Melting the Anger Iceberg – Self-Deception Series 28 –
Purity 1117
Purity 1117 08/10/2023 Purity 1117 Podcast
Purity 1117 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a snow-covered pathway running
through the pines comes to us from the distant past and yours truly as I
captured this foreboding yet tranquil scene while working near the Charleston
State Forest outside of Esperance NY back on February 7th of
2020.
Well, It’s Thursday although we are very much still
in the summer season I am intentionally sharing today’s snowy scene for several
reasons. One, It shows a pathway of sorts
and I love to share photos of pathways on Thursdays as a visual reminder and
encouragement to get on or to stay on the path of Christian discipleship. Thursday
was the day of the week I decided to go into recovery for my addiction to
alcohol at a Christian Recovery program in 2015, and the rest is “MT4Christ”
history as the Lord has progressively led me in freedom and victory ever since.
So we share photos of pathways to remember the journey, remind myself that I am
still walking it out, and to encourage others to follow the Lord to find, or to
continue, theirs.
The second reason is that it is a beautiful scene of
God’s creation, and it gives Him glory.
He made this moment, and I was just fortunate to be there.
The third reason is to prompt us to be thankful: for
– that moment, the beauty, my life then, my life now, and the fact that it is
summer currently and I don’t have to shovel snow, prayerfully for many months!
And the last reason I share this photo has to do
with how things can lie beneath the surface of what we can’t see. The snow has covered the road in this photo. I
can tell you that this particular road is a dirt and gravel road but you really
couldn’t know that from looking at this photo. If you didn’t know better you could think that
the road before you was a stretch of some high-quality asphalt black top with a
pair of yellow painted lines running right down the middle but you would be wrong
because the snow is hiding “the truth”. Sometimes
what we can see is “lying to us” because we don’t see what’s lying beneath the
surface.
And that brings us to our current series on Self-Deception,
where we have decided to investigate some of the ways we deceive ourselves by
walking through Step 2, Deception Vs. Truth, of the Steps to Freedom in Christ
to see what ways we may have been deceived by “the world” and ourselves and in
what ways we have wrongly defended ourselves.
So we present the fifth of the “Ways to Wrongly Defend Yourself”:
5. Displaced Anger
The Steps to Freedom in Christ describes displaced
anger as “talking out frustrations on innocent people.”
I am pretty sure that we have all been guilty of displacing
our anger as a defense mechanism at some time in our lives. Anger can be a red-hot emotion that can cause
us to lose our cool and “blow our tops”, reacting with an unkind word or
action. We can slowly or suddenly get
as “mad as hell” until we are tempted to “not take this anymore” and lash out at
the object of our ire or at an innocent bystander who just happened to be in
the wrong place at the wrong time and just happened to be the one to set off the
“hair trigger” that sent us off half-cocked into a fit of fury causing us to
either be filled with regret and sent to apologize or sent us further into our
pride and to not apologize making our victim carry the load and wonder why their
words or action caused such a response.
Our angry response could be directed toward the “right person” because they
triggered us, but if we could look deeper into the situation we might discover
that there was a lot more beneath the surface of the anger that we can’t see. We could see that this red-hot anger’s source
was actually “ice-cold” as the anger was only the tip of the iceberg, a visual manifestation
of what was a large mass of complex factors and emotions. I share the following diagram to show how anger
can have many contributing factors and emotions that cause it to rise to the
top.
Our diagram shows us anger, but when we look below
the surface we see sadness, stress, helplessness, disappointment, frustration,
regret, guilt, grief, and many other feelings that lie below the surface and
that contribute to the anger that has risen up into our experience.
So, when we or someone else is coming across as “being
angry”, we should try to examine what is going on in their lives that is causing
the anger beyond the triggering event. We
have to realize that “hurt people hurt people” and the angry outburst we see is
just a symptom of a larger problem. If
physical pain or discomfort is lying under the surface, we should see a doctor
or seek other remedies that will heal us.
If it is mental or emotional pain, we should seek the care and company
of professionals, friends, or family that can help us to process the pain and
to work out a plan to change things or change the way we are thinking that is
causing us emotional distress.
In the past, I was a highly reactive person and anger
was part of my problems. Fortunately,
the Lord came into my life to show me that I wasn’t thinking right, and I wasn’t
living right according to His word, and I was reaping the bad harvest for all
the bad seed that I had planted. My ideas about life were selfish and based on
the lies of the world system. My behaviors were selfish and went against God’s
word. It was no wonder I didn’t have peace;
I was going against everything that was good and holy. I chose to sin and so I
chose to suffer. And when I suffered, I got angry and raged against the machine
or anyone who just happened to be nearby when things didn’t go my way. I regretted every instance of my angry
outbursts and after coming to Christ I sought to repent of my worldly ways and
renewed my mind with God’s word. I became a student of the Prince of Peace and
as I have followed Him the fruit of peace, patience, and self-control has grown
in my life. I had to stop planting “bad seed”
and start living according to God’s ways and as I have traveled with Him, the “good
seeds” I received from Him have sprouted and grown into a transformed life of
freedom, joy, and peace.
So let’s keep walking and talking with God. He can
melt that anger iceberg and help you to experience the living waters of a life
in the Spirit where fear is replaced with confidence, sadness is replaced with
joy, and anger is replaced with peace.
——————————————————————————————–
For
those who want more evidence for Christianity than my simple encouragements provide,
I offer apologist, Frank Turek’s website, https://crossexamined.org/ .
Today’s
Bible verse comes to us from “The Quick Scripture Reference for Counseling” By
John G. Kruis.
(
While Bible verses on various topics of Counseling can be found with a quick
google search, we encourage you to purchase this resource to support the late
author’s work. (https://www.amazon.com/Quick-Scripture-Reference-Counseling-Kruis-ebook/dp/B00CIUJZT2?ref_=ast_author_dp )
This
morning’s meditation verse comes from the section on Affliction, Discipline,
Chastisement, & Trials.
Romans 11:33-36 (NLT2)
33 Oh, how great are God’s
riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his
decisions and his ways!
34 For who can know the LORD’s thoughts? Who knows enough to
give him advice?
35 And who has given him so
much that he needs to pay it back?
36 For everything comes from
him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him
forever! Amen.
Today’s
verse fall under the fourteenth point of our counseling reference guide
resource’s section on Affliction, Discipline, Chastisement, & Trials
14. “We can’t always comprehend God’s ways,
as He, in His wisdom, carries out His plan.”
Today’s verses encourage us
to recognize the greatness of God’s wisdom and the impossibility of trying to
understand His decisions and ways.
While we can understand
much about God’s kingdom by reading His word and following His precepts and
wisdom for life, we won’t understand everything, and we have to realize that is
a being part of our relationship with Him. Not knowing everything perfectly and
still choosing to trust God is what our faith is all about.
While we can explain the
gospel of Jesus Christ and understand “how it works” because God has revealed
its truth to us, it is foolishness to those who are perishing.
If we are honest we have
to admit that the idea that a man dying on a cross over 2,000 years ago has a
lot to do with my eternal destination and the meaning and purpose of life doesn’t
really make sense. There doesn’t seem to
be a causal relationship here.
But God has revealed to us
the truth the Jesus was more than just some man. Jesus is the Messiah and if we put our faith
in Him, we are accepted into God’s kingdom for eternity, right now.
God’s word also informs us
that He is sovereign and is shaping history toward a new heaven and a new earth. But the suffering of this world, the
uncertainty of the time of Christ’s return, and some of the “hard” or mysterious
passages in the Bible can really stretch the limits of our comprehension and
cause us to lament because we can’t understand why things have to be this
way.
While we can know some
things, we won’t know everything and in order to have peace we have to realize
that God’s ways are higher than our ways and we have to trust that He is good
and that He is trustworthy to do what is right.
If we know we are saved
through faith in Jesus, we have to rest in that knowledge and know that if God
was good enough to show us this mystery, we can trust Him with the ones that haven’t
been revealed yet. Jesus said He came to give us rest and we can have it when
we trust in God’s plan, even if we don’t understand it.
——————————————————————–
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from The Holy Spirit By A.W. Pink.
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage you all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available online
for $0.99 (https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Spirit-Arthur-Pink-Collection-ebook/dp/B008CM5292/ref=sr_1_3?crid=AHKAQOM39CTN&keywords=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit&qid=1684376225&sprefix=a.w.+pink+the+holy+spirit+%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-3)
A.W. Pink’s The Holy Spirit
19 –The Spirit Teaching
Taught of the Spirit
“But
the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name,
He shall teach you all things” (John
14:26). Those words received their first
fulfillment in the men to whom they were immediately addressed—the Apostles
were so filled and controlled by the Holy Spirit that their proclamation of the
Gospel was without flaw, and their writings without error. Those original
ambassadors of Christ were so taught by the Third Person in the Trinity that
what they delivered was the very mind of God. The second fulfillment of the Savior’s promise has been in those men
whom He called to preach His Gospel throughout the Christian era. No new
revelations have been made to them, but they were, and are, according to their
varied measure, and the particular work assigned to them, so enlightened by the
Spirit that the Truth of God has been faithfully preached by them. The third and widest application of our
Lord’s words are unto the entire Household of Faith, and it is in this sense we
shall now consider them.
It is written, “And all Thy children shall be taught of the
LORD” (Isa. 54:13 and cf. John 6:45). This is one of the great distinguishing
marks of the regenerate: all of them are “taught of the LORD.” There are multitudes of unregenerate religionists who
are taught, numbers of them well taught, in the letter of the Scriptures. They
are thoroughly versed in the historical facts and doctrines of Christianity;
but their instruction came only from human media—parents, Sunday School
teachers, or through reading religious books. Their intellectual knowledge of
spiritual things is considerable, sound, and clear; yet is it unaccompanied by
any heavenly unction, saving power, or transforming effects. In like manner,
there are thousands of preachers who abhor the errors of “Modernists” and who
contend earnestly for the Faith. They were taught in Bible Institutes, and
theological schools, yet it is to be feared that many of them are total
strangers to a miracle of grace being
wrought in the heart. How it behooves each
of us to test ourselves rigidly at this point!
It is a common fact
of observation—which anyone may test for himself—that a very large percentage
of those who constitute the membership of evangelical denominations were first
taken there in childhood by their parents. The great majority in the
Presbyterian churches today had a father or mother who was a Presbyterian and
who instructed the offspring in their beliefs. The same is true of Baptists,
the Methodists, and those who are in fellowship at the Brethren assemblies. The
present generation has been brought up to believe in the doctrines and
religious customs of their ancestors. Now we are far from saying that because a
man who is a Presbyterian today had parents and grandparents that were
Presbyterians and who taught him the Westminster Catechism, that therefore all
the knowledge he possesses of Divine things is but traditional and theoretical.
No indeed. Yet we do say that such a training in the letter of the Truth makes
it more difficult, and calls for a more careful self-examination, to ascertain
whether or not he has been taught of the
Lord.
Though we do not
believe that Grace runs in the blood, yet we are convinced that, as a general rule, (having many
individual exceptions), God does place His elect in families where at least one
of the parents loves and seeks to serve Him, and where that elect soul will be
nurtured in the fear and admonition of the Lord. At least three-fourths of
those Christians whom the writer has met and had opportunity to question, had a
praying and Scripture-reading father or mother. Yet, on the other hand, we are
obliged to acknowledge that three-fourths of the empty professors we have
encountered also had religious parents, who sent them to Sunday School and
sought to have them trained in their beliefs: and these now rest upon their
intellectual knowledge of the Truth, and mistake it for a saving experience of the same. And it is this class which it is the hardest to reach: it is much more
difficult to persuade such to examine
themselves as to whether or not they have been taught of God, than it is those who make no profession at all.
Let it not be
concluded from what has been pointed out that, where the Holy Spirit teaches a
soul, He dispenses with all human instrumentality. Not so. It is true the
Spirit is sovereign and therefore works where He pleases and when He pleases.
It is also a fact that He is Almighty, tied down to no means, and therefore
works as He pleases and how He pleases. Nevertheless, He frequently condescends
to employ means, and to use very feeble instruments. In fact, this seems to
generally characterize His operations: that He works through men and women, and
sometimes through little children. Yet, let it be said emphatically, that no
preaching, catechizing or reading produces any vital and spiritual results
unless God the Spirit is pleased to bless and apply the same unto the heart of
the individual. Thus there are many who have passed from death unto life and
been brought to love the Truth under the Spirit’s application of a pious
parent’s or Sunday School teacher’s instruction—while there are some who never
enjoyed such privileges yet have been truly and deeply taught by God.[1]
—————————more
tomorrow————————
Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, “Freedom in Christ” series of Discipleship Classes via the
mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
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These teachings are also available on the
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Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
to be encouraged.
My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian
encouragement via her Ask Seek Knock blog (https://tammylynask.blogspot.com/ ), her
Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on
Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
For those who require the assistance of a Deeper
Walk International Prayer Minister to experience healing or your freedom in
Christ, I highly recommend Christy Edge’s Life on the Edge Freedom Prayer
Ministry. You can schedule a session by going to : https://cedge216.wixsite.com/life-on-the-edge
“The views, opinions, and commentary of this
publication are those of the author, M.T. Clark, only, and do not purport to
reflect the opinions or views of any of the photographers, artists, ministries,
or other authors of the other works that may be included in this publication,
and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities the
author may represent.”
Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Arthur Walkington Pink, The Holy Spirit
(Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, n.d.).
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