Minding Your Moods:
Addicted to Anger – Part 1

Scripture Reading: Proverbs 15:1 and James 1:19

Key Verse: Proverbs 29:11

A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.

Are you addicted to anger?  If you get angry in the context of your relationships, with frequency, you probably are addicted to anger!  We don’t think of it in those terms, but anger is a learned behavior.  If you observe two people watching the same situation unfold, one can get very angry while the other might be mildly frustrated.  If you still doubt that anger is a learned behavior, why doesn’t everyone have road rage?  Everyone has times when someone does something “stupid” to them on the roads.  I understand that some personality types are more expressive than others, which is not particularly a learned trait.  But how we respond to people and situations was learned.

            The question is how did we “learn” it?  Some anger is learned by the modeling of their parents.  Some may be learned by the modeling of their friends.  But a large portion of an angry response is learned by our own previous history of what that response did for us.  If it never did anything but negative kickbacks, we would soon stop giving it out.  Unfortunately, angry responses often get us our way; makes us feel we are in control.  In a sin stained worldly way, angry responses give us “positive” effects, at least at that moment.  We learn that quickly, and with repeated use it becomes a soft addiction in our lives!  (more tomorrow)

Father, grant me courage to face my anger and its origin.  Help me to be quick to listen and slow to anger!  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.