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Today I want to discuss the topic of anger, how anger affects our lives and how it affects us in general.
I have always said anger is hurt, sadness, and fear. Every single time you’re angry you can recede it to one of those three. Once you can identify it before you blow up you can get a handle on it.
Ecclesiastes 7:9
Control your temper, for anger labels you a fool.
You probably know that guy or that girl, that person who is always angry and you don’t like that person. I use to be that person and I know that internally I had a lot of hurt, I had a lot of sadness and I had a lot of fear and it manifested itself in a lot of anger, I was an angry young man.
I’ve learn in my life that it always helps to approach a person with feelings instead of anger. So instead of blowing up at them you let them know how you feel.
Anger is something that can take control of you, it’s like a weed. Anger grows in the ground of us, it grows into us like a root. The more it grows the harder it is to pull up.
Ephesians 4:26a
And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.”
What we’ve just read there is, if we’re the guy or girl who is letting anger control us we’re sinning. You may have thought it was just a natural reaction to a situation but the truth is you don’t have to react that way. Now in order for us not to, we need to be full of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is one big way to be controlled by the Holy Spirit, being of service to others, meditating – being quiet and listening for the Lord, reading God’s word. The two biggest in my opinion being prayer and reading God’s word, you have to make time for these two each day.
There are plenty of mindless things we waste our time on throughout the day, we make time for things we care about or are important to us. If we have the time in our days to do the mindless things we have time to read God’s word, by doing that we fill ourselves with the Holy Sprit, which allows us to control our anger.
Ephesians 4:26-27
And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.
I’ve always thought of this in terms of relationships, if you have a significant other do not go to bed while you’re still mad at each other. Find a way to make up before you go the bed, don’t go to bed angry, find a way to work it out before you get there.
It’s imperative because the final verse says anger gives a foothold to the devil and it does. It goes into all different areas of our lives.
Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. (James 1:19-20)
“Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires.”
Well what does he desire?
What kind of righteousness does God desire of us?
What does righteousness mean?
The bottom line is if you’re save and a Christian, you’re covered. You’re saved, you are His boy, you are His girl, you are His Daughter, and you are His son.
But there is also something called righteousness. Righteousness is that cleanliness, harmoniousness that happens when the Holy Spirit is working in us.
Righteousness is not the person with a filthy mouth; righteousness is not the person who is engaging in nasty sinful behavior. From what we just read there, anger is not the type of righteousness God desires, so we have to be careful.
We have to be careful because we want to produce what God desires.
In our everyday life that’s not easy, just like prayer and reading the bible are not easy on a daily basis. If you were to ask the average Christian, “Are you reading your bible?” their answer is probably going to be, “Not as much as I should.”
In some way you have to read your bible, something super natural happens when those words from that book go from those pages to your eyes. Just as 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, it was written by the hands of man but breathed out by God. Feel the weight of that, it means the writers of scripture were writing but God was pouring the words out through them. That’s a heavy thing.
Where should we be Righteous?
At the grocery store, at Starbucks, with our kids.
With our kids it’s really tough, our kids will test it depending on their age.
I have a nine year old and twins that are six, they wanted to go get donuts this morning. I timed it, it took them nine minutes to get in the car, you know why? Because they had blankets that they needed, they had Pokémon figures in these boxes that needed to take, etc.
Now I was getting pretty upset, pretty irritated. I kept it under control, we got out of there and everything was fine. The only reason it was fine was because I was able to control my anger. Sometimes your anger can be tested, in every single kind of way.
“Let the Holy Spirit control your lives” it works.