Emotional Health - The Emotion of Anger

Okay, so yesterday we dealt with every one's favorite emotion...(yea right). However, it was needful to talk about this emotion anyway. It's the emotion of anger. Like I said at the beginning of our discussion yesterday, there is a difference between Godly anger and "fleshly" anger.

We can see this contrast in the lives of Jesus and Moses. Moses was kept out of the promise land for striking the rock twice instead of once, because He was angry at the Israelites. This anger left him out of the promise land.

Jesus on the other hand, used Godly anger when He went into the temple to overturn the money-changers tables and proclaimed, "My House shall be called a House of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." One type of anger stopped the promises of God, the other type of anger brought them into the promises of God.

Here are a couple ways that we generally act out our anger:

1. We Blow Up

Have you ever met someone who got angry at someone and took it out on everybody. These are people who blow their stack at the first sign of trouble. They have a hard time controlling their emotional state from day to day.

2. We Blow Out

These are people who get angry and immediately accuse everyone else for their wrong doing, but cannot look at their own shortcomings. These are those who accuse others while feeling justified in their anger to stay the way that they are.

3. We Blow Away

This is probably the worst. These are the people who are passive aggressive and completely shut down when they are angry. At first, it looks like a noble thing to not act on their anger, however doing nothing is acting in and of itself. The problem with people who internalize their anger is, they generally never deal with the root cause of the problem, they simply stuff it in.

So what are we supposed to do? Because we all fall in one of these three categories. Well the answer is found in James 1. I encourage you to go and read it. The equation to be deal with anger is simply this:

BE QUICK TO HEAR + BE SLOW TO SPEAK = SLOW TO ANGER

If we can learn to listen first, speak second, then chances are we are going to give ourselves enough time to process the problem and deal with it effectively. Remember that equation and you are guaranteed to be one step closer to living a life of peace and blessing.

Something to think about,

Pastorj