What Keeps Me from Growing (2 of 10) - Anger

What Keeps Me from Growing?

Yesterday we talked about worry, today our topic is Anger...

 

How can we tell when we are righteously indignant about some injustice versus when we are just plain angry, sinfully angry? Here are five keys. See if any of them is true in your life.

1. Anger becomes sinful when whatever drives us to get angry is a selfish
   motivation. James 1:20
2. Anger becomes sinful when we allow our anger to detract from our giving glory to God. 1 Corinthians 10:31
3. Anger becomes sinful when we don’t deal with it properly and allow it to linger in our lives. Ephesians 4:26-27. Anger turns to sin when it is allowed to boil over without any restraint, often causing irreparable consequences.
4. Anger becomes sinful when it is the lead-off emotion, or should I say reaction, to everything that threatens our pride.
5. Anger also becomes sin when you will not permit your anger to be pacified, or when you keep it all inside.
   
   

There is a classic passage in the Bible that I find very helpful when dealing with my anger. It is Ephesians 4, verses 25 to the end of the chapter. Here are five things the apostle Paul is telling us in this passage about anger.

1. If you are angry about something, you cannot deal with it by keeping your anger bottled up.
2. Don’t let your anger build up; deal with it as soon as possible.
3. Attack the problem within you, not the person who angered you.
4. Don’t do what comes naturally; do what is supernatural.
5. Finally, we must act to solve the problem through forgiveness, not angry
   retaliation.

A BAKER’S DOZEN OF VERSES ABOUT ANGER

1. Psalm 37:8 “Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.”
2. Proverbs 14:29 “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.”
3. Ephesians 4:31 “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”
4. Proverbs 19:11 “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.”
5. James 1:19-20 “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
6. Ecclesiastes 7:9 “Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the bosom of fools.”
7. Proverbs 16:32 “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”
8. Proverbs 29:11 “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”
9. Ephesians 4:26 - 27 “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.”
10. Proverbs 15:18 “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention.”
11. Colossians 3:8 “But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.”
12. Proverbs 22:24 “Make no friendship with a man given to anger, nor go with a
    wrathful man.”
13. Galatians 5:19 - 21 “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”