Dealing With Anger

“He that is soon angry dealeth foolishly: and a man of wicked devices is hated.” {Proverbs 14:17}

“He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding but he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly.” {Proverbs 14:29}

“He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” {Proverbs 16:32}

Being patient is a real virtue – being long suffering and being slow to anger. It’s not easy to be slow to anger and to be long suffering – especially in our day in age where we have microwaves to quickly reheat our meals, drive-thru restaurants to get our food, and we drive 65-70 miles per hour to get to our destination. In addition, any knowledge or information we need can be retrieved by a quick press of our fingertips. Still, being slow to anger is a great thing to aspire for – a great virtue we are so lacking in our times.

First off, it will keep us from a lot of trouble, if we are less easily angry and have more patience. How often do you ever stay up late for not saying something drastic and mean? But when you do, because you got quickly annoyed, how many times have you wished you kept your mouth shut? Even to this day I still find myself cringing over some of the stuff I have said years ago. I actually sometimes find myself asking God to erase it from the other person’s memory and to comfort them. I pray too that He will take it away from me and not let them haunt me anymore. No, you never feel too bad about not saying anything at all; but you definitely feel worse when you do.

Secondly, we will save ourselves from hypertension and all kinds of illnesses if we suffer long and not entertain anger. Anger causes stress and depression. If we don’t forgive and let things go easily because we are angry, that will surely work into our health and kill us.

And lastly, anger causes sin. Being angry will cause us to think and say things that we shouldn’t and can create animosity against someone we are angry with. It will create bad feelings and can ruin friendships. There have been arguments and misunderstandings that have solely been created because one got easily angry.

And then, as a saint of God, where do we turn? How can we do righteous acts freely when we in our hearts hate our brother or sister? We cannot deceive the Lord.

What’s the solution?

We need to talk to the Lord about it. Ask Him for help. Get Him involved. Once you have Him involved you can rest assured that the next time you get angry or fail to do what is good and right, you know you are not alone. You don’t have to carry all that guilt all on your own. You can hand it to the Lord.

An interesting thing I’ve observed though with the Lord, once He is involved is I seem to find myself in a worse scenario than I have ever done before. It seems the Lord is showing me how bad my temper is and is making me aware of it even more so now than I ever thought of. It might seem like the opposite effect is happening – I’m finding myself angrier than I ever did before when it’s the very thing I did not want to do. It’s very simple really; the Lord is making me more aware of my anger issue – making me more sensitive. You just didn’t realize how often you get angry. But now you see it. And what’s more, you’re becoming more sensitive to it, so that even a little scenario seems big to you. Why? It’s simple – so you don’t want it to do it anymore. So you know exactly what specific issues in your anger to cry to the Lord for. (And this seems to about apply to any sin you struggle with, as soon as you bring them to the Lord.)

I find, it helps to talk to the Lord about every scenario I've encountered that day and seemed to fail at in my task for long suffering. I tell Him what I do not like about it and ask for His help. And I feel His comfort and assurances. Whenever we commit our works to the Lord our thoughts will be established. We will see in our minds what we have to do the next time we're starting to feel annoyed. I've found that I actually feel the Holy Spirit dealing with me to ease down and to let it go. I find Him comforting me and "fizzle out" the steam I am feeling at the moment. It definitely helps to ask for more of His Spirit to help us calm down and control our anger spirit and to let it go. Really, a lot of the things we deal with in this life is a spirit. And often we like to hold on to them without even realizing it. And the only thing to fight them and win over them is through more of the Spirit of God. So we should definitely not hesitate to ask for more of it from Him.

And then there's the Enemy who will like to discourage you and belittle you in your struggle. He will want to make us feel that we have failed the Lord and He surely is angry with us now and would not want us anymore. Why even bother with Him? He surely is angry, why come? No, He is not. How can He be angry when He is helping us and we are expecting His help? This is the same lie the devil has thrown to mankind from the very beginning of time. And many have been destroyed because they believed it. They walk away from God and no matter how many times God pleads to them, they choose to believe a lie instead. God cannot help us if we run away from Him. The only way He can help us is when we talk to Him about everything that bother us. There is nothing we can ever do to turn Him away from us except unbelief: unbelief in His love for us and an unbelief in His ability to help us. There is no sin that’s not nailed to His cross. Every single thing you can ever do against the Lord has been nailed to His cross. And there is nothing that can separate us from His love. {See Romans 8:33-39} Nothing. The only way to find more of His love is to come to Him more and talk to Him more – even how awful we feel inside. 

The only thing that will make Him angry is if we don’t talk to Him anymore – because we don’t believe Him enough to forgive us and to love us…because that hurts Him more than anything.

So we need to talk to Him; because He is our heavenly Father who loves us so very much. And He gave His life for us so we can be forgiven of all of our sins and freely turn to Him. Do not let the enemy rob you of your wonderful relationship you could have with the Lord. Believing in His love for us is so important. The more we turn to Him and bring our sins to Him, the better our relationship will be.

“Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” {Romans 8:37}

“Commit thy works unto the LORD, and thy thoughts shall be established.” {Proverbs 16:3}

“He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he.” {Proverbs 16:20}