Are you angry? If yes, what makes you angry? Are you angry because you cannot have what you want? Are you angry because you have been or are being abused? Are you angry because life is unfair? Are you angry because you don’t have as much money as you would like? Are you angry because someone said bad things about you or to you? Being angry seems to have become the undertone for every day life and, in many cases, it is out-and-out rage.

Road rage is in the news so often it has almost become “just another driving hazard”! Senseless anger so hot that it critically injures people, or worse, kills them! Respect on the highways and roads seems to be a thing of the past. Being a courteous driver is seldom copied by others and road racing considered a game or thrill. Respecting human life and each other seems to be lost and no longer important. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is passé and, for the most part, not even practiced by many people.

I am reading a book right now called: “Getting Anger Under Control” by Neil T. Anderson and Rich Miller. This book was written to help people overcome “Unresolved Resentment, Overwhelming Emotions and The Lies Behind Anger”! The first chapter is titled: “Anger – A Matter of Life and Death.” I concentrated on the opening comment of this chapter for quite a while before I began reading it. Here it is. “Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

It talks about how our bodies respond to anger. How our brain responds to what we are thinking and feeling. How that starts a chain-reaction throughout our bodies and the resulting effects on every phase of our health and well being. Our behavior is reflected by what we believe and our feelings will follow those beliefs. If what we believe is not the truth, we are deceived. Our actions, choices and decisions are then based on deception. Deception is not reality. Therefore, we form assumptions falsely about what we believe to be true.

At Judah’s Call, we see many people who have held on to anger for a very long time. It has affected them in many ways. It has made an impact on them emotionally, physically, socially and spiritually. As we work with these people, we see God’s truth replacing the assumptions, deceptions and lies. We see joy, peace and relief settle in and smiles replacing the pain and tears. We watch freedom bring hope; promise; purpose and stability truth-by-truth!

We ask you to pray with us this week for God’s truth to change more lives. We ask you to pray for relationships to be healed and for families to be restored. We ask you to pray for more people to become aware that their own anger is a poison that will do more harm to them than to those to whom it is intended. We ask you to pray that people will acknowledge their own anger and seek God’s solution. Thank you for praying with us! Blessings to you!

Tina

btirwin@earthlink.net