Friday, December 13, 2013

Challies, Walter and Getting Angry

Tim preached a helpful little sermon on anger last Sunday and that got me thinking about a letter old Walter wrote our church a few years back. You can read the whole thing here, but I liked this little quote:

It's a funny thing with anger. It feels like it must get vented, otherwise we will explode or something. Yet, quite the opposite is true. Vent it - and you'll be throwing gasoline on the fire! Suppress it - and the fire is snuffed out. Notice I said "suppress" and not "repress." I'm not a wordsmith, by any stretch, but there's a difference in my mind between those two terms. By suppress I mean, turn away from the anger and pray to the Sovereign. By repress I mean just get tight-lipped and fuming mad on the inside. I don't see much grace in the second of the two. I think what the Lord desires is for us to lose the anger on the outside and the inside - and we can, by His help.
 One encouragement in all this is to recall the respect God lays on the name of the man that controls his anger:
 Proverbs 29:11  “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”