In A Culture Immersed In Anger, Remember That Such Feelings Bring You Misfortune

Anger. It is a great stumbling block of our time. Turn on your radio. Turn on the TV. Watch the way everyone talks about each other.

Oh, the self-righteous amongst us! We are a people filled with anger without realizing it -- and the dangers.

In fact, if there are misfortunes in your lives, or at least blockages, you may want to take a reckoning of what's going on in your thoughts.

Is there dislike? Are you an angry person? Critical? Do you tend first to look at the bad side of others?

We speak here of anger because often the frustrations in our lives -- the inability to find a mate, troubles in marriage, financial distress -- are the result of negativity. What a downward path this is!

"Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go," warns Proverbs (22:24-25), "lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul."

Unwittingly, when we have anger toward someone we are cursing and such curses are boomerangs that come back to haunt us.

"We give the enemy a legal right to attack, or to gain a stronghold in our lives, when we harbor anger," writes Bill Banks, an expert.

This goes right to Scripture: "Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath: neither give place to the devil" (Ephesians 4:26-27).

We grant the devil an evil right when we share in his rage and in our culture we're surrounded by this. Some make a living being angry. In politics, they believe they have the right to be angry if they are on the "right" side of an issue.

Righteous indignation is one thing, but spewing a constant litany of anger is anything but being on the right side.

All around are those who are rude and critical over the air or in person without realizing the harm they are doing to themselves and the blocks they are creating.

Anger plays an enormous role in blocking answers to prayers because anger is connected to hatred, which is the opposite of God and fuels attack by the enemy. It is his energy!

When we look at anger, it is often caused by either pride or by fear. Fear is the opposite of faith -- it is faith in a negative -- and what you fear makes you angry.

Did you know that? Did you know that your anger, by and large, is rooted in fear? We get this even from the dictionary. Webster's tells us that anger is an "affliction," that it is angst, anguish, and fear, "a strong feeling excited by a real or supposed injury."

So get rid of that too. Get rid of emotional hurts. Ask the Sacred heart to heal them. And don't fear. "For the thing I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me," lamented Job (3:25).

The same is true of anger: it brings what we least want -- and it is a sign of another great block to healing: unforgiveness. When we have anger we must often look for deeper wounds and heal those wounds lest they continue to fester.

Unhealed, they cause endless trouble. Emotional wounds attract the enemy. And when we have rage, we grow attached to the subject of our anger! Did you ever realize that? When you express anger at someone, you become attached to that person in a negative sort of soul tie; we enter into a vicious cycle of dislike, that often grows.

What we hate is hard to shake and brings what we least want -- while love chases evil away.