Be Slow to Anger

ith the very fast paced way of living that many of us are forced to live with in this country - stress has become a major factor in many people's lives. As a result of the increase of stress in many of our lives, many people are turning to anti-depressants, drugs or alcohol to help try and calm themselves down and to help take their minds off all of the uncertainty of this life.

For the people who will not attempt to rely on drugs, alcohol or anti-depressants to help them handle the high levels of stress they are forced to deal with on a daily basis - many people are then forced to deal with the side effects that high levels of stress can have on you.

One of the main side effects that high levels of stress can have on you is that it will shorten up your fuses. You will find yourself losing your temper with much more frequency and over things that you normally would have never lost your temper over. You will also find yourself losing your temper much more quickly than you ever had in your past.

As a result, we have some time bombs walking our streets and driving our highways that are just ready to go off at the slightest bit of provocation. Road rage is still a problem on some of our highways. Accidentally cut someone off or drive too slow for someone else's taste, and they will start honking, yelling and cussing at you - and in some of the more extreme cases, they will literally try and chase you down, all over something that was very trivial to begin with.

To those of you who watch your local or world cable news everyday - there is case after case of people who have lost their tempers over something completely stupid and trivial, and as a result, they have either hurt themselves or hurt other people.

Parents, in some cases, have literally beat their children to death over minor disputes or over a child that was crying too long. Boyfriends have beat up or killed their girlfriends over jealous disputes. Parents have physically fought with one another or with some of their coaches at some of their child's athletic events over minor disputes over a coaches decision or over a call made by the referee or umpire.

In all of these cases - the lack of self-control over one's temper has caused some of these people to explode with rage and violence where they will literally strike out at the person that has set them off. This scenario keeps repeating itself over and over again on a daily and regular basis throughout the entire world.

Even many Christians are operating with very short fuses. They are constantly yelling at their spouses, at their children and at their co-workers. As a result, many of their family and friends want nothing more to do with them and all they do is tolerate them as best as they can.

Many marriages that have started out on a good and loving note have severely deteriorated over the years because one or both of the spouses have lost all reasonable control over their tempers. They have verbally and sometimes physically beat the love right out of their marriages.

As a result, many have lost their marriages, their relationships with their children, and their good friends. No one wants anything more to do with them, and they all end up being totally alone, depressed and miserable - all because they could not keep proper control of their bad tempers.

For those of you who are having problems with keeping proper control of your tempers in the high stress world in which we live in today - realize that there is help for you in this area from God Almighty Himself.

Per the article that we have in our site titled " The 9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit" - there are two very powerful fruits and divine qualities that the Holy Spirit can start to transmit up into the core of your mind, soul and emotions. These two fruits are the fruits of peace and self-control.

Unless you have the peace of the Holy Spirit operating in your mind and emotions - you are going to have a very hard time in handling all of the stress this life can throw at you.

You have to have a supernatural source of peace flowing through you, and you can't get this kind of supernatural peace from your own emotions or from your own mental makeup due to your own imperfections. This kind of powerful supernatural peace can only be received direct from the Holy Spirit Himself. This is why the Bible tells us that these 9 fruits are from the Holy Spirit - not from us.

The other fruit from the Holy Spirit that you are really going to need to combat this problem is the fruit of self-control. Unless you have the self-control of the Holy Spirit Himself flowing and operating through you, then you will find that your own level of self-control is not going to be enough to give you complete victory in this area - especially if you have had this problem operating in you for a long time and it has become a conditioned habit.

The first thing you are going to need to do is to find out what the Word of God has to say on this matter. In this article, I will give you 9 very good verses from the Bible on what God's opinion really is on being quick-tempered and having a short fuse.

As you will see in the Scripture verses I will list below, God the Father is telling us:

• To be slow to anger
• To be slow to wrath
• To cease from anger
• Not to be quick-tempered
• Not to let the sun go down on your wrath 
• To overlook a transgression against you

Jesus Himself has told us to turn the other cheek when warranted. Many of the reasons and things people are losing their tempers over are completely unacceptable in the eyes of God. There is a time to engage - but there is also a time not to engage.

I believe there is something called righteous wrath, righteous anger and righteous indignation. There are times that you can lose your temper - and rightly so.

God the Father really let it blow with some of the judgments He pronounced back in the Old Testament against certain groups of people - but every time God the Father would lose His temper - it was always for a very good reason. The Bible tells us that God the Father is slow to anger, but if you manage to hit the end of His fuse - watch out!

It was the same with Jesus when He was walking on our earth. Jesus did not mince any words when attacking some of the Scribes and Pharisees for their hypocritical behavior. He also did not hold back when the money changers were trying to use His house of worship as a place to try and sell their goods to do business.

You have to know when to engage with righteous anger and when not to. The Bible says that God the Father is slow to anger, and as such, He wants us to be the exact same way in our dealings with ourselves and with other people.

As you will see in one of the verses I will list below, God the Father says that it is to our own glory and to our own benefit that we learn how to overlook transgressions that are made against us. In other words, it will be very pleasing to Him if we learn to let certain matters go that are not worth the time and energy to get all bent out of shape over. The Bible tells us that it should be our aim in this life to be well-pleasing to the Lord - and losing your temper over anything and everything is not being well-pleasing to Him.

I'll first start off by giving you some of the better verses from the Bible that deal with the issue of having a bad and quick temper. I'll then end this article with a 2 step process that you can use if you really want to work with the Lord in trying to defeat and put to death this bad character flaw in your personality.

The Scripture Verses

Here are 9 very good verses from the Bible on what God's opinion really is on those who have bad and quick tempers.

1. "The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and it is to his glory to overlook a transgression." (Proverbs 19:11)
    
2. "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city." (Proverbs 16:32)
    
3. "Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God." (James 1:19)
    
4. "He who is slow to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly." (Proverbs 14:29)
    
5. "Cease from anger, and forsake wrath; do not fret - it only causes harm." (Psalms 37:8)
    
6. "A man of great wrath will suffer punishment; for if you deliver him, you will have to do it again." (Proverbs 19:19)
    
7. "Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls." (Proverbs 25:28)
    
8. "He who is quick-tempered acts foolishly ..." (Proverbs 14:17)
    
9. "Therefore, putting away lying, each one speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another ... do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil ... And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also forgave you." (Ephesians 4:25-32)

Notice in the last verse that it says not to let the sun go down on your wrath. This is very good advice for all married couples who like to carry some of the arguments of the day into their beds at night.

This last verse also says that we will grieve the Holy Spirit Himself if we have a lot of bitterness, anger and wrath operating through us. We are to learn to forgive others - just as God the Father has now forgiven all of us through the Blood that His Son has shed for all of us.

If God can fully forgive all of our trespasses - then we can learn to fully forgive others who will trespass and transgress against us. If we can learn to forgive others, then we will be less likely to lose our tempers every time someone transgresses against us in some way.

Notice God says that those who cannot be slow to wrath are not producing the righteousness of God in their lives. He says those who are impulsive and lose their tempers easily and quickly are foolish and are exalting "folly." The word "folly" means a "lack of understanding and a lack of rational conduct - foolishness."

In other words, in God's eyes, you are showing Him foolishness and a complete lack of understanding in what you are losing your temper over. You are looking like a complete fool and idiot to both Him and to other people with some of the trivial and foolish things you are losing your temper over. Most of the time people are not laughing with you - they are laughing at you.

The verse from Proverbs 19:19 says that a man of great wrath will suffer punishment. Sooner or later, your bad temper is going to get you in major trouble. You are going to either lose it with the wrong person or in the wrong situation, and when that happens, there will be severe consequences. For some - it will literally mean having an early departure from this life.

Flip off the wrong guy on the highway who may have just cut you off - and he may be the last person you will ever see alive again in this life!

The verse from Proverbs 25:28 says that a man who has no rule over his spirit and his emotions is like a city that is broken down without any walls. In other words, you will nave no protection from either God or your enemies if you engage with the wrong person at the wrong time. You are leaving yourself wide open to demonic or human attack if you are not going to learn how to control your temper with how you react and respond to others - especially with those who will attempt to cross you in someway.

In the second verse above from Proverbs 16:32, God is saying that those who are slow to anger are better than the "mighty" and he who can take a city. By the way God has worded this verse, you can tell how big of a thing it is to Him that we learn how to control our emotions - especially our emotions of anger and wrath.

Conclusion

So now that you know that God does not want His children having quick and bad tempers, how do you start to get a grip on this - especially if your quick and bad temper has been with you for a long time, and it is now become a habitual and conditioned response in the way that you respond to certain people or certain situations

I will give you a very simple 2 step process to be able to get deliverance from this condition.

In this article, I give you all of the Scripture verses pertaining to this full surrender that God is looking for from each one of us. I also give you a basic, simple, full surrender prayer in the middle of this article on how to enter into this full surrender if you have never done this before with the Lord. Once you have entered into this full surrender with the Lord, you will now be ready for step two.

Tell God that you will agree to work with Him once He starts to release His two fruits of peace and self-control into your mind and emotions. Once God starts to release these two fruits into you - then you will have to work with Him on this. You will not be a passive robot in all of this. What this means is that you will have to make every concerted effort on your own to try and control the release of your quick and bad temper.

Every time you feel your bad temper wanting to explode up on you - you will have to use every ounce of mental will power to try and fight to keep it from exploding and releasing onto the person or situation that is triggering its release. Sometimes you will manage to keep it under control - other times you will not.

But if you show God that you mean serious business with Him on this, and He sees that you are doing every thing that you possibly can within your own mental will power to try and defeat this - then God will start to come to your rescue and He will then start to release His peace and His self-control into you so that you can properly finish this job.

Once God's peace and self-control starts to flow into your personality through His Holy Spirit - then it will become much easier for you to keep control of your bad temper.

The Bible says it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that you will put to death the deeds of your body - and one of the deeds of the flesh and body that you will definitely want to put to death is a lousy, foul, and bad temper.

This is a powerful supernatural type of help and work that you can receive direct from the Holy Spirit Himself if you are open and willing to work with Him on this as part of your sanctification process in the Lord.

 

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Michael Bradley
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Scripture taken from New King James Version.
Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008 by Michael Bradley.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.