Anger

"A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger."  Proverbs 15:1

"So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God."  James 1:19, 20

"Submit to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you."  James 4:7

Have you ever gotten mad?  Of course you have.  Have you ever gotten so mad that you were ready to fight?  "Bring it on if you think your bad enough."  Of course you have.  Have you ever gotten so mad you actually had a hissy fit?  Of course you have.  (For those of you not here in the south, a hissy fit is where one will jump up and down, yell and scream, take a pillow and really work that poor pillow over.  I mean the pillow never had a chance.  Some kicking the pillow and tossing are allowed, just no throwing the pillow at objects that are breakable.  Some decorum please.  And of course if you are a lady, you make sure only you and the Good Lord sees.) Why do we let stuff bother us?  And most of it doesn't even amount to anything.  Maybe it is something we are trying to say but we get the words twisted or maybe pick the wrong words. And the someone we are talking with immediately gets defensive, then you get defensive and before you know it you both are working up to being mad and you both start throwing words back at each other.   Maybe it is over a piece of bacon.... lol.  Yes I know what your thinking, but it has happened.  You want to make something of it?  (lol)  I've had several encounters such as this.  Where is my gentle and quiet spirit that is valuable to my Jesus?  Why is it so easy to push my Lord in a corner when I'm working up to a good mad hissy fit?  Why do I feel so bad and guilty afterwards?  Why do we always seem to lash out at the ones we truly love and don't want to hurt?  Someone once said you always hurt the ones you love the most.  Why is this?  Why do we always think we are right and everyone else is wrong?  

I guess a should've entitled this devotional why instead of anger.  But if you think about about, a lot of anger is started by the use of the question why.  For example, why not me, I was better than them.  Why not me, I done more anyone else.

  Bottom line:  I need to learn to go to my Lord when I first feel the rearing of anger's ugly little head.  If you don't feed something it will not grow, right?  Same principle here, if I don't feed the anger it will not grow.  If I can learn to say what can I do, instead of saying why me, I bet the outcome of my anger will be much more Christ like than what they have been in the past.