Demonstrate Anger Appropriately

Anger is a God-given, God-created emotion that the Lord himself demonstrated on many occasions throughout human history, as He did with Moses, “So the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses” (4:14).

Unfortunately, there is a big difference between God and us. While God is perfect in every way — including in how He experiences and demonstrates His anger—we are prone to experiencing and expressing our anger in inappropriate, sinful ways. Too often, our anger is not righteous anger like God’s is. God becomes angry at unrighteousness; we usually become angry when we don’t get our own way or we feel slighted in some way.

If we want to have successful, satisfying marriages, if we want to be the kind of parents who teach their children to express themselves correctly, then we need to learn to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate expressions of our anger, and we need to learn to express our anger appropriately.

Because many adults don’t know how to properly handle their own anger, they respond in hurtful ways when their spouse or their children express anger inappropriately. So what may have begun as a child sinning devolves into two children sinning, one an adult child and the other an adolescent.

Taken from FamilyLife Marriage Bible