While studying for today’s lesson, I found this story (author unknown) that is just perfect to help teach us about this standard of “love.”
A husband one day said to his wife, “When I get mad at you, you never fight back. How do you control your anger?” The wife responded, “I clean the toilet.” He said, “How does that help?” To which she said, “I use your toothbrush.”
Ephesians 4:26 tells us:
In your anger do not sin; do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.
How many of us have done this?
How many of us let anger control us?
Anger does not happen easily…it creeps in on us when we least expect it; and the first little thing that someone says will upset us and then we explode.
I was called into my supervisor’s office last week for a special meeting and in the first two minutes of the meeting I was devastated with her announcement. I was so angry that I could not even speak, and then my insides were ready to burst.
I wanted to get out of her office quick. Instead of blowing up and shouting out, I began to cry and just told her, “I need to go. I can no longer talk about this subject.”
I left her office, went back to my desk and began to read a Scripture that I had posted on my computer monitor.
Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my lips.
Psalm 141:3
I sat there reading it over and over so that I did not get up and explode and do or say things that later I would regret. The more I said the verse and talked with God the more amazed I was that God was helping me to change my thoughts, my anger. God was providing me the fuel I needed to squash the anger.
Anger is powerful. James 1:19-20 says:
Everyone should be slow to speak and slow to become angry,
for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.
How will we ever be able to live a life that pleases our God if we walk around with this kind of anger inside of us and not deal with it. It will be just like a mouse running around on a wheel in a cage, or also as Cherie stated “we will be stuck in a continual rotation of frustration with everyone and everything around us”.
How can we show God’s love to this world, if inside us we have anger that is built up and ready to be unleashed at any moment? When we fail to release our anger it will control us; it will even be who we become.
Love does not do that. Love seeks to draw others. Love can’t draw when anger is present.
Love looks over the small things that creep up but anger magnifies the small things.
Think of the times in your life recently when you became angry with someone, and that anger then brought you to remember every wrong that person had ever done or said to you. Going through this thought process is not “love in action.”
“Love seeks to bind and to mend”
Many of our angers are petty or personal, so we must learn to bottle them up and deal with them only with Jesus and not others for love’s sake, then we can fulfill the commandment of God, in 1 Corinthians 13, to “love and not be easily angered.”
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Let’s Pray:
Dear God, I pray for each lady who has studied this devotion today. I pray that as they sought You, You were able to speak to them and show them if they are carrying around any anger that has affected their witness of You to others. Help all of us, Lord, to seek, find and then to squash this anger out of our lives so that we can begin to show love, not anger towards others. Help us, Lord, to be patient when others show anger and help us not to get drawn into it. Help us to seek Your love that overshadows anger and—as You show us Your marvelous love—help us to show the world. In Your name I pray. Amen!
