Anger is one of the most common human emotions. It is defined as “an excitement or agitation of the mind, produced by the perception of a real or supposed injury, and commonly accompanied by a desire for revenge”.

Anger in itself is not necessarily a sin, but what we do with that anger often is! Satan will always tempt us to cherish unkind and angry feelings, and a spirit of resentment. Our enemy tempts us to allow all of our passions full reign, including anger. and convinces us we are fully entitled to indulge them. We may think we are merely defending ourselves against wrongs done to us, but the heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9), and seldom more so than when we are angry and seeking to vindicate or avenge ourselves. The devil is always at work, and when we are angry, he will always try to lead us into sin. "He that goes angry to bed, has the devil for his bed-fellow." Night-time, under the cover of darkness, is the devil's favorite time to work.

Sin always begins in the mind. The enemy will try to make us replay the perceived wrong over and over in our mind, and the anger grows every time we replay it. We just cannot seem to let go of it. We rehearse in our minds what we will say and do in response to the offense, to pay back the person who wronged us. We think back over all the other times that person has wronged us. real or imagined. Oh, how much time, energy, and peace we waste, nursing our anger and planning to get even with the one who we feel wronged us.

Far too often, our mouth then continues the sin. Long before we confront the person we are angry with, we tend to tell others about our grievance, what the other person did, how wrong they were. We tend to also bring up other things from the past, showing how awful this person has been all along. We may even exaggerate their behavior a little, teeny-tiny bit, while portraying ourselves in the best possible light. We want justification from others, and when they agree that we have every right to be angry, we hold onto it even more tightly.

It's been said "No one sins by restraining his anger; no one is safe who indulges it." We must be wise to the enemy's tactics: either we learn to control our anger or our anger will control us. The only way to avoid being ruled by anger is to submit to the Holy Spirit our right to be angry, allowing Him to control our minds, our thoughts, our words, and our deeds. We must learn by the Holy Spirit to curb our temper, and restrain our anger. As difficult as it may be, we cannot simply allow our anger to control us - it will always lead us to sin.