One of my greatest weaknesses is a short temper and this is often found when I drive in crazy traffic. I am guilty of road rage often displaced when a vehicle acts in a way that threatens me, a family member or a loved one. Why do I get so upset at a car and a driver whom I dont even know their name? I am also an impatient person which exacerbates the issue. Its the microwave society that I grew up in and its always a concern when you want something quick and fast. When someone sends others into a place of danger, I somehow feel the need to make things better and usually I make it worse. There is something about injustice that has always sent me into a rage at an even higher level. This is a big weakness of mine. It takes a lot to get me mad in business, but when someone hurts someone, threatens someone or is unrighteous to inflicting pain, watch out. My transition into Mr. Hyde is not a good one. A few years ago, I was on the streets in NYC with our family (a group of girls were walking with me, my wife and her daughters) and I saw a man beating a woman on the sidewalk as our family walked past the couple down from 30 Rock. I told the girls to quickly go ahead of me and then I went back, grabbed the man who was hitting the woman and threw him against a wall and said, How does that feel to you sir? He was in shock and the girl just looked at me and I told her to run away from this man. I wanted to beat this man to a pulp for what I saw him doing. In a rage I told the man to never hit a woman again or another man a lot bigger than me would take care of him with an equal and even worse beating. I wanted him to know what it felt like to feel overpowered as I had just witnessed his physical abuse on this woman and it was horrible. However, my reaction was wrong because I answered violence with violence. The reality is, my methodology probably was not the optimal way to help him, even though it felt good to teach him a lesson. The reason I wanted to share about this was because there are so many times in life when we think we make things better by answering fire with fire, but in reality it is the worst thing you can do. Revenge is not a good motivator and just because it is a good movie theme, it is not what we should do. The Waodani in Ecuador told us it was sad we had bombed people in wars because we were killing people in our jungle and we didnt even know their name. At least when they killed someone, they knew who they were. What kind of jungle do we all live in today anyway? Did you know the Wao didnt want to give us permission to tell their story, until they heard about Columbine where children were killing other children. It was then, they said, You can tell the story if you tell your children to stop killing other children. Wow, what a lesson from a killing tribe!!!! Here is the reality. I am secretly a person who has a wrongful spirit of rage inside of me that a short temper can get me in to trouble. I got in a fight a couple years ago in a grocery store parking lot when a car pointed their car at me at an intersection and three guys in a pick up truck tried to run me into oncoming traffic because they thought I had pulled out in front of them. So guess what, this 55 year old man at the time followed them into the grocery store parking lot and called them out, like Clint Eastwood saying, Make my day. The bullies couldnt believe I followed all three of them to a showdown. Are you getting the picture yet? Do you understand how a person who appears to be a man of peace also has a side that is not peaceful and could go into rage when provoked? This is a nemesis of which I have to pray a lot and ask God to help me to not get upset. I find myself wrongfully judging, wanting to take revenge or changing the game with righteous indignation. You see, I knew if I was going to get into a fight, I would hurt them, more than they would hurt me. I didnt count on the potential knife or gun they might possess did I? The Bible tells me, Blessed are the peacemakers but sometimes I am in reality, the opposite. It didnt say, Blessed are the fighters, but people who know me, know this is an area where Batman wants to take out a Joker and has to be careful to not take the law too far. We are part Scotch Irish and we are fighters. My clan was banned from Scotland because our clan couldnt get along with the other clans. So the fact of the matter is, I am under construction and that means I have a huge long journey ahead to get to that place of real holiness. My short temper can be a real fault in so many areas and a blind spot. I have a process of real sanctification to realize as I let go of things I cant control, be more of a peacemaker and not a reactionary personality and learn to stop and breathe. SO I need to change, period. In the middle of the grocery store parking lot the bully I had called out ran over to me in lightning speed and then, immediately stopped a few feet from me as I stood there with hatred in my eyes. Before he could react, I hit him in the solarplexes and he fell to the ground. When his friends reacted and started to run at me too, I exclaimed, Great, its a party? and the other two young men stopped as well and then turned and ran away. They must have thought I was Hannibel Lector, but honestly, I was in a rage already. After the incident, I called my family and had to apologize over the phone. Then, I started feeling not prideful and cool, but ashamed and sick of myself. What if people from my church saw this kind of Kevin McAfee? Here is the reality, I am no better than any common criminal and neither are you. We are so quick to point our fingers at those who do bad things, when in reality, we have so much bad inside of us, its deplorable. What if people close to me saw my behavior? I would have been so very humiliated. Instead, I am confessing to all of you that I dont have this whole thing called life figured out. The reality is that just like controlling your tongue, self discipline is a fruit of the spirit I need the most. If one of my friends is attacked, a pastor is wrongfully accused, then I am more than happy to be the vigilante who rises to the occasion. I am more drawn to conflict than I am to building peace. This is the dark side and only in the movie Star Wars did we find how bad it can really be. Today, a friend called me I had not talked to in a long time. Little did he know I had been talking about him all week and God had placed him on my heart. He called to tell me thank you and that he loved me. It was a humbling conversation because I felt like there was so many things I wanted to change about my life, and he was graciously complimenting me. Loren, I love you and I am honored to be in your life. Thank you for being my friend, even in my own weaknesses. Thank you for encouraging me to live with transparency. I learned this from you. Thank you for not judging me man, because that would be horrifying. One of my strategies is to be more affirming. I am trying to literally strike sarcasm out of my life. I am working to not be a reactionary and to breathe before reacting. These are HARD and its just not very fun. Dont be a fake anymore. Lose your secrets and just speak VERITAS. Truth can be a powerful weapon and guess what, we can learn about being real from great men like Paul, Moses and John. I know this, there is a freedom when you are who you are. Dont use your weakness as an excuse to rationalize bad behavior. Use your experiences to grow and encourage others. I love you guys... I
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 04:04:12 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015