Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it. If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.
James 1:19-23, 25-27 NLT
Let this word penetrate in your hearts and move you to action.
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:18.
Loving another person as ypurself can be difficult especially if all you want to do is get back at them. With the same tender care you look to treat yourself with, do the same for others, soothe your anger at God’s feet because the bible commands us to be slow to anger, do not sin by holding onto it for longer than necessary. Let it go. Let us really seek to live the word out in our lives.
Practical steps we can take is writing out our frustrations as they arise or praying in the moment rather than reacting straightaway.
Prayer: Dear Father open our eyes to practical ways of living out the word in our lives, give us the ability and opportunity to live as the word commands us to and show us how to obey it. May we soothe all anger at your feet and seek to love our neighbours even the most difficult ones, in Jesus’s name, amen.