UNDERSTANDING THE LOVE OF GOD SERIES

LOVE HEALS BAD TEMPER

 

      I Cor.13: 4 “Love suffers long and is kind; love does envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.”

 

      The first phrase is what we are going to touch on.  Say: Love suffers long, love endures all things, love is meek.  The love of God in my life will teach me to have self-control in Jesus’ Name.

 

       Gal.5: 22-23 talks about the fruit of love and we have shown how all these qualities of the Holy Spirit are related to the love of God that is formed in our lives.  Verse 22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”   The last word self-control in the Old King James is the word temperance.  Temperance means able to control your temper, its self-control.  One of the fruits of love is meekness, longsuffering, self-control – temperance.

 

       This morning we are going to touch on a very important subject, that love is self-control or how to hold a bad temper.  See love is temperance; love is self-control.  Basically every one of us in our life has to deal with our own temper.  Some people have a temper hotter than others.  But all of us have a temper.  Some people have a very short fuse.  Some still have a fuse except it’s slightly longer but every one of us has a fuse.  Once in a while somebody light that fuse and you explode.  Your face turn red, your ear tremble, your voice raised and the smoke come out on the chimney on top of your head.  All of us have a temper.  Sometimes different people irritate you and to one person you can be very nice but to another person you could lose your temper.  It’s strange how it works.  So lets look at the Bible and see what it says about controlling your temper and dealing with bad temper. 

 

Lets look at the book of Proverbs.  Even the meekness of man called Moses, remember Moses had one title called the meekest man in the whole earth at that time.  But you and I know that he lost his temper.  Remember how he lost his temper several times at the Israelites.  He scolded them many times.  In the book of Numbers, we see how his anger was hot against the Israelites.  Earlier on in Exodus 32, 33, when he came down from the mountain after taking the Ten Commandments, he was so angry he broke the Ten Commandments.  And one time he let his temper get away with it and God said speak to the rod to bring out water and he spoke to the Israelites.  In Numbers 20 he said, shall I bring water out of this rock you rebels and he hit the rock twice and God said because you did it twice, you shall not go into the land of the Canaan.  Yet the Bible called him the meekest of men.  So we are going to look at the book of Proverbs.  The book of Proverbs has many things to say about bad temper and how to deal with it.  All of us need this message.

 

       Proverbs 15: 1 “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”   This is one of the reasons why when we want to select ushers, when we have a meeting where there is an overflowing capacity crowd, if I were to select, I will select those with the softest voice and place them right at the entrance.  But if you put someone with a naturally loud voice, you will stir up temper.  Someone who speaks to you very softly and there you are raising your voice, the guy just speak softly, you will begin to feel very guilty.  It’s the best conviction.  A soft answer turns away wrath.  In watching some of you ushers and some of you minister in conventions and rallies, I observed that the tone of your voice carries a lot of weight.  All you have to do is just speak louder and be more commanding.  That’s all.  People will lose their temper.  You will have to deal with people’s temper.  A soft answer is very important. 

 

            Proverbs 16: 32 “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes the city.”   Now the phrase he who rules his spirit, in the Hebrew it talks about one who learns to control the temper.  You have a temper and it may not be a bad temper but when you go about telling people I have a bad temper, you have to sit down and hear Kenneth Hagin’s messages all over again.  You have to learn the faith message all over again because you are confessing what you should not be.  You may have a temper to be dealt with but the first thing to change is your confession.  So here it says that if you learn to control your temper, you are better than someone who conquer a city.  You are better than Alexander the Great who conquered lands and nations.  All you have to do is learn to control your temper.  And it tells you here that if you are slow to anger that means it’s very difficult to make you angry.  You are mighty.  You want to be mighty man of valor, a mighty woman of valor control your temper.  Of course, in controlling your temper it includes controlling your tongue. 

 

      The book of Proverbs when it speaks about temper relates controlling temper to wisdom.  Let me read you some passages so that we can have a good foundation for people to learn how love can suffer long and love can bring about great tolerance and temperance.  Lets start from Proverbs 14: 29 “He who is slow to wrath has great understanding but he who is impulsive exalts folly.”    The word impulsive actually is from the Hebrew word in the same verse 29 short of spirit.  So the word short fuse originates from the bible.  When we say someone has a very short fuse, it means it takes him a short time to explore.  It says that when a person is slow to anger, slow to wrath, slow to get angry, slow to get irritated, that person is of great understanding.  The opposite is true here.  It says that if your fuse is short, then you are having a great foolishness.  Here the bible says when you are short of spirit you exalt folly.  You remember how it is when you lose your temper?  Don’t you remember how you lose your understanding?  When you lose your temper, you also lose your understanding.  Your comprehension of facts gets boggled up, your emotion rises and your understanding doesn’t work the way it should.  Your understanding doesn’t function properly.  You say things that you don’t mean to say.  You do things that you don’t mean to do.  You are not yourself anymore.  You have lost your understanding.

 

            Lets look at Proverbs 16: 14 “As messenger of death is the king’s wrath.”   It talks about a king, a person in authority is angry, death issue forth.  See when a person in authority gets angry; there are symptoms of death that issue forth.  People get cut off; people get ex-communicated.  Sometimes in the natural world, people die because of anger.  I like the next sentence, it says “but a wise man will appease it.”   Wisdom will know how to appease the anger.  Wisdom will know how to go about dealing with that anger.  A wise man knows how to deal with the anger of a king.  See wisdom, self-control and good temper are related together.  Bad tempers, foolishness are also related together on the opposite side.  Once we understand the bible’s teaching, it will help you to control yourself.

 

         Proverbs 19: 11 “The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger, and his glory is to overlook a transgression.”  The discretion of a man, the understanding, the discerning all that helps a person to be slow to anger.

 

         Chapter 29: 8 “Scoffers set a city aflame, but wise men turn away wrath.”   It is one thing to lose your temper.  It is a wiser thing to turn away someone’s temper.  It takes wisdom.  The bible gives us some wisdom.  It says a soft answer turns away wrath.  How many of you want to be wise?  Then have a good temper.  That is wisdom.  That is understanding.  If wisdom and good temper are related, then bad temper and foolishness are also related.

 

       Proverbs 27: 3 “A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but a fool’s wrath is heavier than both of them.”   When a fool gets angry, it’s very heavy.  It is just like a big stone resting on you.  One of the best passages is Eccle.7: 9 “Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rest in the bosom of fools.”   The bible makes it very clear.  When you are not able to control your temper, you are actually behaving like a fool.  Anger rests in the bosom of fools.  A hasty spirit does not hasten to be angry.  Be slow to anger, that is one of the attributes of love.  That’s one quality that God wants us to have.  If the love of God develops in your life, then you will not be angry at all. 

 

        The bible says in James 1 that the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God.  Don’t excuse yourself and say this is righteous wrath.  It does not work the righteousness of God.  We should leave judgment to the Lord.  We should leave the display of judgmental anger with God.  As for us and our household, we should demonstrate the love of God with plenty of self-control and temperance.  The bible here relates the cost of anger. 

 

        Lets look at Proverbs 15: 1 “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”   The word harsh is the Hebrew word ‘atsept’ that is from the word sorrow.  That is why in the Old King James it translate it as grievous word.  Words that grieve.   Words that contain sorrow.  It gives us a clue why people get angry.   When there is already sorrow and grief in your life, it does not take long before an additional word that is harsh, grievous or sorrowful adds to that burden and you can’t take it anymore, the volcano explodes.  When a person gets angry, it is not that the person gets angry right at that moment but there is something that is sitting and boiling inside.  When you see the smoke coming out from the kettle and say the water is boiling, you will notice it’s not at that time only that the kettle started bubbling.  It has started bubbling some time back but it is at that time that the steam starts coming out when there is an overflow of heat.  In the same manner why people do get angry?  It’s because there are hurts in their life.  There are grief and sorrow in their life.  And by the time you come into the picture, you come right at the spot to let the lid of the volcano out.  You just add one tiny little bit to what is already there. 

 

             For example, if my hand is all bruised and the skin becomes sensitive, then when I shake hands with you, when you touch the skin, it is painful to me.  But if my hand is normal, I could use the same hand and touch you and shakes hands with you.  It wouldn’t be painful for me.  It would be a pleasure.  In the same way, if you are having mouth ulcer, the food you eat is no more enjoyable.  It’s painful to swallow.  The same food that gives you pleasure now gives you pain.  There was nothing wrong with the food but there was something wrong with your mouth.  And as a result of ulcer in your mouth, the food that was intended to give you pleasure does not give you pleasure anymore.  The problem is with you not with the food.  In the same way why do people get angry?  Why do people lose their temper?  It is because there is grief and sorrow in their life.  It’s hidden inside.  We have learned to put a smile until somebody comes along and say the wrong word.   The smile melts and the volcano explodes.  Not that at that time you were grieved but there was a boiling up of grief in you.  So if we were to examine our life, those of you who have a bad temper, those of you who find hard to deal with your temper, examine your own life.  If you are sitting in anger that is hidden, it is because there is a lot of grieving, there is a lot of unhappiness, there is a lot of sorrows in you.  There is a lot of dissatisfaction inside you.  One fine day it will explode. 

 

           If we have the joy, the love, the peace of the Holy Spirit and do you notice that if you have joy it’s very hard to get angry.  Because inside you, you are healed.  If you have a bad temper that you just need to be locked up in the zoo, that every time you explode, you are like a lion gone wild.  There is something in your life that needs the inner healing.   You see anger is what a person does on the outside against people.  When inside they are angry, maybe it could be when you are a small child, you have gone through a lot of unhappiness, so now you are no more with your parents, but you are living with others.  The Lord has never touched that anger that you have stored up in you.  The love of God has not been allowed to be shed in some of the inner rooms in your life.  Now you are living with different people and once in a while it comes out.  You strike out at them.  It’s just like you are storing all these things to hit out but you won’t dare to hit out at your parents when you were small because you know they are bigger than you and they are the authority in your life.  But now you have grown up and so the same desire to hit out is still there.  Any point where you can you hit out at anybody.  And inside your subs-conscious mind you are seeing that person as your parent whom you are hitting out.   But now it’s a different person.  And the person whom you are hitting at may not even know what is going on.  So when you have a bad temper you cannot deal with, it’s because there is something in your life that you have not allowed God to touch.  The love, the peace, the joy of the Holy Spirit has not been allowed to saturate your life.  You are dissatisfied.  Didn’t the bible say that the Lord is like honey and honeycomb in the rock, that He satisfies you?  You will have to allow the Lord to touch you, heal you of that unhappiness in your life.  Unhappiness, sorrows, grieves are the swamp that allow bad temper to grow. 

      

          So we see that dealing with anger is not just on the surface.  There are a lot of deep things inside to deal with.  Maybe you have to come to God in fasting and prayer and ask God to touch the inner things in your life.  Sometimes when you fast and pray in your life God shows you inner things in your life that are hidden from others.  Things that are locked up in you that needs to be dealt with.  They will come up in your dream.  They come up during times when you seek God.  The closer you seek God the more His light shines on you.  Those things that are not visible become visible.  They come out in your dreams.  They come out during your daily life in your fasting.  It’s because God wants to deal with them.  Unless you surrender those things to God they will keep on being a perpetual problem, a stumbling block in your spiritual growth.  You have to deal with them to be touched inwardly and healed by the Lord.  Anger has caused a lot of man of God to fall short of where God wants them to be.  It was God’s perfect will for Moses to enter the land of Canaan but because of anger he could not enter it.  Do you notice that Cain slew Abel because of anger?  And I believe one of the reactions of Judas to Jesus was anger.

 

            In Matthew 26, there was an incident that led to his betraying of Jesus.   See he has been with Jesus for 3 years; there must be a cause to it.  See when you are angry you lose your understanding.  You lose your wisdom.  You cannot hold on to wisdom and at the same time hold on to bad temper.  They don’t go together.  In fact bad temper and fools go together. 

 

            In Matthew 26: 6-13 is the anointing at Bethany.  “Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table.  But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, why this waste?  For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.  But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, why do you trouble a woman?  For she has done a good work for Me.  For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always.”   This is immediately followed by the betrayal in the next verses, 14-16 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I deliver Him to you?” And they counted out to him 30 pieces of silver.  So from that time, (notice from that time onwards) he sought opportunity to betray Him.  That was the starting point when Judas Iscariot decided to look for opportunity to betray Jesus. 

 

            Look at Mk. 14: 10 “The Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went to the chief priests to betray Him to them.”    Notice the record.  It records after the incident when Judas became angry with Jesus so that incident is significant. 

 

            Look at John 12; the one who ask the question is identified by apostle John as Judas.  Verse 4 But one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot who would betray Him said, “Why was not this fragrant oil sold for three hundred denarii’s and given to the poor?  This he said, not that he cared for the poor but because he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it.  Notice the background of the story?  I am sure Jesus by the word of knowledge would know that Judas was a thief but Jesus never reprimanded Judas Iscariot.  He may know about it but He never reprimanded Him, neither did He go about exposing Judas Iscariot.  But do you know what happens when you sin secretly?  Your conscience bothers you.  When nobody finds it out, your conscience makes you feel guilty and you let yourself out.  You let the cat out of the bag by yourself.  Your conscience eats you up.  So Judas was stealing money all the time.  Nobody said anything about it. 

 

            And here when he saw the costly ointment, he said this cost a lot of money.   The money should be given here in the moneybag where I am the treasurer.  And I would make use of the money.  When he did that all the time his conscience must have bothered him and so when he was making that statement to Jesus, Jesus said, “The poor you always have but Me you do not have always.”  Publicly He reprimanded him.  He never said anything about stealing but Judas, due to his guilty conscience, thought, “He is reprimanding me.”   And from that moment on, there must have been a reaction.  He may have reacted in anger.  He may have got angry with Jesus and in his anger, (remember when you have anger you lose your understanding), he went out and plotted with the Pharisees to betray Jesus.  Do you remember after he betrayed Jesus what he did?  He regretted.  Doesn’t it sound like someone who reacted in anger and not knowing what he or she did and later on regretted what he or she did in anger.  Don’t you remember the times when you were angry and you broke something and then you regretted it?  You got to buy it back.  Men, when they get angry, they break something.  Ladies, when they get angry, they scream and then you regret what you do.  Because the bible says that when you are angry, you lose your understanding.  Judas must have walked out very angry and in his anger he plotted with the Jews.  And now he had plotted something he finds it hard to retreat and anyway he went ahead with it.  From that moment he sought to betray Jesus.  He was irritated with Jesus.  There were many things in this bible that tells us that anger of man brought them to destruction.   And after Jesus was betrayed and Jesus was crucified, he saw what happened to Jesus, he has regrets.  Does this not sound like a man who had a bad temper?  Who reacted and now he cannot change it? 

 

            Anger has brought people to do things that they normally would not do.  I heard about one incident in another church somewhere, where some body was so angry that she accused and framed the pastor.  Later they found that she told a lie and the police went after her.  It’s amazing what anger can cause you to do.  Actually it can cause you to do a lot of foolish things because when you get angry you lose your understanding.  How important therefore for us to learn to have a good temper. 

 

            And remember it is not just learning to control the temper, it’s learning to heal the temper.  You cannot control what is not healed.  If you are hurting on the inside and you are controlling, every time you get angry you count to ten.  In your peak of anger one of the things to do is to go to prayer.  Go to God and ask God to touch the area in your life that is exposed.  When you have bruised on your shoulder, then I just come to you and pat you on the shoulder, what does it reveal?  It revealed a sore point in your shoulder.  Whenever you are angry or irritated with somebody, it’s not the time to examine and cross-examine him or her.  Normally people would cross-examine the one who caused them anger.  But the person to be cross-examined should be you who lost your temper.  Whenever you are angry or irritated by somebody, the first area to examine is the area in your life that is being irritated.  You have to sit down and ask yourself, “Why am I angry? Why am I irritated?”  At that time your computer brain probably got overheated and begins telling you why, “The person did this and that person did that – this is injustice, its unrighteous.”  Don’t trust your computer at that time because it is overheated.  It’s not working probably.  Just go aside to God and pray, ask God to touch that inner part of you that is hurting you.  Just as there are sores and bruises that people have on their body there a lot of bruises people have in their soul.  And nobody realize it until suddenly that part of the soul is touched and they get angry and upset.  It’s all stored inside and it has to be dealt with.  Take every opportunity when you get irritated or you get angry to pray to God.  If you keep doing that, taking that action all the time, we do not promise you an instant solution but it is a process that is being dealt with in your life because in one meeting we cannot expose everything in your life.  We can only show what the Word of God says in this area then as you constantly go through your life, you will gradually heal the troubled hidden spots of your life.  Every time you get irritated or angry, you turn aside to the Lord and say, “Lord touch me. God heal me.”  See anger is not to be controlled; it’s to be healed.  It’s not just counting to ten then talking.  But the temper is to be healed.  The grief in your life, the sorrow in your life, the unhappiness in your life need to be touched by God and healed by God. 

 

        Love suffers long; the fruit of the Spirit is temperance.  Love endures all things.  Jesus never reacted.  He acts.  That is why when we talk about the love of God, we have to touch this area because one of the attributes of the love of God build and reinforce in a person life is that the person’s temper changes.  Things that irritated you before do not irritate you now.  Things that you get upset over do not upset you anymore.  And the way you talk changes and you flow with the temperance of the Holy Spirit, which is self-control.  The fruit of love is self-control.  He who learns to rule his spirit is better than he who conquers a city.  And he who learns to rule their spirit is better than the mighty. 

 

         Another point that can help you besides showing that temper needs to be healed not controlled, it’s learning to place things in the hand of God.  You remember how children develop anger?  When they cannot get their own way, you know what they do?  The child will cry.  Do you know that is natural human reaction?  And what happens when you grow up, you camouflage it.  Instead of putting yourself on the floor and beating the floor and kicking your leg, you wouldn’t do it because it will break the milk bottle.  So you camouflage and you raise your voice louder usually than louder the other person so that you get your attention.  You make a mess out of things and everybody look at you.  Then you say, I got the attention now.  That is why the book of Proverbs says; it is a fool’s way of getting your attention. 

 

           The way we get attention is by prayer.  If you want something to be dealt with is by prayer.  And sometimes when things are not the way we want, we lose control.  We are no more in control of circumstances.  Do you know that feeling is there since original sin?  See man was in control when he was righteous with God.  Adam was in control of the world but when Adam fell, suddenly the world is the place where he is no more in control.  There are some things you control and some things that run out of control.  What happens when it runs out of control?  Circumstances or people seem to do things that are out of your control.   You react, you scream because there is no more control.  It’s human reaction.  Do you know that there is one way that you can control all things?  By prayer.  If you switch on to this capacity where you realize that you cannot control this anymore for  the circumstance is beyond you, you switch on from the natural to the spiritual and you began to draw on the spiritual forces and learn to control it and move the circumstances by the spirit not by the natural.  Not by raising your voice and losing your temper but by praying and changing it.  So when you learn to be a person of prayer, you learn to change things by your prayer and not by your screaming, not by your compelling but by your prayer.  The only problem sometimes prayer takes longer than your screaming.  When you want someone to hear you, what do you do?  You scream at them and they quiet down.  You may get their temporary attention but they are not opening their hearts inside.  Something closes up on the inside of them.  If you could pray and get their attention you want or the hearing that you need or the circumstances that flows in your way.  If you can get it by prayer, it’s so much better.  So you got two choices, either to get it in the natural or get it in the spiritual. 

 

              It is quite a skill to learn not to use the natural because the natural is something you could feel, you could see, you could touch.  So it seems easier to use the natural than to use the spiritual and that is the problem for people.  We live in the natural so much that the spiritual seem unreal to us.  We should not depend on the natural.  We should depend on the spiritual.  But people like to take the easy way or short cut because the natural is the realm where they could feel, they could see and they could touch.  But yet if we depend on the spiritual we will develop spirituality.  If we depend in the natural we will develop to be natural brood.  The bible exalts us to develop on the spiritual side.  So learn to surrender things to God.  A surrendered life is a life that will flow with good temperance.  You know why?  Anything happens you surrender it to the Lord.  You bring it to the Lord, so besides healing the temper, you need to learn to pray to use spiritual weapons and you need to learn to surrender, since temper comes from self. For example if somebody talks about you and says you are a nasty guy.  You heard it and you get angry and you said how dare the person speak about me.  But if you are dead in Christ, it’s no longer you that lives but Christ who lives in you.  Then when they speak something bad about you, you said you are dead and gone.  They can say all they want but it doesn’t affect me.  So it’s learning to be dead to self.  When you are dead to self, you don’t react, you don’t get angry.  You can’t get a dead man to scold you back.  Have you gone to a coffin where someone is lying dead and you shout at that person?  That person never said anything because that person is dead.  In the same way, when your self is dead, you are dead in Christ and it’s not possible to be angry.  How can you be angry when you are dead and Christ lives in you?  So the root of temper is self.  When we remove self we remove the tendency to be angry and then the fruit of the Spirit can flow out freely through our life. 

 

      Lets look at Romans 5: 3-5 “And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope.  Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

 

        Paul gives it the opposite way, the ability to stand in tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance is possible because it to produces character and character is possible because of hope.  And hope is possible because the love of God is shed abroad in your heart.  The word shed abroad is actually poured into your heart.  So it starts with love.  When the love of God is in your heart, you have great hope.  Your hope never gets disappointed.  Your hope never gets destroyed.  When people’s hopes are destroyed, they commit suicide, they got depressed and they want to die because they lose hope.  So hope comes from love and the love of God is in your heart.  You know all things will work out for good, so there is hope.  When there is hope, it develops a strong character.  Then a character produces perseverance in your life.  Perseverance to stand in tribulation.  It works both ways. 

 

                After this message it does not mean that you are going to walk out here perfect.  Do you know that apostle Paul sometimes blow his top?  Acts 15: 39  “Then the contention become so sharp that they parted from one another.”   Do you know Paul quarreled with Barnabas?  And they quarreled over Mark.  Later in Timothy Paul says Mark is a good service to me.  He changed.  So what are you going to do after this message and realize the truth of God?  You may still lose your temper here and there but one of the secrets you must learn to do is to ask for forgiveness quickly. It is to say sorry.  It is to apologize.  You may slip here and there on your way to perfection but learn this truth.  You learned the reasons for keeping to wisdom and learned to be slow to anger.  What to do when you slip?  Learn to apologize.  Humble yourself.  Humbling is good for you.  Do you know it takes losing face to go to someone and apologize?  Now that is good for your self-nature.  Good medicine heals your self-nature.  We Asians always think about saving face.  Whenever you slip, makes mistakes, you get angry or anything, the first thing to do is to say I am sorry.  I missed it.  I blew it and forgive me.  It takes humility.  But if you keep doing it, it will remove self-nature in your life. 

 

                 Now Paul slips once in a while but he learns one thing that is to apologize immediately.  Here is another point where he slipped.  Acts 23: 1 Paul was being tried in the Sanhedrin council.  In verse one and two,  “Paul looking earnestly at the council, said,  ‘Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.  And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.”     The high priest was moving with anger.  Do you know one of the things the high priest crucified Jesus was because the high priest was angry with Jesus?  Anger does a lot of funny things.  Anger was at the root of the high priest’s heart.  The devil was the anger in his life to cause him to crucify Jesus.  Jesus preached the truth and they got angry.  It’s amazing what anger can do.  If you realize how much anger will cause a fall of man, we will watch out and not to be angry.  It causes us to do a lot of foolish things.  I mean crucify someone innocent.  It was a foolish act.  A normal person wouldn’t do it but an angry person would.  An angry person does a lot of foolish things.  Anyway here is a high priest very angry with Paul, the priest said, slap him.  Paul got angry.  Verse 3 “Then Paul said to him, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!  For you sit to judge me according to the law, and do you command me to be struck contrary to the law?   Actually in the Greek, it is even fiercer than that.  Paul actually said, God will strike you back you whitewashed tombstone.  Actually he scolded him back.  Then someone next to Paul said, do you talk like that to the high priest and this is what Paul said, I did not know he was the high priest.  And he even quoted a scripture for himself, verse 5 “I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest; for it is written, you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.”   I just bring this to show you that Paul was not perfect.  So I don’t want you to be discouraged after you hear this message and then you go back, perhaps after lunch today, you just blow your top and you said finish.  I want to encourage you.  I want to show you the plan of God, the perfection.  And then at the same time I want to show you what to do on your way to perfection.  You may fail along the way but you should apologize fast.  Paul was fast at that.  He quoted a scripture against himself.  He corrected himself.

 

             Anger comes in many ways.   It can be between brothers and sisters.  It could be between parents and children.  It could be between husband and wife.  Sometimes people have anger against their country and government.  Let me put it on record; we have no right to join the world if the world is angry with the government.  You and I are supposed to pray for the government, pray for peace and to show love.  The bible says respect and give honor to who honor is due.  You won’t change things by your anger.  There are a lot of people out there who are angry at all kinds of things.  Anger is evil and we are not supposed to repay evil with evil.  We are supposed to do good.  Think about those things that are good.  Think about the positive things, where people are so angry you are so peaceful and you so love.   It can come in any form but don’t tolerate it because it will sit inside you.  If bad temper is tied to grief, unhappiness and sorrow, then good tempers are tied to love, joy and peace.  Learn to have joy.  Learn to laugh at circumstances.  Learn to laugh at things.  Learn to laugh, learn to rejoice and you will not be angry.

 

HOME  I  INDEX  I  PRAYER REQUESTS SITES  I  LINKS   I  CONTACT US  I  TOP