How You Can Put On Christ When all You Want to Do Is Rage

There are some Bible-teaching voices that feel like a drink of cool water, and there are some that help you go even deeper and dig your own well—which is exactly what Jane Johnson loves to do. Her passion is to help women learn to dig in, dig down, and dig deep into the Word and to experience God’s faithfulness. Her story today gives a glimpse of His working in Jane’s life in such a relatable way, and it’s a joy to welcome her to the farm table…

Guest Post by Jane Johnston

It’s the thick of the dinner-time hour. I’m at the stove, stirring noodles, flipping chicken, and cutting apple slices for mini-mouth consumption.

The kids are running circles around the kitchen, arguing over some unimportant detail, talking louder than my repeated instructions to get them distracted onto other things.

My mood mirrors the noodle water, close to boiling over. Until one of them screams.

That was it.

That was my boiling-over point.

I snarled the beginning of a profane expression through gritted teeth, doing my best not to complete it, when my five-year-old daughter piped up from across the room and, without missing a beat, finished it for me. 

Mom of the year. Bible teacher of the year. Earlier that day, I’d been writing on Colossians 3:1-15 about putting off filthy language, and there I stood, seeing my own inability to control my mouth (and watching the real-time effects of it trickling down to my children).

The truth is, I’m raising children with temperaments like mine, trying to teach them how to control their anger when I was never taught how to control mine. I’ve prayed all the anger verses in the Bible, but still, the rage comes. 

“He will be eternally faithful to all His chosen people who have put Him on.”

It wasn’t until I was neck-deep in the linguistics of Colossians 3:12 that this all began falling together in a way that actually felt tangible to me: “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering.”

It’s the “longsuffering” part of the verse that really caught my spirit, what one biblical dictionary defined as “the prolonged restraint of anger or agitation.”

My habit, my predisposition, my brain wiring are all naturally pulled toward negativity. I feel the weight of that clothing my spirit every single morning.

From the moment I wake up, more often than not, the heaviness sits on me. I only realized recently, when I paired two different Old Testament passages together, that God had given me the how-to guide for Paul’s way of “putting off”: Numbers 27:5 and Exodus 18:18. It turns out, you’re not just removing anger and filthy language from your heart; you are taking them off and bringing them straight to Jesus.

“Longsuffering and the prolonged restraint of anger is a display of His glory because you and I are clothed in Jesus’ girdle-strength, which does the holding in and restraining for you if you choose it.”

“Moses brought their case before the Lord,” Numbers 27:5 says. And, in Exodus 18:18, Moses’ father-in-law speaks an extra measure of profound truth into this, because anyone who habitually struggles with anger knows how difficult it is to change your temperament: “You will surely wear yourself out taking this on,” Jethro said to Moses, using a Hebrew phrase that describes sinking from exhaustion. 

Don’t sink yourself. Sink into Jesus. Put Him on, Paul wrote in Romans 13:14. And it doesn’t just mean clothing yourself. It means sinking into a garment.

“Don’t worry about what you will put on,” Jesus said in Matthew 6:25. “Just put it on. Just put Me on.”

“Remember,” Paul wrote, to paraphrase Colossians 3:12, “God picked you out. He chose you the same way He hand-picked the Jews to be His own in the Old Testament. He was faithful to them, and He will be eternally faithful to all His chosen people who have put Him on.” Yes, Jesus chose His disciples. But they also had to choose Him back and, even more notably, they had to keep choosing Him. Most of them did. Some didn’t.

Longsuffering and the prolonged restraint of anger is a display of His glory because you and I are clothed in Jesus’ girdle-strength, which does the holding in and restraining for you if you choose it. Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, yes, but still, you have to choose it.

Choose and keep choosing, bearing present offenses and forgiving past ones. And, even beyond all of that, put on love. Wrap yourself in it, “” (Col. 3:14 AMP). And allow that peaceful agreement to actively rule in your hearts—Jesus Himself, acting as your umpire. 

Those who get up in the morning and put on Jesus the same intentional and habitual way that they make their beds every day are the ones who go about their days with the peace of heart that comes from Him perpetually present in their hearts and lives. It’s their responsibility to pull the spiritual sheets up, ask Jesus to smooth the heart-wrinkles, tuck it in tight, and then do it all over again tomorrow.

A recent NPR article was the unexpected motivator for me to put in the prayer work to finally tackle something that has controlled me for my entire life. The article was about the satisfying effect of watching people solve problems in real-time, like clearing debris from storm drains and watching flooded streets suddenly empty or scrubbing filthy, caked-over-with-mud area rugs back to pristine condition. 

“Under all that muck, there is still a rug,” the author wrote. “It takes work, it takes an enormous amount of patience, it takes knowledge, and it takes some willingness to look at something that looks like it’s wrecked and say, ‘Well, I’m going to try, anyway.’”

So I push up my sleeves and do the hard heart-work, believing that, with this reciprocity of choice, His Spirit will fill me and enable me and pull me further toward holiness than I could ever get in my own efforts.

Sheets pulled up. Wrinkles smoothed out.

God, today, I choose it.

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