Really, what kind of "reality" do you want to live in?

Blogs can make me think, can challenge me, can offend, can feed me.  I recently read two blogs.  The first one is a christian satire that I enjoy, and it was highlighted in a secular paper.  The second was a christian author posing a question regarding churches and developing leadership (I'll think about posting the blog links, but I'm not inspired to at the moment.  Both led to strong dialog in the comments, and this is what I learned:

• Non-christians really do think we are off our rockers for believing in God.  They find it unreasonable, illogical, and weak.
• The non-christians who posted couldn't fathom how we believe in heaven, but were proud to announce they were headed to hell?  Not sure how it is easy to see yourself going to hell and yet find heaven unreasonable?
• Non-christians believe we are unthinking, group-think, naive people. 
• There are a lot of "unchurched" christians out there with bitterness regarding the local church, unforgiveness and unhealed hurt.
• There is a an awful lot of generalizations and stereotyping thrown around as weapons both from non-christians and christians alike
• There are also a lot of justifications and rationalizations based upon personal experience/pain (understandable, right?  Or is it?)

I could go on, but it's depressing.  Instead, I'd like to share these thoughts:

Let's love God and love our neighbor.
Let's be real, not weird
Let's put action behind our words
Let's not give up in the face of disbelief
Let's persevere in humility, not letting mockery stop us
Let's be happy, live life to the fullest, display God's goodness in our attitudes, smiles, words, hands and feet. 
Let's remember that we don't fight against flesh and blood - don't hate them, they don't know what they're doing.
Let's keep kindness in our hearts and on our tongue.  A soft answer turns away wrath.
Let's not lose every connection we have to the world around us.  They need the light we have and if we keep closing the doors, our opportunities will be non-existent.
Let's keep asking questions and listening to the responses
Let's guard our hearts
Let's forgive
Let's be healed.  Let go and be healed.

What reality do I want to live in?  What reality do I want to drive me?  Not the ones I read in the dialog.  I'm going to choose a different reality.  How about you?

How do we let the anger go?

Have you ever been angry?  Who hasn't!  But how about the anger that just can't seem to let go, anger that simmers and bubbles beneath the surface until it finds a vent to explode out of?  You know what I'm talking about.  It's the anger that demands an answer.  We want to understand, to figure out why it happened, how it can be fixed, and how to prevent it from happening again.  We find ourselves rehearsing it, searching for different outcomes, perhaps falling into the trap of laying blame.  It's a vicious, violent cycle that robs us of our peace and hurts others (often unsuspecting people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time as our anger comes shooting out). 

I've come to a personal conclusion that I have no answer to anger.  I can't figure it out, understand it or fix it in any meaningful way which results in the anger disappearing.  When anger is in my hands, it just burns a hole in me and I suffer.  But there is way out of the anger trap if you'll read on.

I had the opportunity to minister to a much-loved one recently, minstering from my own struggles with anger, and this is what I've learned and what I shared with her.

Quit trying to make sense of it.  You have to let it go.  (I can hear the cries of despair now, "I've done that, I've tried to let it go and it keeps coming back!").  The only sure-fired way I've found is this:

Repent.

It's not enough to forgive the one who hurt you, but we need to repent of holding onto our anger, turn the whole mess into God's hands and decide it is now His to deal with.  Ask Him to take the anger, and pray for the one who hurt you (notice I said pray FOR them, not ABOUT them - that's called "letting go"). 

Matthew 5:22 (amp) says that "everyone who continues to be angry with his brother or harbors malice (enmity of heart) against him shall be liable and unable to escape the punishment imposed by the court..."

Anger happens, but continuing in it is what gets us into trouble, and in the end, WE are the ones who pay the price for being angry.  Did you get that?  Not the one who did us wrong, but we ourselves are liable!  I don't know about you, but that is not the way I want to live.

Paul reminds us that the grace we walk in is no excuse for holding onto our anger:

Romans 6:1  "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?  Certainly not!"

Let's not take grace beyond it's borders and continue to be angry. 

Choose repentance, and ask God to take the anger.  You'll be amazed not only at how He does this, but often you'll see a beautiful response from the one who hurt you.  Best of all?  The peace that comes when the burdens comes off your soul.

Oh, yeah, my friend?  She went from turmoil to peace after we prayed. 
Are you ready?