Anger: Pt. 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning.

Welcome to the end of the week. I’m sure you’re looking forward to the weekend. I always do too, but as we head into this day, don’t forget, it’s not just a matter of making it through Friday to get into the weekend. It’s a matter of living for God today. If God is at work in your life, He wants to work not only in you but through you. He wants you to show people what it’s like to be in a living relationship with Him.

And the Bible is full of practical insight and advice about that and if you really want to demonstrate the life of Jesus Christ through your life, you must develop your relationship with Jesus.

You know every relationship in your life grows as you spend time with that person, and it’s the same with your relationship with the Lord. You must spend time with Him, and time with Him bears such enormous dividends in your life. You grow in your knowledge of God Himself. Not only that, but God changes you from the inside out.

It’s not just a matter of how you should live and trying to live it. No, how you live is starting to change because of what God is doing inside of you. All of these things are the fruit of growing your relationship with God by taking time with Him each day. We do a little bit of that together each weekday morning at this time, and I hope you’re blessed by that, and I hope that you build on that to spend time of your own with the Lord as well.

Well, this week we’ve been talking about anger. Let me give you another verse today from the book of Proverbs, that practical book on life. He says:

He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is quick tempered exalts folly.

He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is quick tempered exalts folly. Well, which of those kinds of people do you think you are? Slow to anger or quick tempered?

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Part of that is personality, isn’t it? Some people by personality are much more slow to anger. Some people by personality are more quick tempered. But if you go beyond just personality, what’s happening in your inner life?

Well, this verse shows us the value, doesn’t it, of being slow to anger.

And sometimes when you’re faced with a situation, a verbal attack on you or seeing someone you care about being hurt, you feel irate and you feel justified to be angry. And sometimes it is right to be angry at injustice.

But…

As you face wrongs being done to you, just remember Jesus’ own response in the book of 1 Peter in the New Testament of the Bible. In Chapter 2, it says this:

You have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin. Nor was any deceit found in his mouth, and then catch verse 23, and while being reviled, he did not revile in return. While suffering, he uttered no threats but kept entrusting himself to him who judges righteously.

That’s God.

Well, a quiet response like Jesus had often really disarms the person who is attacking you and diffuses the situation that if you respond in anger would only escalate into something far, far worse.

And in talking calmly about the real issue rather than reacting with anger and just reacting to emotion, then it leaves room for God to move and work through that on our behalf. But if you take the steering wheel into your own hands and you try to control the situation through anger – God will often stand back and allow you to take the consequences of not trusting Him. And really, when you’re in that situation, it is an issue of trust.

Here’s something Max Lucado has said:

I choose gentleness. Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice, may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.

I’m John North.

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