I have a lot of things that I struggle with. Anger is one of them. In fact, it's probably one of the biggest things in my life. I tend to become angry at the smallest things. It makes me self pitying and miserable inside, and it is not a fun feeling at all. As I was looking through our bookshelves, I found this book by Kay W. Camenisch called 'Uprooting Anger: Destroying the Monster Within. It looked interesting, so here are some of the conclusions I've come to.   


This are the things you'll need to be able to uproot the anger in your life.

•  You need to know God.  
• You need the ability to change.
• You need the ability to pray. 

If you don't have these things yet, you need to get them. Knowing and loving God is the most important thing in our lives. If you don't yet no God, I urge you to open your bible and read about him. He is loving, and he wants to welcome you into his family. All you have to do is open your bible and read. 

What happens after you make your commitment to God is your choice. You can continue to go down that busy, sunny path, falling deeper and deeper into sin. Or, you could change, and run to him instead of away from him. I can hear some of you saying, "all this stuff sounds awesome, but I can't change. This is just the way I am." Maybe some of you will try to do what God says, and if you fail, you might fall into sin or depression. "I can't seem to do anything right," or "woe is me! I can't do anything the way God wants me to at all!" Now you're just being self pitying! We need to face our problems and try to work them out by swallowing back our pride and becoming humble. (Trust me, this is still something that I'm working on.)

Praying is not that hard! You're simply talking to someone, a friend. I like to think of it as talking to my heavenly father, because for one thing, he is my heavenly father, and for the other thing, my father is always there to help me! And so is Yahweh. No matter how many times Israel ran from God, when they came back begging for forgiveness, he always forgave them and welcomed them back with his arms open wide. 

Remember that we all make mistakes, and we're going to mess up a lot. But do we throw ourselves on our bed and cry, "I just can't do it anymore! I'm never going to change! ?" No, we're not! We're going to take a deep breath and pray that Yahweh will help us to remain calm and not bite back. Remember, it's a choice. You can make the commitment, but once the commitment is there, you have to make a choice. You can make a choice to lash back at what ever you're angry at and let it have it, or you can pray and ask for help. Then you can deal calmly with the situation. Proverbs says that "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but an angry word stirs up strife." I think that that is true--when you're heart's behind it. If you're talking sweetly through clenched teeth and in your heart your groaning because you're so angry, don't count on it working. It's never worked for me.  


Lesson one
Ephesians 4:29-31 says, "Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice..."

This passage is saying that we need to get rid of all the anger in our lives, so that we can minister Grace unto the hearers. If we have things in our heart such as anger, wrath, bitterness, or evil speaking, ect., how can we minister to people? Put on a happy face even though everything is bitter inside? This is one thing I struggle with. Sometimes people try to run from their problems instead of facing them, and that only leads to more anger and pain. 
  
The book says to read 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. I encourage you to do the same at your home or where ever you are. Yahweh wants us to root our the anger in our lives, so that we can live pleasing to him and be joyful, peaceful people ourselves. He wants us to be without:

• Bitterness
• Wrath
• Anger
• Clamor
• Evil speech
• Malice

Bitterness means: 1. Sharpness of taste, or lack of sweetness. 2. Anger and disappointment; resentment.
Wrath means: Extreme anger
Anger means: A strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure or hostility. 
Clamor means: A loud and confused noise, esp. that of people shouting vehemently.
Evil speech is: Using unkind words, evil words, seeking to tear people down.
Malice means: The intention or desire to do evil; ill will.

All of these are bad things that Yahweh hates. As children of the living God, we need to uproot those things in our life and think of good things.

"Finally brothers, what ever is true, what ever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent, or praise worthy, think about these things! Philippians 4:8

"But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such things there is not law." Galatians 5:22-23

• Love means: an intense feeling of deep affection.
• Joy means: A feeling of great pleasure of happiness.
• Peace means: Freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility.
• Patience means: The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.
• Kindness means: The quality of being friendly, generous, or considerate.
• Goodness means: The quality of being good, in particular.
• Faithfulness means: 1.The quality of being faithful; fidelity.
• Gentleness means: 1. (Of a person) mild in empowerment or behavior; kind or tender. 2. moderate in action, effect, or degree; not harsh or severe.
• Self control means: The ability to control ones self, in particular ones emotions or desires or expression of them in ones behavior, esp. in difficult situations. 

 I love the meanings to these, especially the ones of Love, Patience, and Self Control. If we have Patience, we can have self control, and if we have self control, we can have love, and if we have love, we can have joy and peace. It's all quite incredible that we can't have one without the other. We can't only have Kindness and not have Goodness. We can't only have Love and not Joy. We have to have all of them.

Thank you so much for reading today's post. I pray and hope that those of you who read this post will comment and give me some encouragement, as well. I'll need pray for me, for peace and gentleness. I definitely have a lot to learn, so as I said before, comments with words of encouragement are greatly welcome and encouraged! Also, Caleb has been having a dreadfully hard time with his stomach, so we might be going on some healing gut foods for a season! We all need it really bad. It's just a lot of work, because there are some pretty tight restrictions. We will welcome all your prayers and words of encouragement! Also, I've made this a private blog, so that only readers I invite can look at it. If you know somebody who might like to be one of the readers of this blog, please tell me by commenting, and I can see what I can do. Thanks!

Emma