Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Contagious, infectious, highly infectious…


Proverbs 22:24-25 (NIV), "Do not make friends with a hot tempered man.  Do not associate with one easily angered or you may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared."  Is anger contagious?  You better believe it!  It's infectious!  Highly infectious! 

If I started yelling at you, eventually you'd probably start yelling at me.  Anger is contagious.  When we get it out, other people pick it up. 

If you are serious about breaking this pattern in your life, you need to hang out with some people who have got it together in this area.  That is one of the reasons why we have church.  It is not a perfect place, there are no perfect people there.  It is for people who want to grow.  But the people who come to church are at least making an effort to do what's right which is better than a lot of people are, so you hang out with other believers, – it is called fellowship.  Why?  You start picking up their good qualities, too.  There's value in that, great value.  [Three good churches in Metro LA are PazNaz in Pasadena, MosaicLA in Hollywood and Saddleback Community Church in Orange County.  They don’t accept perfect people there.]

The way that you express your anger is not anger, not in your genes – you learned it.  You learned it by growing up and watching other people.  If anger is a learned response then it can be unlearned.  That's good news.  I don't have to go the rest of my life being manipulated by my moods.  I don't have to go the rest of my life being controlled by my feelings.  I can learn to be patient when everything in me wants to be impatient. 

Just a thought from the front porch…

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