job on Losing your Temper

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer.

Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter.

Part of the spirit dies a little each time it’s asked to carry more than its weight in terror, violence, and betrayal.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you...

Pastor: Father in Heaven, I have sinned times without number. I am guilty of pride and unbelief. I’ve failed to delight my heart in your Word and have neglected you in my daily life. All: My transgr...

Stop being so sure that you are always right, and others wrong. Don't trust your own opinion, when you find it contrary to that of older men, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives ...

As we pour out our bitterness, God pours in his peace.

When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...

In her memoir, Confessions of a Good Christian Girl, Tammy describes the internal turmoil she experienced trying to be a good, rule-following Christian who had unexpectedly built an entire life arou...

I am a bow on your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break?

A few days ago I met with a young couple. Their toddler was injured in a car accident. When I visited them in the hospital, the child was on life support. As we stood outside the ICU and spoke, I saw,...

Preaching Commentary Straight Talk from Jesus Jesus Christ did not mince words.  He seems to have always spoken the unvarnished truth, but, I think, with a smile on his face and compassion in his a...

Most of us are aware of the fact that pearls come from oysters, but do you know how they are formed? It all begins with an irritation. Some foreign particle, for example, a piece of sand, works its wa...

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko describes one of the many paradoxes that come with depression: how ...

John Chrysostom, the eloquent Church Father, had incurred the wrath of the Byzantine (aka Roman) Emperor Arcadius. Enraged, the emperor consulted his counselors on how to punish the powerful preacher....

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

It is wicked to wrong God; but still worse to think oneself wronged by God. And men and women think this oftener than one would suppose.

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora...

Pastor: And the LORD said to Job: “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it.” All: Then Job answered the LORD and said: “Behold, I am of small account...

The first funeral I officiated was for an eighteen-year-old girl killed in a car accident. To this day I’ve never experienced a more difficult funeral. And as I spoke and looked out into a sea of grie...

Charles Templeton was a close friend and preaching associate of Billy Graham in the 1940s. He effectively preached the gospel to large crowds in major arenas. However, intellectual doubts began to nag...

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.

I have found it is impossible to be unforgiving toward those I am praying for. It’s not easy to start praying for them; it’s one of the hardest things I’ve done. But when I make that person an object ...

We greet the world with a cry and a scream, with clenched fists grasping after what we so desperately need. None of us remember the shock and drama of being born, but have you seen a baby’s birth? I r...

Many of us assume that our spiritual heroes do not have to experience the same inner-wrestling that we do. Mother Teresa, beloved across the world is one such figure we might “assume” didn’t have to d...

Nine-year-old Leo Tolstoy , convinced God would help him fly, dove headfirst out a third-floor window and had his first major crisis of disappointment with God. Fortunately, Tolstoy survived the cr...

“If your eye causes you to sin…” is one of the boldest phrases from the mouth of Jesus, appearing three times in the gospels. Our eyes not only leads us into sinful behaviors, but also to take in sinf...

In our modern materialistic world, it is easy to lose sight of that sense of longing. In her wonderful collection of essays Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard speaks about that growing void...

God, we come with hesitant steps and uncertain motives to sweep out the corners where sin has accumulated, and uncover the ways we have strayed from Your truth. Expose the empty and barren places wher...