Dealing with The Twin Little Foxes: Anger and Irritability

UV 1521/10000 Dealing with the Twin Little Foxes: Anger and Irritability
Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.
Song of Solomon 2 v 15

Samson caught 300 foxes and tied them tail to tail, set the bushy tails on fire and sent them into the enemy territory. This is what we need to do: like Samson we should catch each of these little foxes that ruin our lives, our peace, our health, our relationships, our fruit of the spirit, our productivity, testimony and our legacy. Like foxes, they are cunning and creep into our nature and our lives stealthily and keep biting off juicy parts of our lives. Identifying these sly ones and catching them are certainly a big challenge. But once caught we should not treat them like pets but ruthlessly destroy them before they destroy our fruitfulness. Samson caught them in pairs as most of them are twin vices or closely related to each other. The Word of God is the fire torch that can set the foxes’ tails on fire and destroy them.
The first of the foxes we need to catch is anger. Scripture says that we should not let the sun go down on our anger. Anger first starts as a real or imagined resentment for some reason against another person. It could be against someone close to us like our spouse or our own parents or siblings. Uncontrolled anger has the potential of destroying our relationships and thereby, our peace and joy. It slowly builds up inside us and then shoots forth like the hot lava of a volcano from deep inside. We need to identify the sources of anger inside us that often dates back to our childhood. Once we identify the cause of our resentment and anger, we should ask the Holy Spirit to help us to deal with the roots of anger and rage inside us. The spirit that the Lord has given us is one of love, peace and self control. The enemy has sown the weeds of anger inside of us. We need to uproot it and set it on fire.
Scripture says that we should love what is good and hate what is evil. We should cleave or cling to the former and leave or flee from the latter. We must first choose to love peace and joy and to let go of anger or rage. We need to love peace or calmness more and more passionately and hate the opposite – anger or wrath. The source of calmness in our nature should be affirmed. It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. We need to feed this seed, water it, nourish it and allow it to grow even as we starve the anger roots in us. Our minds consisting of our thoughts, emotions and will need to be consistently put on the track: be calm, beat anger. These are binary commands we give to ourselves even as we ask the Lord to help us overcome anger and be calm and peaceful. Anger’ s twin fox is the feeling of irritability based on the assumption that one is always right and the other person or persons are wrong. We need to tie this fox’s tail to the anger fox and send them scurrying with burning tails to destroy each other.

Prateep V Philip