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Late one summer evening in Broken Bow, Nebraska, a weary truck driver pulled his rig into an all-night truck stop. The waitress had just served him when three tough looking, leather jacketed motorcyclists - of the Hell’s Angels type - decided to give him a hard time. Not only did they verbally abuse him, one grabbed the hamburger off his plate, another took a handful of his french fries, and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it. How would you respond? Well, this trucker did not respond as one might expect. Instead, he calmly rose, picked up his check, walked to the front of the room, put the check and his money on the cash register, and went out the door. The waitress followed him to put the money in the till and stood watching out the door as the big truck drove away into the night.
When she returned, one of the bikers said to her, "Well, he’s not much of a man, is he?" She replied, "I don’t know about that, but he sure ain’t much of a truck driver. He just ran over three motorcycles on his way out of the parking lot."
When Steve Tran of Westminster, California, closed the door after activating twenty-five bug bombs, he thought he had seen the last of the cockroaches that shared his apartment. When the spray reached the pilot light of the stove, it ignited, blasting his screen door across the street, breaking all his windows, and setting his furniture ablaze.
"I really wanted to kill all of them," he said. "I thought if I used a lot more, it would last longer." According to the label, just two canisters of the fumigant would have solved Tran’s roach problem.
The blast caused over $10,000 damage to his apartment building. And the cockroaches? Tran reported, "By Sunday, I saw them walking around."
Anger is one letter short of danger. Don’t blow your screen door off trying to deal with a cockroach irritation in life.
After spending 3 ½ hours enduring the long lines, rude clerks and insane regulations at the Department of Motor Vehicles, a man stopped at a toy store to pick up a gift for his son. He brought his selection, a baseball bat to the cash register. "Cash or charge" the clerk asked. "Cash" the man snapped. Then apologizing for his rudeness he explained, "I’ve spent the afternoon and the motor vehicle bureau." The clerk sweetly asked, "Shall I gift wrap the bat or are you going back there?"
A woman testified to the transformation in her life that had resulted through her experience in conversion. She declared, "I’m so glad I got religion. I have an uncle I used to hate so much I vowed I’d never go to his funeral. But now, wh...
LET GO OF THE ROPE
Corrie ten Boom told of not being able to forget a wrong that had been done to her. She had forgiven the person, but she kept rehashing the incident and so couldn’t sleep. Finally Corrie cried out to God for help in putting the problem to rest. "His help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor," Corrie wrote, "to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks." "Up in the church tower," he said, nodding out the window, "is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what. After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding, then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops. I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down."
"And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversations, but the force -- which was my willingness in the matter -- had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at the last stopped altogether: we can trust God not only above our emotions, but also above our thoughts."
SOURCE: Corrie ten Boom.
MELVIN NEWLAND
The story is told that in the latter 1800’s, Alfred Lord Tennyson invited a Russian nobleman to his estate. And early one morning this nobleman took off with dogs & guns & servants to go hunting.
At mid-day he returned & Lord Tennyson asked him how he did. He answered, "Not very well. I shot two peasants." Lord Tennyson thought for a moment & then said, “No, we pronounce it with a ‘ph’ here. It is ‘pheasants.’ You shot two pheasants."
"No," the nobleman replied, "I shot two peasants. They were insolent towards me, so I shot them."
Wade Hughes, Sr
Why do people wear masks?
Several years ago, I had a nightmare, it was terrible.
For many days my spirit was greatly troubled.
In a dream, I saw one of my most serious workers at
church dying a terrible death.
As my church worker was dying,
I saw a battle going against my member.
I was broken beyond belief, as I saw this dedicated
Christian worker die and the Devil was grabbing the
individual and taking the soul to hell.
The smell was terrible, I could smell the enemy and
hell. This was so real.
In the dream, I started screaming, this is a terrible
mistake.
No way enemy, you can’t have this worker!
I have counted on them to do many things to build
this church.
They have touched many people and led many to the
Lord.
I am a better pastor because of this individual, and
the church is a better church, after all the hours
and efforts this family has invested in the church.
The enemy was slowly dragging my church member toward
the lake of fire and great torment.
We could hear the horrible sounds coming out of hell.
The smell was so real and horrible, I shall never
forget.
I was thinking, maybe there was secret sin, and they
were playing Christian games.
This was not the problem. I tried to fight for my
dear friend and the enemy kept slowly pulling my
member towards hell.
The fight was very painful.
I said, this is a good person.
This family paid their tithes.
They were faithful to church.
I could count on them.
What is going on here?
Jesus help me? What is going on here?
With tears in His eyes, Jesus came to me,
and said, I have tried and I have tried to change the
events of this day.
I have personally sent messages through you to warn
this individual?
I have sent radio messages to expose the sin?
I have given the words to television preachers, and
they watched with zeal, but My words were unheeded.
This person has cassette tapes that has warned them,
but they have not heard the message I have spoken to
them.
This person has books on their shelf, they have read
the parts they like, but the message I warned them,
was unheeded.
As a matter of record, when they heard the message,
they said the message was for someone else.
They even said, amen, let it be, but they thought the
message was for the other party.
I again questioned, Why Jesus, what is the wrong?
I knew them! They are good people.
With tears running down Jesus’ face,
Jesus said, "This individual was very angry,
and full of wrath.
Bitterness was rampant daily, and unforgiveness had
helped to bring an early death.
The home was full of coldness and painful rejection.
This person had allowed a critical spirit to tear
down the confidence in everyone.
They refused to pray.
Their hurt and disappointments had become the driving
force in their heart.
The anger they carried had brought physical
affliction, yet this never got their attention to
correct.
The person had rejected forgiveness, and justified
because of unforgiveness.
I was absolutely broken, as I saw one of my best
friends escorted into hell.
I could do nothing to change the hard heart, the
hurt,
the bitterness, --- the bait had been accepted.
The trap had locked on the neck.
I understood blasphemy as never before.
By focusing on the bitterness and pain, the person
had shown contempt and the lack of reverence for God
or His people.
Jesus had warned, the anger was turning into wrath,
Have you noticed that people are more and more angry then ever before? Consider the following…
§ One anger management firm stated that “one out of every five Americans has an anger management problem.”
§ According to FBI statistics, there were 23,305 homicides in 1994 and the most common reason was arguments occurring in the home (28%). Gang related killings accounted for only 7.6%.
§ Anger related violence is the reason stated for 22% of divorces of middle-class marriages.
§ Studies show that 79% of violent children witnessed some form of violence between their parents.
§ From 1995 to 2001 there were 1655 incidents of “air rage,” directing anger toward airline employees - according to FAA records.
§ The phrase "road rage" officially entered the English language in 1997 when it was first listed in the New Words edition of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary). Why do we need a new word?
In Atlanta, Georgia a two-year old toddler was shot through the neck by an irate motorist engaged in an argument over a road incident with the toddler’s father (The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, 30 June 2000).
In Denver, Colorado a 51 year-old man used a .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol to kill a 32 year-old bicyclist who cut him off on the road (The Denver Post, 21 June 2000).
Near Cincinnati, Ohio a 29 year-old woman cut in front of a 24 year-old pregnant woman and slammed ...
The story is told of a man who took an evening flight on which dinner was to be served to the passengers. Of course he was in first class, so we can expect that he would have received first class service and a first class meal. He was a bit hungry as he had missed lunch that day in order to attend a meeting so that he could catch an earlier flight home. He inquired of the flight attendant how long it would be before they would be serving dinner, and she was rather cross with him, but he tried to ignore her behavior when she responded that it would only be a bit longer. And so as dinner time arrived, the flight attendant came around with the cart and started passing out the wrapped dinner trays which included a tossed salad. When the passenger received his tray he was a bit anxious and began opening his salad, but he was met with a surprise upon peeling back the covering. There, on top of the mixture of lettuce and carrots and what have you, lay a roach. Of course after such a strong urge to eat, his hunger quickly left him and he no longer desired the salad or any other food they had to offer. He became quite furious and decided that when he arrived home he would most certainly send a scathing letter to the president of this particular airline. So he wrote the letter and mailed it off.
A couple weeks or so later he was surprised to receive a special delivery package in the mail. Lo and behold upon opening it up he saw that it was from the president of the airline. In contrast to his own letter full of contempt and anger, this letter from the airline president was just dripping with apology. He informed the passenger that the particular plane on which he had flown had been taken out of service. He told him it had been stripped and treated for bugs. He also told him that the flight attendant would most certainly be reprimanded, possibly up to and including termination from employment. And he ended by appealing to the passenger to continue to use this airline. As the passenger finished reading the letter, he noticed that there was another page clinging to the back of the letter. You see the secretary had made a grave mistake because the passenger noticed that this was his own letter. He pulled it apart and his attention was drawn to the unfamiliar scrawl of the airline president who had written these words to his secretary; "Send this guy the standard ’roach’ letter".
d. Anderson tells a story about D.L. Moody and how he learned to control his anger. It’s from his book Getting Anger Under Control
i. Evangelist D.L. Moody, the ‘Billy Graham’ of the nineteenth century, had a sharp temper that he learned to control-usually. One evening moody was conducting two- evangelistic services back-to-back. After the first service, as Mr. Moody was standing near the door welcoming the new crowd, a man approached him and delivered a highly offensive insult of some sort. Moody never told what the insult was, but it must have been contemplative, for in a sudden fit of anger, Moody shoved the man and sent him tumbling down a short flight of stairs. The man was not badly harmed, but Moody’s friends wondered how the evangelist could now possibly preach at the second service.” When I saw Moody give way to his temper,” said one observer, I said to myself, ‘The meeting is killed.’ The large number who have seen the whole thing will hardly be in condition to be influenced by anything more Mr. Moody can say tonight.” But Moody stood up, called the meeting to order, and with a trembling voice spoke these words: “Friends , before beginning tonight I want to confess that I yielded to my temper, out in the hall, and have done wrong. Just as I was coming in here tonight, I lost my temper with a man, and I want to confess my wrong before you all, and if that man is present here whom I thrust away from me in anger, I want to ask his forgiveness and God’s. Let us pray.” Instead of being a lost cause, the meeting seemed unusually touched that night, with many people deeply and eternally impressed with the Gospel” (81,82).
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