Pray your anger away

““Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil.” (Ephesians 4:26–27, NKJV)

In my opinion anger is more prevalent in our society than ever, and I believe its on the rise. I believe this is the case because we have more information than ever, and we can be influenced and derailed with things that are being pushed to us through our televisions, computers and now our smart phones. There is also is something interesting, what makes someone angry and how small the thing may be that makes one angry.

If we were to ask people candidly “What makes you angry?”, we would hear many things like traffic jams, a car that cut me off, rude people, poor customer service, a certain political party, my family... and the list would go on. The question we then have to ask would be, is this something we should be angry over. In general and in almost all cases the answer is no. If we look at Jesus’ life, there was much for Him to be angry about compared to today’s standards, but we do not see this pattern in His life. We know that the righteous indignation Jesus had for the money changers did not reach the level of sin, because He is sinless. Jesus treated people with love, and even at the peak of pain and sorrow on the cross, He still looked at them and asked God to forgive them for they know not what they do.

So, how do we deal with the day to day frustrations without getting mad, angry, or perturbed at those around us? We pray; its that simple because when you are praying for someone its hard to be angry at them. When you pray for someone who wrongs you, you give no place for bitterness to build a short fuse in your heart that could become an anger pattern in your life. Pray, pray, pray my friends. There are many things vying to distract you and to cause you to stumble, follow that pattern of Jesus and pray.