Are You Easily Irritated?

PRAY OVER THIS

“(Love) does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13:5-7

 

PONDER THIS

Love is not irritable. Do you have a hair-trigger temper? Are you a person who easily flies off the handle or is easily irritated?

Years ago, when I was working my way through school, there was a deacon in our church who hired me to work for him. I thought he was one of the most wonderful men I’d ever known. I worked with this man, and on one occasion I saw this man I greatly respected get so angry. He picked up a tool and threw it all the way across the room, muttering something that I would not want to repeat. I was so hurt because I’d looked up to him. He was a leader in our church, and I was just a young person. I thought how sad that this man was so easily provoked.

We all have our faults. There have been those moments when I have taken my eyes off the Lord and gotten provoked, and the Holy Spirit has reminded me, “Adrian, the reason you did that is because that’s what you were full of.” What spills out is what you’re full of. We need to learn to drown insults in a river of love. One of the precious virtues of love is that it is not irritable.

How easily are you irritated? What are specific things that set you off?

How has someone’s patience made an impact on your life?

PRACTICE THIS

Ask someone you are close with to keep you accountable for times you are easily irritated. Resolve to drown insults you receive in a river of love.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If He Calls, He Keeps

[The Lord] will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:8–9)

What are you depending on to ensure that your faith will last until Jesus comes?

The question is not, Do you believe in eternal security? The question is, How are we kept secure?

Does the perseverance of our faith rest decisively on the reliability of our own resolve? Or does it rest decisively on the work of God to “keep us trusting”?

It is a great and wonderful truth of Scripture that God is faithful and will keep forever those whom he has called. Our confidence that we are eternally secure is a confidence that God will do whatever is necessary to “keep us trusting!”

The certainty of eternity is no greater than the certainty God will keep us trusting now. But that certainty is very great for all whom God has called.

At least three passages put the call of God and the keeping of God together in this way.

“[The Lord] will sustain you (keep you) to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Corinthians 1:8–9).

“May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

“Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to those who are called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you” (Jude 1–2). (See the same reality in Romans 8:30, Philippians 1:6, 1 Peter 1:5, and Jude 24.)

The “faithfulness” of God guarantees that he will keep safe forever all whom he has called.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Philippians 4:6

[6] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

Matthew 6:25

Do Not Be Anxious

[25] “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

Proverbs 16:3

    [3] 

    Commit your work to the LORD,

        and your plans will be established.

Romans 1:8-10

Longing to Go to Rome

[8] First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. [9] For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you [10] always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you.

Does God’s Love Shine Through You?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up.” 1 Corinthians 13:4

 

PONDER THIS

A woman once told a preacher, “You have brought me to a saving faith in Jesus Christ.” And the preacher said, “I’m grateful for that. I like to know how God uses me. What was it I preached that brought you to Christ?” She said, “It was nothing you preached. I was standing around when somebody criticized you to your face, and I watched you respond to that person with kindness. I knew that what you had was real.”

Love is kind. There are many people who are religious, but not necessarily kind. That’s the reason a little girl prayed, “Lord, make all the bad people good, and all the good people nice.” Love enables us to be patient. It enables us to be kind. It enables us not to envy. Envy and love don’t dwell in the same heart. Do you know how to see if you have love or not? If somebody else is being blessed and you rejoice, then you have love. If you cringe when other people are being praised, there’s no love in your heart. Proverbs 14:30 says, “A sound heart is life to the body, but envy is rottenness to the bones.”

When have you felt justified to be unkind to someone else?

What causes you to envy others?

PRACTICE THIS

Assess where envy might live in your heart. Submit this before the Lord and ask Him to lead you to love others.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

As Sure as God’s Love for His Son

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

God strips every pain of its destructive power. You must believe this or you will not thrive, or perhaps even survive, as a Christian, in the pressures and temptations of modern life.

There is so much pain, so many setbacks and discouragements, so many controversies and pressures. I do not know where I would turn, if I did not believe that almighty God is taking every setback and every discouragement and every controversy and every pressure and every pain, and stripping it of its destructive power, and making it work for the enlargement of my joy in God.

Listen to Paul’s astonishing words in 1 Corinthians 3:21–23, “All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The world is ours. Life is ours. Death is ours. Which I take to mean: God reigns so supremely on behalf of his elect that everything which faces us in a lifetime of obedience and ministry will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God.

If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all will infallibly and freely with him give us all things — all things — the world, life, death, and God himself.

Romans 8:32 is a precious friend. The promise of God’s future grace is simply overwhelming. But all-important is the foundation: I have called it the logic of heaven. Here is a place to stand against all obstacles. God did not spare his own Son! Therefore! Therefore! The logic of heaven! Therefore, how much more will he not spare any effort to give us all that Christ died to purchase — all things, all good, and all bad working for our good!

It is as sure as the certainty that he loved his Son!

John Piper 

Bible Study

John 3:16-17

For God So Loved the World

[16] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Romans 4:23-25

[23] But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, [24] but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, [25] who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

[16] All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, [17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Psalm 102:18-20

    [18] Let this be recorded for a generation to come,

        so that a people yet to be created may praise the LORD: 

    [19] that he looked down from his holy height;

        from heaven the LORD looked at the earth, 

    [20] to hear the groans of the prisoners,

        to set free those who were doomed to die,

The Lord Stood By Me

2 Timothy 4:17

[17] But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

Acts 27:23

[23] For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship,

Matthew 10:19-20

[19] When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. [20] For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Lamentations 3:22-23

    [22] The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;

        his mercies never come to an end; 

    [23] they are new every morning;

        great is your faithfulness.

How precious are these words. 

The Lord stands with you in every hour of need. 

His mercy is new every morning.

When you are very ill and your husband says he wants an active social life so he tells you to leave.

When your routine doctor visit reveals cancer.

When your child is cruelly taken from you. 

When your loved one suddenly dies.

When you lose your job.

Lord, we pray for Your presence to be know by those who suffer. 

We pray repentance for those who inflict evil on others.

We pray forgiveness for those who hurt others. 

We know You say "vengeance is mine".

Keep us from bitterness as we trust You.

Amen