Managing Your AngerSample

It Matters to You

Nothing will be done about your anger issues until you decide to work on them.

You have to be the one to believe that it’s worth it to work on your anger. Your wife may tell you that you have an anger problem. Perhaps your boss has even warned you about it. Maybe your children are afraid of your volatility.

But none of them can make you improve in this area.

You may even be accustomed to it and think, “Who cares? I get angry. No big deal. Every man gets angry.”

We’ve seen this week that God cares about your anger. It matters to Him because man’s anger doesn’t produce the righteous life He desires from us. Furthermore, it matters to our wives, children, church, and the non-believers in our lives. The devil also has a vested interest in our continued wrath for all the wrong reasons.

Proverbs 19:11 (NLT) states, “Sensible people control their temper; they earn respect by overlooking wrongs.” Ideally, we all want to be Christian men with the sensibility to manage our anger, thereby winning the respect of those around us. This will give us a greater platform to represent Jesus in our spheres of influence.

Proverbs 19:19 (NLT) further gives us a sober warning: “Hot-tempered people must pay the penalty. If you rescue them once, you will have to do it again.” To get dark for a moment, you can easily see that if you let your anger leap out of control, you can be imprisoned for hitting someone or causing a road rage incident. This proverb is another way of expressing the phrase “Learning the hard way!” or “You have to live with the consequences” when it comes to losing our temper.

When the moment of testing comes, probably unannounced, you may forget everything you’ve ever learned about anger. Instead, you may instinctively think hateful thoughts or spew aggressive words.

My best advice from personal experience is to be intentional ahead of time.

Be aware of your triggers. Find your own Christian go-to method when your temper is tested. It’ll probably involve prayer, Scripture, and relying on the Spirit in the moment. My go-to method is to pray something like, “Lord, slow my anger down because I’m getting mad real fast.”

May you and I be men who choose to be slow to anger for the glory of Jesus.

Prayer: Lord, I won’t give up. You love me and want me to live a righteous life for You. Help me to honor You in the moment my temper is tested. Please teach me how to be slow to anger. Amen.

Reflection: Do you usually have a short fuse or are you more even-tempered? What is something you were mad about in the last week? How did you respond, and what did God teach you about it?

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