“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.”
—Ephesians 4:31
We are in a culture that knows many different kinds of anger and even rage. You know, there’s road rage. Been there? Then there is sports rage! Listen to sports talk radio lately? There is voice mail rage. If you’ve ever been into the abyss of one of those voicemail systems, you have perhaps known voicemail rage. There’s work rage and office rage and, end of semester test rage, right?
Maybe you wrestle like we all do with how to get a handle on your anger, on your temper and your temperament. If that’s you, and really that’s all of us, and you said, “Pastor, do you get angry?” Of course, I do. We all battle this. It is frustrating, isn’t it? In fact, I’m mad about it!
Well, the Scripture is clear that anger must be laid aside. Let it go. If your goal as a follower of Jesus is to reproduce the righteousness of God, then you must be willing to lay aside anger.
Anger can be an ally when we control it. We ought to be passionate about some things in life. But we know that so much of our anger today is not disciplined or directed by God, but it is misdirected.
God cares about our personalities. When Christ comes to live in our lives, He wants to transform the way we think, and therefore, the way we act. And so we need to let go of any addiction we have to anger. How do you do that? We confront it, we confess it, we control it, and we conquer it.
YOU CAN, BY GOD’S GRACE, LET GO OF ANGER!
