Daily Devotionals
Devotional: October 10th
“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking he put away from you, with all malice.”
Life brims with provocative situations that tempt a person to lose his temper. Perhaps you can identify with some of the following scenarios. A waiter spills hot coffee on you or makes you wait interminably for your food. You arrive home with your latest purchase only to find that the merchandise is defective. When you try to get a refund, the salesman is insolent. Or perhaps you have been given wrong information that causes you to miss your plane. The first week you have your new car, some careless driver puts a dent into the side of it. Then a store promises to deliver an appliance on a certain date. You stay home but no appliance arrives! Repeated delivery promises are broken. The clerk at the supermarket overcharges you, then is rude when you speak to him about it. Your neighbor hassles you over some minor squabble between her child and yours—and her child was obviously to blame. Another neighbor drives you up the wall with loud stereo music and wild parties. A fellow employee heckles you constantly, probably because of your Christian testimony. The computer makes an error on your monthly account, then in spite of your repeated protests by phone, the error reappears month after month. In your favorite sport, the referee makes a grossly bad call. Or the problem may be a clash of wills over TV programs in the living room of your home.
There is no way of avoiding some of these irritating situations. But for the believer, the important thing is how he reacts to them. The natural way is to explode in anger, to tell off the offender in a few well-chosen words. But when a Christian loses his temper, he loses his testimony also. There he stands, livid with rage, his eyes like piercing steel, his lips quivering. There is no way he can speak a word for the Lord Jesus. He is behaving like a man of the world. He is no longer a Bible but a libel.
The tragedy is that the person who has wronged him probably needs the Gospel. Perhaps his annoying behavior is because of some crisis in his personal life. If he were just shown love and consideration, he might be won over to the Savior.
Eruptions of temper have done much to nullify the witness of believers and to bring dishonor on the name of the Lord. A mad Christian is a poor advertisement for the faith.
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