James 1:19-20

New American Standard Version

19 This you know, my beloved brethren. But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; 20 for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.

Pastor’s Paraphrase

          So I plead with you, my brothers and sisters in the Lord, listen carefully and heed this instruction – All of us should be eager and ready to give a listening ear to others but very cautious and careful before we speak ourselves. Especially be slow to become angry because being angry without righteous cause is not a part of what God wants to develop and grow in our lives.

 “How does this help me become more like Him?”

          It is not a sin to become angry.  Anger is a natural human emotion and can actually be channeled for good.  Jesus became angry at the money changers because of how they had desecrated the temple by conducting self serving businesses in the place of worship.  It could even be said that in order to be more like Him, we should become angry more often.  Does that sound strange?

          Our problem is that we become angry at the wrong things and we fail to become angry at the right things.  We fail to become angry at the ongoing destruction of human life in the wombs of expectant mothers that happens by the thousands each month in our “Christian nation”.  We hear of the millions of starving and destitute children around the world but it fails to move us to share our more than sufficient incomes each month to help provide for their most basic physical and spiritual needs.  We hear of believers in other parts of the world who are persecuted for their faith and we barely raise an eyebrow as we are just thankful it’s not us.

          Yet we become angry at the strangest things.  If someone fails to move in front of us when the traffic light turns green, our blood pressure rises and we are angered that they would delay us for a few seconds.  I almost hate to mention this one but what about Christian parents at their children’s sporting events?  Otherwise sane, sophisticated, and saved people can turn into raging lunatics at Little League games.  You would, at times, think that an umpire had just broken their child’s leg rather than (in the parent’s opinion) missed a call.  Anger and rudeness can fill the air among Christian people at such contests.

          In order to be more like Him, we don’t need to stop becoming angry.  We just need to change what makes us angry.  That will happen when the Holy Spirit does a deeper work of transformation in our hearts so that we begin to care about what He cares about.  When we begin to see the world more through His eyes and have passion about the things that move His heart, then our anger will take entirely new and different directions.  Before you boil over today, take a quick look at what is lighting the fire.

“How should I pray for Him to change my life?”

Pray that the Lord would help you to care about the things that He cares about.  Ask the Holy Spirit to guard you from becoming angry at things that, from an eternal perspective, really don’t matter much at all.  Pray that He would work in your heart so that misguided anger would not become a hindrance to your testimony for Him.

END