A Word in Seaon: The Furious Friend (Proverbs 22:24–25)

Do you have angry friends, one or more than one, men and women who are easily provoked, who are touchy and quick to resent any apparent insult or affront, people who get stirred up very rapidly, who are easily wound up, who move from frustration and irritation through to rage and fury in a few short leaps?

Are they people who are quickly angered by what other people do to them or against them?

Are they angered by what's going on in the church? Angered by what's going on in society?

Angered by what's happening in the family? They're just tinderboxes, they're like oily rags and a mere spark is enough to set them off.

The wise teacher of the Proverbs tells us, Make no friendship with an angry man and with a furious man do not go.

We are to choose our friends carefully and we're not to become too quickly and easily familiar with men and women who are going to have this kind of life and show and demonstrate and essentially teach this kind of reaction.

We're not to make a friendship with them, we're not to fall into a path alongside them and the danger is that we might learn his ways and so set a snare for our own souls.

We can do this in any number of ways, not least just finding ourselves getting into the same habit of reacting to everything with anger, having a quick fury because someone somewhere has done something that offends our sensibilities and sensitivities and whether it's in the church or in society, with regard to family or neighbours or colleagues or bosses or employees, government, whatever it may be, we get into the habit of anger and we are provoked ourselves and we often wind one another up.

Perhaps you've been in that situation where with a friend you are basically escalating a problem and by the time you've finished talking you're both in this state of distress and unrest and your souls are agitated and your brows are furrowed and your voices are harsh because everything's wrong with this or that or the other person or situation.

That's a very unhealthy state for us to be in. It's unhealthy because sometimes when we're angry like that we end up doing things that we would not otherwise do.

Our passions carry us into words or deeds that are in themselves sinful as well as coming from a sinful root.

We put ourselves in situations where we're not really able to deal righteously with our friends and address the fact that they are angry and that they ought not to be in this way, that the gentleness and the tenderness that ought to be manifest in Christian living is not clear in their lives.

And perhaps worst of all, we become accustomed to a spirit of anger.

So, do you have angry friends or are you that angry friend?

Are you one who is leading others in a constant disposition of frustration and irritation moving to even anger and fury because of circumstances around you?

Are you being provoked and drawn out by such a one? Do you perhaps even enjoy the kind of sense of release, the discharge of your soul that you get when you really get stirred up into a proper passion?

These are not good dispositions, these are not good attitudes, this is not a good lifestyle.

And if we are God's people we ought to reserve our anger for things that are proper.

We ought to direct our anger only toward the things that truly offend

God and then it is not to be a sinful anger but one that is controlled, proportionate and right.

Because to live in a constant state of anger, to spend our time with the furious, to learn their ways is to set a snare for our souls in any number of ways.

It's terrible in the world, it's awful in the church, it's fearful in a family.

So let us ask God for wisdom not only for ourselves to be patient, thoughtful and stable men and women, but to make no friendship with an angry man and not to go with the furious, not to learn the ways of rage and set a snare for our own souls.