from the truth!” 

Because you may miss the meaning the first time I will repeat it differently…. “God is not interested in punishing us for failing to obey rules he established!”

 

This can be confusing to those of us who have believed this lie!  Christians reading this at this point may start to get all concerned. “God will punish those who contravene his rules”, they may say.  Perhaps, but he is not doing it because he wants too! He doesn’t want too and he has tried everything to get us out of this situation, to the point of stepping in and being willing to take the consequences of our doing these bad things on himself, so we don’t have to. He wouldn’t do that if he wanted to punish us would he?

 

Would you offer to do the jail duty that comes with a sentence for your brother or sister who used illegal drugs, in order to get them off free, even if you weren’t part of any of the activity yourself and you know they were guilty! That’s a big thing to do isn’t it? Well God takes everything we do wrong and steps in to protect us by taking our sentence on himself. We get to walk away free! All we have got to do is acknowledge that God is who he says he is! It’s a bit like if we when went to that judge to offer to pay the price for our brother or sister who used those illegal drugs. Our brother or sister would have to acknowledge who we were and accept what we did to get the judge to accept us as a substitute. If they didn’t, they would have to pay the price themselves. Our offer to the Judge would stand, but it would be their refusal to accept it that would condemn them to the sentence, not anything we do, right?

 

Well, God’s son, Jesus, paid for all “sin” according to the bible. However, we have to acknowledge who Jesus is and what he has done to get us off the sentence. It’s easy to do, but if our pride gets in the way, our refusal to accept the offer can take us down!

 

God’s love for us is huge, and covers everything, but we are often so scared of letting him into our lives and acknowledging him that we often we damage ourselves and miss reaching our potential. That’s sin! It’s missing the mark enabling us to reach our full potential!

 

Unfortunately we have such limited visibility into what makes the spiritual world work that we cannot understand spiritual aspects very well. We get sidetracked into sensual activities that misdirect us, and we don’t do what is best for ourselves. Sin is what happens, and God’s response is to pay the price so we can be free. It’s up to us to take God up on his offer. That then starts up the spiritual powerhouse that supports us in overcoming our anger and other inadequacies. It doesn’t stop there since God wants us to do a few additional things to make our lives good. God wants us to follow his guidelines to get the best performance out of our lives.

 

The logic is this….Say we buy a specialized piece of equipment. Normally it comes with an instruction manual. We can ignore those instructions and try and use it using our own knowledge. If we do, then it is considered our fault when the equipment fails to deliver the correct results. Similarly, God’s instruction manual to get the best performance from our lives is the bible. We can choose to ignore the guidelines. If we do, it’s not God’s fault when we fail to get the best performance out of our life! I Honestly we have to say it’s our own fault! Also, if we don’t read the bible(or get it read to us), then it is also not God’s fault if we don’t know what to do. If you ignore the instruction manual, the machine will still break. Ignoring it doesn’t protect you from the damage does it?