Week 6: Impatience, Irritability & Anger

I'm trying to get back on track this week, so I decided the first step is engaging in the chapters early and getting the questions posted on time. While I personally haven't dug in to chapters 14-16 yet, here are the study questions to help us all get started.

I don't think I'm wrong when I say that it is getting hard to stick with it. The blog feels a bit lonely, and I can relate to the difficulty too. But whatever your level of involvement on the blog, I hope you'll persevere through the book, and I'll try to do the same. The book isn't a "fun" experience, yet I have to say that this type of self-examination is certainly a tool God can and is using in making me/us more like Himself. And there is no greater goal than that! So even if you're not blogging, I'm just asking you to stick it out and see what God will do. Don't see it as more to feel guilty about but as a way to honor a God that is so holy that He cannot stand even the "smallest" sin yet so loving that He has forgiven even the "biggest" ones. Our sins are paid for, so now we have the freedom to live in the joy of the Lord AND the sanctification His Spirit longs to do in us...for our whole lives.

I'm thankful for sisters in Christ like you! I love you all and pray your week is blessed with the knowledge and presence of our holy and loving God!

Study Questions for Ch. 14-16 (Ouch! These hurt--are we sure irritability is a sin?)

1. Jerry defines impatience as "a strong sense of annoyance at the (usually) unintentional faults and failures of others." In what ways do you tend to express impatience? How do these expressions affect those people who are objects of your impatience?
2. Situations do not cause us to be impatient. "They merely provide," the author writes, "an opportunity for the flesh to assert itself. The actual cause of our impatience lies within our own hearts, in our own attitude of insisting that others around us conform to our expectations." Is Jerry's statement a new distinctive for you? Why is it important for us to understand this perspective?
3. Speaking through Paul in the following Scriptures, how does God want us to act when we're tempted to be impatient? 1 Corinthians 13:1-4, Galatians 5:22-23, Ephesians 4:1-2
4. "Irritability describes the frequency of impatience, or the ease with which a person can become impatient over the slightest provocation." Keeping this definition in mind, do you agree that irritability is a sin? What do you think lies at the root of the irritability?
5. Contrast what the Bible reveals about righteous anger with what it says about sinful anger:

• Righteous anger (self-controlled, arises from an accurate perception of evil, focuses on God and His will): Exodus 32:15-20, Nehemiah 5:1-8, Matthew 21:12-13
• Sinful anger (sinful reactions to people's actions and words): Matthew 5:22, Galatians 5:19-20, Ephesians 4:29-31