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"A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."  Proverbs 15:1. NKJV

This area is covered greatly in sermons, books and bible commentaries. But if we don't overcome it, then God will continue to expose us to this teaching until we do. We all struggle in this area from time to time. Driving behind someone who is driving ridiculously slow can provoke some pretty harsh words from the one who is following.  Trying to overtake and and nearly crashing the car is one kind of anger fallout, to avoid. Then there is the car park. You queue for hours and just when a space becomes available, someone nips in there very quickly. The blood in your body can be bubbling as you mouth off at the other driver and they give you one of those strange hand signals.

Then there's the person in the supermarket queue - the one that's the items of ten only. Someone comes along with a trolley load of shopping and starts passing them down towards the till. No one says anything but inwardly, you are fuming. You start counting how many items she has. When you see she has 25 different bits of shopping, instead of 10, you try catching the cashier's eye, but they're not saying anything. Eventually you keep staring at the customer, really hoping that she is going to be evicted from the store and banned. However, noting happens. Except, that is, she now catches you eye-balling her and rudely asks, 'What are you looking at?' Pretty soon you have a feud on your hands.

All of this could have been avoided if you had used the soft answer option. However, you opted for the harsh word option and things had gone crazy.If you are a Christian, you know that this behaviour is unacceptable; common to us yes, but unacceptable. 

Does this sound familiar? If so, what should you do about it? I heard of a vicar with a reputation for having a short fuse, who blasted off at a young couple. This vicar was driving home from various appointments when this couple cut him up and slow-timed him all the way. He was livid, and shouted at them, sounded  his horn and repeatedly flashed his headlights at them. But this made no difference. After shouting abuse at them again, the couple gestured at him rudely, slowed down even more and turned into the vicar's drive. He was horrified as he followed behind. He then realised that this was the couple who were getting married in his church in a few weeks time. He told me that he had to do some quick thinking to quieten this down. But alas, the damage was done and he had used the harsh word syndrome instead of the soft answer one.

Don't be like him. Allow the Holy Spirit to help you overcome this area. It is not good and paints a bad picture

Copyright 2019 Grahame Howard 

dailylifewithjesus@protonmail.com