Peace And Joy In An Angry World

It never ceases to amaze me that when I am struggling in a certain area of my life and I open the Bible to read, exactly what I needed pops right out at me, exactly what I needed God to tell me to draw me closer to Him shows up.  I had another such experience on Saturday, we had to go into work due to the fact that we were behind schedule and missed two days during the week due to the intense amount of rain that we saw.  As expected, no one who went in was in a good mood, no one wanted to work on a Saturday.  I was no exception to this and started off sour, I let some comments from coworkers get to me easily due to this and snapped at a couple of them pretty harshly, setting off to a very poor start to the day.  Things did not get better as two of my coworkers nearly got into a physical fight and had to be restrained.  The day seemed to be spiraling out of control and just seemed miserable, and that was just in the first three hours of the day!  So at our break at 930, I was in my car reading my Bible as is my custom during my breaks.  I had finished off my first chapter of reading in 1st Corinthians and started reading in Psalms in chapter 39, what I read really blew me away and has given me a new perspective on anger and how to deal with it.  Before I go on, I will share a few of the verses in this chapter and break them down a little bit:

Psalms 39:1-2

I said, "I will guard my ways that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle while the wicked are in my presence."  I was mute and silent, I refrained even from good, and my sorrow grew worse

David is telling us his pledge that he made in the previous chapter, to not show his anger to men, to not lash out with his tongue to them, but to be mute and silent in face of taunting or whatever it might be that is angering you.  So he tells us he did this, and while he kept silent, his anger did not go away, it festered inside of him and kept him from even doing good to those around him, and his sorrow and misery grew worse.

Psalms 39:3-8

My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: Lord make me to know my end and what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am.  Behold, you have made my days as handbreadths and my lifetime as nothing in Your sight; Surely every man at his best is a mere breath.  Surely every man walks about as a phantom; Surely they make an uproar for nothing;  He amasses riches and does not know who will gather them.  And now, Lord, for what do I wait?  My hope is in you.  Deliver me from all my transgressions; Make me not the reproach of the foolish.

David tells us that his anger continued to burn, and finally he did speak, but not to men, he did not vent his feelings and anger to man, but he brought it all to God.  He takes every one of his problems to God, he realizes that man is nothing more then a breadth on this earth and that no physical things or praise we gain on this earth matter.  He tells God that all is hope is in Him and asks Him to save him from his sinful desires and urges(his anger) he asks God to not make him a stumbling block and a point of reproach for the foolish people of this earth.

Psalms 39:12-13

"Hear my prayer, O Lord and give ear to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears;  For I am a stranger with You, a sojourner like all my fathers.  Turn Your gaze away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more."

David continues his prayer, telling God that he is wondering this world, that it is not his real home, his real home is with God in heaven.  He asks Him to not be angry with him, to take away his anger so that he can smile again before his time on this earth is done.

This is a problem for a lot of people, I know it surely is one for me.  We live in an angry world in which we get cheap laughs by putting others down and get angry at others when they put us down.  We allow this to effect us in the way we relate to others by constantly lashing out or we hold our anger inside, causing us even more sorrow and torment.  As Christians we cannot lash out at others in anger, we cannot allow ourselves to do this as it hurts our relationship with God, it sheds a very poor light on our faith to the world and also continues the vicious cycle of anger in and angry world.  But David shows us the way to let go of our anger, to deal with our inner demons so to speak.  It is to take all our problems, anger and issues to God.  Our days on this earth are numbered, we are nothing more then a whisp in the wind, for us to hold onto our anger and allow it to effect how we interact with others and effect our relationship with God is disaterous to our relationship with God and damning in the eyes of the world as they see us as being no different from them.  God is willing to take all of our anger and sorrow from us if we give it to Him, laying it all on His shoulders.  If we do this, then we will be able to feel joy and smile again in this angry world.  God offers us this joy of living a life free from anger burning inside of us, free from our misery and sorrows.  So often we choose to except this, we choose to live with our anger, lashing out at those around us and letting it build inside of us.  My personal experience on Saturday, after reading this it really effected me, I broke down in my car, praying to God to take it all from me.  The result was nothing short of amazing, all of the anger I was feeling was lifted, He took it all from me.  I was in an incredibly good mood from that point on, my coworkers noticed this and we talked about it.  There were no more problems the rest of the day, everyone seemed to be in a better mood.  I am going to struggle with my anger more as my life goes on, but God further showed me how I can be rid of it, by taking it to Him, giving it to Him and not letting it effect me.  He gave me back my smile and my joy in Him and He will do the same thing for me the next time if I allow Him too, He will do it for you to, for all of us.  We truly can live with peace and joy in this angry world, all we have to do is turn it all over to Him, the Lord and Savior of our life.

Tim

Snow balls and Submarines

So todays blog is a little different then normal, thought I would tell you about something amusing that happened yesterday during the lunch hour of work.  One of the guys that works on the job drives there from the mountains, where, during all this rain we got in SD it was snowing quite hard.  So he still had quite a bit of snow in the back of his truck when he got to work.  At lunchtime our crane driver started it, and soon everyone joined in, taking snow from the back of the truck and throwing it at whoever was walking towards the truck or walking away from the truck.  The snowball fight lasted a good 20 minutes until the ammo from the back of the truck was gone.  Not what you would expect on a submarine base in San Diego, but for the first time in history, the base saw a snowball fight.  

Also, on a slightly more serious note, this has been a really rough week and I am incredibly tired these past couple days and now we find out we will be working 10-12 hours on saturday as well.  So if you guys could keep me in your prayers that I would make it through this week till sunday when I can at least have a day of rest, I would appreciate it!

Live Life To It's Fullest! Live like there Is No Tomorrow!

It has been awhile since I posted a blog, I have been slacking off!  But lately some things have been happening in my life that I wanted to share.  So being the new guy at work, who is also the nephew of the owners, I have been getting a lot of crap at work, just merciless ribbing and what not.  It was really getting to me, I was really angry all the time at work and was getting ready to rip off the heads of a couple guys I work with, but then during my bible reading I read something that really effected me(okay a bunch of somethings).  I am going to share a couple of the verses with you and how they effected me and how they should effect us all.  Here are the verse:

Romans 14:7-9

For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore wether we live or die, we are the Lord's.  For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.

Romans 12:9

Let love be without hypocrisy.  Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good.

Romans 8:17b-18

If indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.  For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

I realized that my anger was me living for myself, I was getting annoyed for no good reason.  As Christians, we are going to face a lot of persecution for our beliefs.  Heck, Jesus, the son of God came to earth for us and face persecution and death because of what He tough, if we are living our lives for Him, then we can expect nothing less.  I realized that loving my coworkers, no matter how tough it might be is no less  then expected of me and my walk with God.  The anger I was feeling was evil, we are called to hate what is evil and cling to what is good, and in the end any suffering I have on this earth gives me a small taste of what Jesus suffered on this earth, and it is very temporary.  When we reach heaven and see all of Gods glory all the suffering on this earth will be more then worth it.  We live for God, we are dead to this world, we need to be showing love to the world no matter what the circumstances.  After I came to these conclusions, I was no longer angry, I gave it all to God.  As soon as I did that, I felt Him there with me, helping me, calming me, giving me a peace that passes all human understanding.  Since that point, in the last week one of my coworkers commented on how much he likes my attitude and another couple are asking me a lot of questions about my church, telling me they have never gone to one and they both have said they might be willing to go to mine.  Seeing what God has accomplished in such a short time when I started given my emotions to Him has been incredible.  I can't wait to see what happens from here.  So I wanted to share this and encourage you all to live for God, give Him all your evil feelings and emotions, show love to those around you no matter how they act towards you.  It brings you closer to God, it allows Him to calm you and walk alongside of you directing your thought life and actions.  It gives you peace and joy and allows you to reach those who are lost.  So view persecution as a blessing, something that can make you stronger and make your relationship with God stronger.  Thanks for reading guys, I promise I will become more regular with these blogs soon!

Tim