Anger and Encouragment!

 


 ¹ What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?  When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

James  4:1-4

I must say it amazes me to see so much anger and strife between my Christian  friends. One little comment and off they go accusing and hurting one another. What really gets to me is how many times God has told us through his word to encourage others and be slow to anger. That also means if we have issues with someone it is best to bring them to the person and get them out in the open.

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.

—Psalm 37:8

A man of quick temper acts foolishly,
and a man of evil devices is hated.

—Proverbs 14:17

Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding,
but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.

—Proverbs 14:29

A soft answer turns away wrath,
but a harsh word stirs up anger. —Proverbs 15:1



We are also suppose to be an encouragement to others. This life with all its valleys and pits is hard enough some days for brothers and sisters  in the faith to be quarreling like school children. We also should be slow to anger and quick to encourage and talk about things in a way that brings glory to God. Am I saying I always do this? No I do not but the more I see the bickering and backbiting the more I want to strive to deal with conflict from the perspective of God. .

Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

—Ephesians 4:26-27, 31-32

But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

—Colossians 3:8 

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

—James 1:19-20


 If we are not doing this are we not just like the world we are trying so hard to reach?  How can a person see Christ when all that is being spewed is worldly anger and hate? If we were lost in our sinful state and the Lord of heaven and earth died on a cross for my sorry self how much more should I be willing to forgive my brother?

I would like to say fighting among Christians is something  new but of course we know it is not. Paul wrote many  letters to churches in the New Testament warning just of these things.

But in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you. And I believe it in part,

—1 Corinthians 11:17-18

We as believers and the body of Christ need to come together and put away the attitude that we must stand up for ourselves when anyone slightly insinuates that we might have offended them. We need to ask ourselves if our first instinct is to attack then maybe our heart needs a little work. Let us try to be understanding, slow to anger and quick to forgive. This is my prayer for my family and yours dear friends!

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

—Hebrews 10:24-25