Mad

“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”
― Phyllis Diller

A joke? Yes. By a famous comedian and told laughingly. However, anger reveals a huge plague in the souls of many. It’s a pit which drags us in to it over and over.

Some Bible verses are telling:

“A soft answer turns away wrath: but a grievous word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs_15:1
“A meek tongue is a tree of life; but perverseness therein is a breaking of the spirit.”- Proverbs_15:4
“A wrathful man stirs up contention; but he that is slow to anger appeases strife.”- Proverbs_15:18

Here’s some outside the Bible quotes:

“The best fighter is never angry.”― Lao Tzu

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”― Ambrose Bierce

“Anger … it’s a paralyzing emotion … you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless … it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers … and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.” Toni Morrison

“BAD temper … is in a home what toothache is in the body: the pain is insufferable and yet it is not treated as serious. A passionate man or woman spreads a pervading sense of irritation in the house or in the workshop, and all the other occupants of the place are as if they dwelt in a country subject to earthquakes; life for them is divided between anxiety to avoid the explosion and a painful effort to repair its devastations.”

How does it end?

Where love comes into the soul we are more anxious to convert those who offend us than to be angry with them” from. (James_5:20) Expositors”

“A Japanese gentleman living at Fujioka, who was much addicted to the use of sáke, a strong intoxicant, which produced the worst results on his temper, was led through reading a tract on the subject to renounce the evil habit, and to accept Jesus Christ as his Savior. In proportion as the Divine Power mastered him he became a new creature. One day his wife had been careless about some silkworms’ eggs, which had become partially destroyed, and she trembled with fear that he would become enraged when he discovered it, and punish her severely, as he had done before. But to her great astonishment, when he found out what had happened he remained perfectly calm, and then said, “We can distribute them among our poor neighbors, and so they will have a larger crop. Thus it will perhaps be better than if we had sold them and taken all the money ourselves.” His wife was so impressed with this change of character that she said, “This is the result of Christianity; I want to become a Christian too.”

Sounds easy, but,

“I want to say somewhere: I’ve tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in.”
― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

We must see it for what it is.

(Proverbs_17:12) teaches, it is associated with being a fool. So also, (Proverbs_14:17; and Proverbs_14:29)

“Make no friendship with a man that is given to anger; and with a wrathful man thou shalt not go: lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.” (Proverbs_22:24)

“The wrathful man does mischief to many, but his wrath is like an old arquebus, which, when it is fired, hurts the bearer almost as much as the enemy. It may fail to hit the mark, but it is sure to knock down the marksman.”

Friends,

How are our evil passions to be cured? — we must frankly admit that our book has no suggestions to offer.– nothing less than Christ, and. Him crucified, to cure it.” Expositors

Be encouraged, God will make us aware of our malady, confess it to God. now. He will cleanse us of all unrighteousness. 1John 1:9 love ya