Free Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions by June Hunt Page B

is God’s will? Even when we’ve been unjustly wronged, Jesus commands us to forgive and to cancel the offender’s debt, just as our debts have been wiped clean by the Savior. The Bible says, “Love for God” is “to obey his commands.” 21 Don’t allow anger to drive a wedge between you and your love for God.

    So…the bad news is chronic anger is costly , taking a tremendous toll on our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. It wields the power to ruin our relationships, impair our employment, damage our health, and interfere with our being in the will of God—and that’s just the short list.
    The good news is we are not doomed to a lifetime of lament. The Bible says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” 22
    If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. This means the past is wiped clean. God has made this possible, and He makes it possible—“as far as it depends on you” 23 —to know peace, healing, and hope in all your relationships and circumstances.
    Matches: Fire on a Stick

    It seems magical: You can actually make fire leap from a tiny piece of wood. But it doesn’t take a wizard to strike a match and light a fire, as if it were some supernatural feat. It’s a simple matter of assembling the right ingredients and applying the right forces at the right time. Here’s all you need:
    • a matchstick coated on one end with red phosphorus and finely ground glass
    • an abrasive surface
    • friction
    The heat of friction turns a small amount of the red phosphorus into its chemical cousin white phosphorus—a substance that bursts into flames in air. Other chemicals in the mix release oxygen in small amounts to feed the flames. Then—presto!—the wooden or paper match catches fire.

    Of course, a match by itself doesn’t provide much light or heat. For that you need something to fuel the flame—a candle, or firewood.
     
    To ignite anger also requires just the right combination of emotional ingredients—and friction caused by some hurt, injustice, fear, or frustration (or any combination of the four). Even then, however, what size fire you wind up with depends on the fuel you provide. So before the sparks fly, work to clear the kindling—the underbrush of bitterness—from your life.

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    THE FIRE EATERS

    The Harm of Holding In Our Anger
    “Careful words make for a careful life;
careless talk may ruin everything”
    (PROVERBS 13:3 MSG).

     
    “SO THAT’LL BE A CHEESEBURGER—hold the onions—one large order of fries, and a supersized bowl of anger. Anything else?”
    Had a restaurant server attempted to confirm such an order in my younger years, I would have quickly corrected him. Never would it have been my intent to down a big, steaming bowl of fiery anger. But for a number of years, anger had become a staple in my emotional diet.
    Growing up in an unpredictable home that fostered anger, I frequently chose silence when fiery eruptions occurred. Going underground with my feelings seemed the only way to survive in the presence of my painfully punitive father, who tolerated no anger but his own.
    “Eating” my anger felt less dangerous than allowing it to surface. But over time, I’ve learned that when we bury anger alive, it’s only a matter of time before it comes raging back to the surface—only hotter and more harmful. I was subconsciously heaping my hurts into what appeared to be a bottomless pit. But every bowl has a bottom.

Fear Evokes Fire Eating
    If you consistently internalize your anger, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why—the reason is fear . Either you’re afraid of what you will do if you express your feelings, or you fear what others will do (as in my case).
    I constantly evaluated my situation: What will it cost me to be candid, to be honest? Security? Safety? Survival? I didn’t risk showing anger without calculating my potential losses. And from my fear-based perspective, the cost seemed to