Though sometimes it is not the most pleasant place in which to live, you are obliged to live there because that's where your were born and raised. Where? right inside your head. With nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, you have become a first-class manager with respect to your personal state of internal affairs; otherwise, the whirlwinds of an uncontrollable emotion, say, anger for one, can wreak havoc on all that encroaches upon your personal space. Anger being examined here on a scale of 1 to 10, if 5 is your base-line, you likely are a full-time resident in that turbulent space behind your face: Angry-La. Yet, a certain amount of anger is necessary to one's survival as it is known to be a natural response to threats which permit people to defend themselves when attacked. Charles Spielberger, a psychologist, defines anger as an emotional state varying from "mild irritation to intense fury and rage." Experts state that when unexpressed, however, anger can lead to pathological behaviors resulting in a "getting-back" at people vengefully without telling them why. Some character-istics of this malady find expression in putting people down, criticizing everything, and the like. The good news, on the other hand, holds that angry behaviors are learned over one's lifetime and can therefore be unlearned and replaced with acceptable means of expression via anger management training. But who wants to to live without that fly inside the nose?
Ecclesiastes 7:9 teaches that: "...anger rests in the bosom of fools." Like villagers threatened by a forestfire raging out of control, people driven by anger must take measures to escape from Angry-La or eventually be consumed by their anger. The only person to regulate control over a seething internal state is the one who harbours it. Proverbs 16:32 advises that, "...he that rules his spirit is better than one who conquers a city." That's self control. One writer has said in his translation of Matthew 5:22, that "the sin of anger is tantamount to murder." The Scripture itself says, "Whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment." And now, as each one of us reads this, we conclude that we have never been angry in our lives. As a result, we will endeavor to conceal the tenacles of anger in the lines that our sentences make when we sugar coat passive-agressive responses.
Even though Proverbs 22:24 says, "make no friendship with an angry man" people singularily or en groupe have befriended or come under the direction, management or shepherding of "angry others." The closer the proximity to the flame, the higher the degree of burn is to say that those nearest to the fire experience greater scarring, in this case as in being scarred by anger. Why? How? There is a tendency is to take on the spirit of an angry person. As the angry person/leader/shepherd leaves, he is never truly absent for behind him his disciples live on as the tongues of the flame his or her anger. Hence you have the spread of one unholy fire.
When Jesus promised in John 12:46 that God would send the Holy Spirit in his name to teach us all things," he himself was led by the Spirit (Matt. 4:1), "full of the Holy Spirit" (Lk. 4:1), and returned from the desert "in the power of the Spirit" (Lk.4:14). For followers of Jesus Galatians 5:25 says, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." This means the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of anger or any other. David Wilkerson says of Times Square Church says, "The more someone is with Jesus, the more that person becomes like Christ, in purity, holiness and love." If then someone has imparted unto you any spirit other than the spirit of Christ -- and for the purposes of this writing a spirit of anger -- you have unwittingly become a prisoner of your own Angry-La. http://www.geocities. Com/ wordofgodca. Also on 106.9 fm on chrq Sundays at 8 a.m. Sponsored by CFP Concepts, Inc., C'ton, NB