By Joe Palmer Pastor, Fellowship Baptist Church
I cannot live rationally and happily without assuming that God is there and that He is good. He gives me a reason to live and a reason to love. As I said last week, if I do not trust God to take care of me, then I will impose upon other people to do so, and I will become angry with them when they don’t.
I have found, however, that God is good and trustworthy, and this makes it a little bit easier for people to put up with me.
I have a temper, and on one occasion, I was very angry with a person with whom I was having a dispute. I sat and pondered what I had counseled others. I had said on many occasions that an angry person is usually a frightened person.
So I asked myself what I was afraid of. In that particular case, I was afraid of losing my status as a leader. What was I to do? I gave the situation into God’s hands.
I trusted Him to preserve my status or to change it for the better. Because God is good and loves me, He is always going to cause all things to work together for my good (Romans 8:28).
Trusting in God’s care for me, I relaxed and let go of the anger. The result of choosing to trust God rather than fight actually gave me more credibility as a leader and improved my status.
Anger is an appropriate emotion to move us to stand up against injustice or danger, but more often than not, we generate this emotion at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
If we are regularly angry, then few people will want to be around us. To dispel inappropriate anger in ourselves we need to trust God with whatever is frightening us. We need to let Him handle the danger we dread. Then we can relax, be at peace and enjoy the people around us.
If you would like to talk with me (Pastor Joe Palmer of Fellowship Baptist) about it, email me at joeandsuzypal@yahoo.com.
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