COUNT TO TEN AND BE MORE CHRIST-LIKE
I was sitting quietly in Starbucks with my laptop, notebook, and
Bible, totally engaged in studying on dreams, when up out of my peripheral
vision, a nightmarish face invaded my space. It startled me, and I grabbed
ahold of my purse on the empty chair next to me and slid it onto the floor by
my feet. I had earplugs in, so I couldn’t hear what the grizzly-looking man was
mumbling. A few moments passed, and I heard Jane’s clear voice from the next
table over, “We’re working here. We don’t have time to talk.” The man angrily
mumbled something about the Bible, and in a matter of minutes, he got up and
left.
Later on, Jane and I talked about it. She told me she was ready to
fry the guy with her words the minute she saw him approach me, but she’s been
practicing counting to ten before she speaks out of anger. It was amazing. Her
quiet, honest words only got one low grumbled complaint before the nightmare
man left.
I thought about a lesson I’d heard as a child: “When you get
angry, count to ten before you speak.” Jane counts “one one thousand, two one
thousand, three one thousand, etc.” I learned it as: “one dimension, two
dimension, etc.” I think it works with any three-syllable word, but the point
is, it does work.
My tendency is to sit there and boil on the inside until I can
hardly stand it and can’t concentrate anymore. Either that or I fire off some
snide remark out loud or under my breath.
Not Jane. She counted to ten and calmly and clearly told the man
we didn’t have time for conversation. And it was true. I was studying for an
article, and she was working on promotions.
There are several verses in the Bible that say God is slow to
anger. We are to “be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Eph. 5:1).
Nehemiah 9:17 says this: “Thou art
a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great
kindness.”
Counting to ten is one way to make sure we don’t fly off the
handle in rage, but instead, be more like God, slow to anger. By calming
ourselves, we give the Spirit a chance to work, instead of being led by
emotion.
Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had a hot temper (maybe
partly my Sicilian background?), but the truth is that no matter where it came
from, only God can really change those built-in character bents. Unlike one who
“flies off the handle,” the Lord is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy” (Ps. 103:8).
Psalm 145:8 tells us: “The Lord is gracious, and full of
compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.” Anyone who knows the old Jane
knows she can cut to the bone and turn a live person to sand (figuratively)
with her words. But her answer to the scary man in the coffee shop was full of
compassion. She spoke the words calmly and straight forward. After counting to
ten, she had no anger, just truth.
The wisdom of Solomon on slowing down our wrath is found in
Proverbs 15:18: “A wrathful man stirreth up strife: but he that is slow to
anger appeaseth strife.”
And Solomon goes on to say, “Better
to be slow to anger than to be a mighty warrior, and one who controls his
temper is better than one who captures a city” (Prov. 16:32). These
are some very strong words.
Is it worth it to count to ten to calm our anger? Definitely! It
is God’s will that we do it, as we can see from these scriptures.
In Colossians 3:1-3, the Apostle Paul admonishes us as Christians:
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above,
not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ
in God.” He goes on to say in verse 5: “Mortify therefore your members which
are upon the earth.” Among the things he lists is anger.
If you know any other way to be slow to anger, God bless you. For
now, since I’ve seen the amazing true results in Jane, I’m going with “one
dimension, two dimension, three dimension, four dimension, five dimension, six
dimension . . . See, you’ve already gotten tired of reading, so, can our
fiery anger also dissipate as fast? With the Lord’s help, I absolutely believe,
YES!
A few days later, the same man walked by Jane in the same
Starbucks, and the demon in him audibly growled at her! But Jane has no fear. I
hope to report to you sometime in the future that because of the goodness of
God, this same man becomes like the man of the Gadarenes in Mark 5:15: “ And
they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the
legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind.”
One dimension, two dimension . . .
Love, Carolyn
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