Disclaimer: this is as much if not more for me than anyone else but i hope you can learn from it 🙂
Anger 101
Anger is one of the most destructive and unpleasant of emotions, it consumes and is fueled like a raging furnace, for some its a way of life and for others it is a last resort.There are many cases of where anger has been fueled by something else to cause disastrous consequences; anger fueled by hate:- homophobic killings, lynching, bullying…anger fueled by lust:- crimes of passion, rape(in some cases). These are but a few examples. We are but weak humans and cannot help but get angry however how we quench that fire before its fueled is up to us. Despite this, there is also such thing as righteous anger but most of the time as the book of James stated our anger is not righteous:Man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:20). What may be seen as righteous anger can arise in dangerous situations or in situations where problems need to be solved. Now, there is a BIG difference between blaming everyone and everything for your anger, and being righteous in your anger. More often than not we fall into the blame game category.
Anger in the bible
Even our maker knows that we cannot live a life without getting angry at some point which is why in Ephesians 4:26-7 we are told: In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. what this means to me is that God in His infinite mercy understands that there are things that will enrage us, however that is no excuse to allow this rage to take over our lives. If you go to sleep at night angry and you wake up angry, this may inevitably become a way of life because maybe the source of your anger is something you cannot get rid of. However if you give in to this fatalistic pattern of thought the devil has surely got a foothold.
A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult (Proverbs 12:16) Nobody wishes to be foolish we all aspire to be wise and insightful, how many coherant, wise sounding angry people have you seen? It may seem more foolish at times to not barg that woman back, or to not kiss your teeth at that man who stepped on your toe or to not give the wonderful human that coughed in your face a piece of your mind but if we do retaliate what could that possibly solve? Even the word tells us that a quick tempered man does foolish things and also that a patient man calms quarrel.
Tip:
Its easy to fall into the trap of cursing and effing at whatever and whoever makes us angry but i find that you feel much better if you call them/it nice names such as: prince, princess,wonderful human etc or tell them God will bless them or something. There’s no sin in that. Hopefully it will become second nature.
Play the ‘breath in’ game:
What benefit would we get from a world where every negative action wether intentional or accidental had an intentional retribution exerted on it? Not much because most, if not all of us would either be dead, diasabled or in a hospital. No matter how hard we try someone or something will tick us off, I am not going to suggest that we turn to our bible every time we feel rage building up because this may not be practical at all times, what i will suggest is the breathing game. It’s pretty simple when whatever has happened to tick you off, has happened just breath in and out and sing and happy song in your head or out loud, it does the trick most of the time. Or you can write a blog 🙂 I personally find the latter more relieving.
A few quotes to remember:
Cease from anger and forsake wrath, fret not thyself in any wise to do evil
He(or she) that is slow to anger is better than the mightyand he that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city
Anger resteth in the bossom of fools
But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communications with your mouths.
please excuse any spelling mistakes *big smile* thanks please
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