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No More Fuel to the Fire
Ephesians 4:26-27 (TPT) says, “26 But don’t let the passion of your emotions lead you to sin! Don’t let anger control you or be fuel for revenge, not for even a day. 27 Don’t give the slanderous accuser, the Devil, an opportunity to manipulate you!”
It is not a sin to be angry, but anger can give an opportunity for Satan to manipulate and take advantage over you. When it becomes uncontrollable, it can hurt your integrity and reputation. It can leave you regretful once you come back to yourself. It can leave a mark on someone’s life to where they think negative of you, and your responsibility should be to repent, go and make things right!
In reality, anger shows how much you care about someone or something. Why spend the time to invest your anger over something you don’t really care about? A good example is road rage. When you are driving, it is so easy to lash back if someone cuts you off while you are driving down the road, but while you cannot control how anyone else drive, you can control your response. It is about not losing sight of the moment and allowing the Holy Spirit to take a seat upon your emotions! Always remain in control of your anger. If you “let the sun come down on your wrath”, the light of God will never shine. Only darkness covers the scene.
Nothing good happens when you speak out of anger. If you have to step aside and just give yourself time to cool down and thing, you will be more equipped to make a sound decision. When you are frustrated, you must ask yourself, “Have you prayed about it?” Your frustration could be the result of being out of alignment with the will of the Father. You have to learn to step outside of yourself and see the whole circumstance. Sometimes, you do not have the right to have an opinion of a situation. In other words, it is not your problem to fix, and, therefore, no reason to get worked up. Your frustration can be seated in putting an expectation on people in which they were never suppose to fulfill. Typically in frustration, you do not see the big picture. Once you do, can you admit, “I was wrong”? Be willing to admit your mistakes and respond the way James told you to, which is be, “Quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to wrath” (James 1:19).
Swift to hear means that we go beyond just listening to what someone is saying, but we open the senses of our spirit to where we are humble, receptive and obedient. You have to be sympathetic in order to put yourself in their shoes, but, at the same time, you must not fall prey to someone who is hiding their true motives behind a mask. Being quick to listen is the key to knowing God’s commandments so you can obey them (Psalm 81:11, 13; Proverbs 5:7), receiving rebukes and discipline so that you do not resist or run away from God’s purposes for your life (Proverbs 13:1; 19:20; Ecclesiastes 7:5), and enables you to free someone else of the burden and pain in someone’s heart (Job’s friends). This strengthens you to deal with the difficult preacher on Sunday morning, the difficult parent or teacher who tells you what to do, and the difficult person who seems to always focus on the negative and be going through constant struggles.
Slow to speak eliminates us always being right in voicing our opinions all of the time, refusing to speak out of emotion as a result of taking a phrase out of its entire context. We must pray as David did and ask the LORD to put a watch over our mouths (Psalm 141:3). Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34), and so we must refuse to allow anyone to dictate our heart, causing us to speak out of irritableness. When you walk in the spirit, instead of reacting in the flesh, you will respond in the Spirit! This equips you to not be the difficult person of acting like you know it all, being loud and obnoxious with your own judgments and opinions, and seeking to simply cause a debate and argument.
Slow to wrath means bearing the fruit of temperance and self-control, that we are not quick to be angry and divisive but rather that we become willing to see it from another person’s perspective (Proverbs 15:1). Anger and wrath, which is when your anger boils to the point that it overflows, becoming uncontrollable, are behaviors in which God instructs us to lay down (Ephesians 4:31; Colossians 3:8; Galatians 5:19-26). It is not a sin to be angry. You may feel guilty when you become angry, but you have to look at the root cause and how you deal with it to determine whether or not it gives opportunity for you to sin. You begin to say and do things that hurts people, even to the point that they may never forget it. Man’s wrath will not work the righteousness of God (James 1:20). It only wounds people, including yourself, robbing God of His glory. If something seems to be boiling you with anger, get by yourself so that you can calm down, get a hold of yourself and not speak out of emotion. This positions you in how to handle people who can get under your skin while at the same time learning how not to lash in anger when something does not go the way you planned. There is freedom from the spirit of anger, but you must be willing to put it off and take upon yourself the lovingkindness of the Father!