Know Your Enemy
I wake up angry each morning.
Unmet expectations, decay of my body, challenges of business, the flight of time, lack of money, etc. I honestly don’t have a specific reason why, but it seems to be an underlying mosh pit of resentments, or possibly a gradual collection of negative thoughts born from my reactions of external events and people.
Anger is a Gift
Over the course of time and in the midst of battle, light has pierced through the morning clouds of darkness. During my youthful ignorance, I would wake up passively optimistic about the day. I’ve realized that I wasn’t necessarily happier then, nor did I possess some glorious gift of joy, but rather I was ignorant. Ignorant to my purpose, my identity and the almighty definition of time.
I cannot recall the reason or the first day I woke up mad, but I do know it was not so long ago. Since that first day of angry awakening, it’s been a consistent circumstance. I struggled many mornings fighting the anger, calling on the Lord, diving into the Word, talking with people, listening to music, meditating on affirmations, whatever it took to reclaim my previous blissful attitude to start my day.
I had been disappointed in myself for being angry. Throughout my life, anger has been taught as a negative feeling. Throughout my life I have been taught there must be a specific reason for any emotion, especially anger. As if one could identify, talk through and rectify the issue at hand, the feeling would disappear with the cause. Despite my seeking and fruitful practice of building positive thought processes, and even though I had conquered my previous day with recognition of victory, anger greets my awakening.
After successfully beating my own ass over this “terrible” anger, I have come to realize that anger itself is not bad at all, it’s actually holy. The problem, however, is when I’m oblivious and passive to its morning call. However, when I activate my spirit, this anger, this ball of energy, this crazy animal in a cage, this conquerer in chains immediately becomes the life force rocket of my purposeful, overcoming existence.
In this reality, anger is a gift. I must practice the following, however, to keep the gift:
Awareness: Recognize that my anger is not unhappiness or negative in nature. It’s a positive charge.
Purpose: Recognize my anger is intentional from God. No person can fight a battle without the fuel of anger. God created us to war against evil forces. Would He really send us to battle without proper arms? Anger is just one of the weapons given by God.
Action: Anger is not something for me to contemplate, but to activate. Once I’m aware I have anger and then I understand its purpose, it’s time to activate its energy. Laying in bed passively waiting for anger to subside is the absolute worst distraction of the enemy. What better tactic in war than to soften the enemy through distraction of peace and finger-pointing. Get the fuck up and go to war!
Know Your Enemy
This topic is a repeat from about every situation in life. As a warrior, I must constantly, every moment of every day for eternity, realize that God has an enemy, and therefore His enemy is my enemy. Everything, anything and anyone else is a distraction by the enemy, for the enemy.
The enemy is the ruler of the world. The world is the battle ground. It’s the epicenter of the fight between God and His enemy. God put man here to execute His judgement. We are soldiers in this fight. God and the enemy both realize the war going on, our problem is we forget there is even a war. Thus, if our enemy is constantly engaged in battle, and God’s soldiers are distracted and oblivious of the battle, who the hell do we think is winning?
Distractions, distractions, distractions, distractions. Our distractions are not just obvious flinging arrows, but the sweet pillow-talk of prosperity, peace, fairness, rest and comfort. Any second that we are not soldiered up and fighting is a second the enemy is winning. Our greatest problem is that we become so accustomed to not fighting the war that we literally forget about the war altogether.
If there was no war, there would be no reason why we would be angry. Although the reality is war, we believe there is no war, and when things don’t work out to our desire, our anger works completely against us by pointing to everything but the war. In fact, because our head is out of the war, anger itself blindsides us as misdirected fuel, and then we’re angry that we’re angry. The enemy is literally leveraging our own God-given anger against ourselves.
Everyone and everything can become our enemy, including ourselves. But that’s the hope of our true enemy. If my focus is on the real enemy, my anger is a critical weapon to activate all my being to overcome for God’s glory. My experience proves that when my anger is toward His enemy, God is smiling at His soldier. I can hear God saying “that’s it son, that’s it my warrior, go and attack My enemy.”
This holy, focused, directed and intentional anger fuels all of our gifts to the overcoming life. From the moment this reality sets in, the Life of God flows into my inner man, my spirit, then flows to my soul and body. Fuel to conquer. Fuel to purposeful living.
Know your enemy.
