Proverbs 25:28. Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls.
Temper Temper Temper!
The first thing I noticed when I got saved (besides a miraculous change in my life), was that some Christians had really bad tempers. The head usher of my home church, saved for 70 years, still has a quick temper. Everyone excused it, so I assumed we had a right to blow our cool every now and then.
I then drove down to Nicaragua in hopes of becoming a missionary/surfer. An ‘Endless Summer with a cross’ kind of thing. I just wanted to get under a happy, gentle, Godly pastor and grow under him. Preferably a native Nicaraguan pastor because the american missionary community down here was pretty quick tempered in general, except for a few greats like my late friends David Spencer and Bob Trolese (books will be written about those two some day).
Missionaries greeted me and told me ‘welcome to the people eater’. FULL TIME missionaries down here, for the most part, have pretty quick tempers. It always surprises me. They blame it on extreme heat, filth, mud, lack of sleep, their heritage (????), constant stomach problems, untreated toothaches, separation of family. Etc. Etc. I think it’s just a martyr’s complex.
The reality is, we all need to just stop making excuses for losing our tempers. It makes us ugly and kills our testimony. Ignoring the person you get mad at, badmouthing them, or excommunicating them is just a cheap cop out. You still have a bad temper. It’s just more Fake, totally fake. The Holy Spirit never writes someone off. Doing so is the same as murder. Instead of running from the people that make you lose your temper, control yourself, and love on them, unless they are a danger.
We have a lot of reasons for our temper. Holy anger is religious people’s favorite excuse. We simply don’t qualify. We blame it on our war criminal grandfather or on something else; but the reality is, are a plague.
No excuse for losing your temper if you’re a Christian. I remember a man who had a very good testimony and became a leading pastor/missionary down here. One night at an event, he lost his temper so badly that it startled me. After that, nobody trusted him.
Overtime, I became less and less comfortable with my own temper. I want to be like Christ. That should be all of our goals.
2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Except for once in the temple, Jesus wasn’t given to temper tantrums. Even that one incident wasn’t a temper tantrum. It was a teaching opportunity. It wasn’t in Jesus’ character to get out of control angry.
One time, a great (famous) Christian I was with got into a traffic jam on the way to a meeting. He blew up, and began driving like a wild man. He scared me and I never believed in him again. Whenever I see a man lose his temper, I lose trust in that man unless I can see that he has gone to the Fountain that cleanses and has gotten delivered from that bad testimony.
No man has any more right to go around with an uncleaned temper than he has to hold a hand grenade in his pant’s pocket (to use just in case). He has no more right to hold a bad temper than he has to leave untreated a cancerous tumor, because it will destroy his ministry. He can pray and testify, give and labor in the mission field, but if one day he blows up publicly, nobody will believe in him after that.
Proverbs 24:16 For a righteous person falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in time of disaster.
Speaking of learning to control our tempers! Every day down here is an opportunity to grow down here. Winnie and I have learned to just give glory to God, for everything. Bad gov’t, naughty kids, weird neglectful parents. Just Praise God for every opportunity to learn to control our tempers
Romans 8:28 All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord.
For example, We ran out of tin down here helping everyone else during the monsoons and now we don’t have tin for our own house. Praise God that we have pots and pans in the mean time, Hahaha. Welcome to the mission field! Praise God that He allows us to be here and to help the poorest of the poor. I knew I was forgetting something while I was helping others. The rains wiped us out. Glad it stopped! Praise God! If any one in nicaragua knows where I can score free tin, please let me know. He’ll work it out. He always does.
Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.