Anger: Pt. 4 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning.

This week we’re looking at the topic of anger from the Bible, and you know this just reveals to us once again how real the Bible is that the Bible is talking about the issues of life. And as you go into this day, I hope that you recognize that if you really want God to change your life in ways that you cannot change yourself. Those inner ways that you’re stuck in your ways of responding to people and circumstances, and particularly this area of anger, you can’t control anger in your own heart, but you need God to do His kind of change in your life.

And do you know, if you want to change in this area of your life, you need to learn to put God first in your life.

Take time with God every day because God is about real life. God is not just about the church thing. God’s about life every day. Don’t just come to God on Sunday and go to church. Yeah, make that a big, big part of your life, but so that God can be a part of Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday that we’re heading into today.

This area of anger is such a big issue for so many people. Just listen to what the Bible says about our inner lives and how God wants to use His word, the Bible, in our lives.

Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 says:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Well, the word of God is living and active and sharp. It pierces, doesn’t it, when the Bible really speaks into your life, sometimes you think, man, that is speaking straight to me. That’s got my name all over it.

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Well, that’s God at work in your life through His word, the Bible, getting down to the real issues of your life. After all, do you want to just live your whole life on the surface, putting on this facade to everybody, a mask that everything’s great in your life, and yet inside is this boiling anger just waiting to burst out and sometimes you can’t hold it in and so it spews out on the people around you.

Or do you want to get down to the real issues in your inner life that are feeding that anger and let God do His healing work in your inner life? If so, you need to let the pain come when God speaks to you in your inner life. It exposes things sometimes that we don’t want exposed, but if we don’t expose them, if we don’t let God take His two-edged sword and use it as a scalpel – The great physician getting to work in our inner life – dealing with things down deep.

If we don’t let him do that, then we’ll never move ahead spiritually.

So the next thing, if you want to put aside anger in your life is to confess that it’s harbored deep down in your heart, and you know something, you cannot live like God wants to help you live while you are holding on to your right to hold a grudge to someone or to be angry towards them.

You may feel you have a right, and that person may genuinely have wronged you in a really major way.

But if you really want to be transformed by God, you have to say I will not hold on to my right to be angry, even if I have that right. After all, God has the right to condemn me forever – after I’ve offended Him and broken what I knew to be wrong and right so many times in my life. He has the right, but in spite of having the right to condemn me, He’s reached out to me with love and offered me forgiveness.

And in the same way He wants me to learn to give forgiveness even to people who don’t want it from me but who have wronged me in an awful way. Do you know when you come to the end of yourself and you say, God, I choose your way and you choose to forgive.

You don’t feel like forgiving, but you choose to forgive and you trust God to enable you to forgive.

Then you are walking into a new lifestyle that has peace at the end of it, and isn’t it worth it to you to find that.

I’m John North.

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