Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: Anger”
Our Bible verse for today: “And my God will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Look to God not to people.”
One of the primary reasons we get angry to begin with is fear, and it almost always involves other people. Someone says or does something that creates a sense of fear in us and we get angry about it. Not necessarily a shaking in your boots, wetting your pants kind of fear – although it could be that. Usually our fear takes other, more subtle forms and it often results in us getting angry.
Usually it’s something like, a person made a critical comment about you and you fear that it makes you look bad in the eyes of others, so you get angry. Or maybe you have lost your job and you are fearful about how you are going to pay your bills, and so you get angry. Or somebody cut in front of you in line at the store and you fear you are now going to have to wait even longer and maybe miss your next appointment, so you get angry. And on it goes.
Fear of loss, fear of harm, fear of being diminished in the eyes of others, fear of being treated unjustly, fear of … well, fear of all sorts of things is frequently the spark that ignites our anger.
Do you see the two common elements present in all of those situations? It’s you and other people. In every case the fear, and the resulting anger, involves the words or actions of other people and your response to them. That means that your anger is tied to what other people think, say, and do. Essentially, they own you. They control you.
The problem is that you’re focusing on other people instead of on God. You are acting as if other people control your destiny. In your mind it’s their words about you or their actions towards you that matter. You will be happy or sad (or angry), depending on whether other people are nice to you or mean to you. You think you will be able to pay the rent and buy groceries if your boss lets you keep your job, and you will be holding a sign and begging for dollar bills on a street corner if he doesn’t. In all those cases the focus is on what other people think, say, or do.
But in Philippians 4:19 the Apostle Paul says that God is the one who can and will provide for us and meet all our needs, not other people. Not only is God the source of our physical provisions (see Matthew 6:25-34), but He is also our source of peace and comfort (Matthew 11:28-30), and He is the one who determines our value as an individual and our worth as a person (Matthew 10:31). God is the source of everything we need whether it is physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual in nature.
So take your eyes off of other people. Pay less attention to what they think, say, and do, and more attention to what God thinks, says, and does. Doing so will greatly lessen your fear factor and it will go a long, long way toward eliminating sources of anger.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 