August 14, 2023
In the days we live in, we are surrounded by angry people who are one provocation away from an explosion. It's apparent at times, by how they're enraged about seemingly small things. You know they already had to have a very full glass for it to take just a single drop to make them spill all over everybody. Our easily-triggered and quickly-provoked anger should scare us. Because rage crushes reason and makes us blind to the expensive consequences of our eruption.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Volcano Called Anger."
When I was in Quito, Ecuador, I was surprised to learn that the city is virtually ringed by volcanic mountains. Dormant, I hoped. The locals pointed out one in particular - Antisana. "It's 18,000 feet," they said, and I was impressed. "They believe it used to be 28,000 feet." I was curious. Turns out that it just blew its top one day. The eruption didn't really last all that long, but the damage was forever. What was lost was lost for good.
Anger's like that. Just ask the spouses, the children who bear the permanent scars from a human volcano near them. Or the countless people who are forever diminished by the angry words, the names, the accusations heaped on them. Probably by someone who supposedly loves them.
The "molten lava" of rage often comes from a lot of junk we stuffed inside: wounds, disappointments and perceived injustices. I've found you have just two choices with life's bad stuff. You can let it go or you'll let it grow. Bitterness, grudges, unforgiveness; they don't stay the same size. They morph from deal-with-able grass fires into uncontrollable infernos unless you deal with them when they're small.
I found this simple defusing technique in the ancient wisdom of the world's best-selling book. The Bible says, "Do not let the sun go down while you're angry." In other words, deal with it while it's small - manageable. Talk it through. Forgive, if necessary. Just don't stuff it.
Our hair-trigger temper should scare us enough to seek out a place to dump the build-up of years. Someone we can pour it all out to. Someone who can help us work through it. Even to trace our rage back to those original wounds we never dealt with; wounds that became the foundation for what is now a volcanic backlog of angry "sundowns." Unconfronted anger? It's a ticking time bomb. And it's sure to explode, carrying us to consequences we could never imagine. If we're honest, we've all got a dark side. Some of us are better concealing it than others, but it's still a defining part of who we are.
Rage, passion, greed, self-destruction, selfishness: they're all symptoms, the Bible explains, of a much deeper cancer. Our rebellion against God. We've left the Son that we were made for and drifted into ever-darker corners of ourselves. In our word for today from the Word of God, in Romans 7:24, one Bible writer describes himself as a "prisoner of sin," and he cried out, "Who will rescue me?" Then the answer. "Thank God! Jesus Christ our Lord!"
The Bible reveals that Jesus turned the full wrath of the beast of sin on Himself when He absorbed all our darkness by dying on the cross. And the darkness doesn't have to win any more.
There is a Liberator. There's a Savior I want you to know as I've come to know Him. So, would you go to our website and find there the road to begin a relationship with Him that is so transforming? Go to ANewStory.com. Because this could be the beginning of a new story for you.