I hope you all forgive me, but I have to say it again. Not necessarily because you need to hear it again, but because writing about it helps me.
Ephesians 4:26 one more time for the stubborn in me.
"Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath"
Often times I've looked at this scripture in terms of rage. Like you get so angry that you tell someone off, curse someone out, or hit some thing/one. I know that God has really been working on me, because I've learned that my words can be unkind. Yet this isn't the all encompassing danger this scripture is warning us of.
Sometimes we get so angry we do something...for lack of a better word, stupid. We get so angry we punch a hole in a wall, we break our phone, we throw a sandwich out the window. Sometimes we get so angry we do things that don't help resolve our anger, or make us feel better, if anything our actions make us feel worse because now we not only have to deal with the thing that made us angry, we also have to fix the thing we broke in our anger.
Even more disheartening, sometimes we break something that can't be fixed.
God's command that we don't sin in our anger isn't because he is dismissive of our anger, in fact it's because He understands the power of it. God knows just how much we can harm ourselves and he is warning us against that. In Deuteronomy 32: 51, 52 we see this scripture:
"Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the waters of MeribahKadesh, in the wilderness of Zin; because ye sanctified me not in the midst of the children of Israel.
Yet thou shalt see the land before thee; but thou shalt not go thither unto the land which I give the children of Israel."
Moses, the man of God who brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt and led them in the wilderness for 40 years, forfeited the promise land because he was angry with the children of Israel.
"And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?
And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also.
And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them." (Numbers 20:10-12)
God told Moses to speak to the rock to bring forth the water that the people needed, Moses instead struck the rock while reprimanding them because they were complaining yet again about the things they needed.
Did Moses deserve to be annoyed/frustrated/angry? Absolutely! God had been taking care of His children the entire time they were in Egypt, and the entire time Moses was leading them in the wilderness. Moses was the vessel God used to answer their needs and every time they came to him whining, complaining and overall ungrateful. Yet, it wasn't Moses place to react to them. As a result, after 40+ years of leadership and suffering, Moses wasn't allowed to cross the finish line.
Can you imagine?
Has that ever happened to you? You worked so hard for something and in a moment it disappeared? And you were the one to blame?
I know that in the moment we aren't thinking of what could happen. We get so angry, so caught up in our feelings that we react. Yet, if we rehearse positivity the same way we rehearse revenge in our heads, maybe we will react better when things happen to us. Instead of practicing how we would tell someone off, or curse them out, or knock them upside their head, we practice praying. What if we practiced taking a deep breath and quoting a scripture. We won't just start behaving differently just because, we have to continue to read our Bible, pray and practice God's instruction so that even in our anger we don't sin.
What are you going to start practicing today so that when you're angry, you aren't sinning? Drop it in the comments below!