Day 4

We’ve seen righteous anger. Now we come to the other kind, the kind that does the damage: unrighteous, ungodly anger. And here’s the uncomfortable truth we have to face at the outset. Unresolved anger and bitterness is obvious in the hearts of unbelieving people, but, sadly, it shows up just as often in the hearts and lives of believers. Remember, the passage in Ephesians 4 was written to Christians. So ungodly anger is a problem for every one of us.

One study indicates that anger shows up in the average person’s life eight to ten times a day in some form or another. So if you’re tempted to say, “Well, I never really get angry,” you may need to repent of that, because the truth is you do get angry, and so do I. I admit it freely. And I’m not talking about righteous anger here. I’m talking about the everyday irritation, impatience, and resentment that quietly leak out of all of us.

As a pastor, I’ve discovered over many years that countless people live year after year with some form of anger, resentment, or bitterness in their lives. And it doesn’t stay contained. Anger is breaking apart marriages and families, and it’s fracturing our church communities and our workplaces too. It rarely wrecks just one life; it spreads.

Here’s why unresolved anger is so serious: it almost always leads to disobedience. And disobedience is no small thing. Consider Moses, God’s own chosen leader. He never set foot in the promised land, and the reason was anger.

You remember the story. In Numbers 20, Moses faced, for the second time, a whining crowd of Israelites complaining they were thirsty. Earlier, the Lord had told Moses to strike a rock, and water came out. But this time God gave him different instructions: speak to the rock. Moses, though, was so angry with that grumbling mob that he struck the rock, twice, forgetting what God had actually told him to do. His anger made him stop listening. And that act of angry disobedience cost him dearly; he was not permitted to enter the land he had spent forty years leading the people toward.

Let that sink in. Moses got all the way to the border and missed the blessing, not because of some scandalous sin, but because he lost his composure in anger and disobeyed. Just like it did for Moses, ungodly anger can cause us to miss out on God’s very best blessings for our lives.

That’s the danger we’re dealing with. Anger that seems small and justified in the moment can quietly steer us straight out of obedience and right past the blessings God had prepared for us.

So be honest with yourself today. Don’t pretend you’re the exception who never gets angry. Name the resentment you’ve been carrying, and bring it to God before it costs you something you can’t get back.