Impatience, Irritability, and Anger

Respectable Sins has been a series of places where I’ve gotten stuck, worked through it or attempted to, moved on, only to get stuck again. I’m stuck in The Weeds of Anger chapter. Actually, this chapter is going to be a reference tool for me. Like chapter 4, it will be a place I bookmark and return to read and re-read over and again.

I like knowing about anger. Born from experience and necessity, putting God’s Word to the test regarding anger has been almost a quest in my life. Chapter 16 has provided me additional insights for my arsenal against anger. Here’s what I came away with:
- Anger is never static: there is either an upward spiral or a downward one.
- The downward spiral of anger is resentment, bitterness, hostility, grudges, and strife.
- The upward spiral of dealing with anger is a firm belief in the sovereignty of God, growing in love, and learning to forgive.
- A sure road to bitterness is filing wrongs away in our minds and a sure test of a grudge is when the wrong filed away in my mind develops into a plan of revenge.
- A good test for true forgiveness is a restored relationship.

Discussion for Chapters 14, 15 & 16:
1. Here’s what I am most grateful for: in the Discussion Guide there is a special Bonus Study section titled, Battling Anger’s Noxious Weeds. It is one of four bonus studies in the Guide, two involving anger and two involving jealousy. That comforts me. Someone else believes anger is a powerful subject.

We will start our homework with Battling Anger’s Noxious Weeds:
Long-term unresolved anger creates many noxious weeds that poison lives. Return to Chapter 16 and write the definition of each of the terms below. Using the following verses as a springboard, ask God to reveal any area in which He sees a weed growing in your life.
Resentment:
1 Corinthians 13: 5
2 Timothy 2: 22–24
Bitterness:
Romans 3: 12–14
James 3: 14
Holding a grudge:
Romans 12: 18-21
James 5: 9
Strife:
Proverbs 30: 33
Romans 1: 29
1 Timothy 6: 3-4

2. We don’t want to leave out Chapter 14. Go back and write out the definitions for:
Impatience:
Irritability:
How do you tend to express each?

3. Situations do not cause us to be impatient and others do not cause us to become angry. Your thoughts and your solutions?

For August 5:
Read Chapters 17 & 19.
May I just say here that we are finally to the chapter that in the beginning of this study I knew was just for me: Judgmentalism. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Cry, because I wonder how much more plowing up my heart can stand. The plowing has definitely brought many things hidden back to my memory and to the forefront of my thinking. But, I am encouraged by the fact that my husband, who used to be a farmer, tells me that there are two kinds of plowing: plowing to prepare to plant a new crop and plowing to get rid of the weeds. I’m not sure which one God is doing with me, but I’m confident that He will do no more plowing than what is needed. And laugh, because how wrong could I be about myself – to think I’d sail through the previous chapters before getting the one I knew was for me. Sail through the chapters until I arrived at the one on judging! Who am I kidding? Only me, myself and I.