My dear brothers and sisters, understand this:  Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness.  James 1:19 CSB

Have you ever been so angry that you found it really hard to control yourself?  I mean the really, really angry that the little orange faced emoji exemplifies?  Well, unfortunately I found myself in that situation this morning.

I sat down to do my blog and when I logged into my website I got a Godaddy page prompting me to get started setting up my website.  I called Godaddy only to find that my website had been removed for non-payment.  The problem with this is that I paid on Monday for four years of hosting.  After being placed on several holds, I was finally told that a supervisor was being gracious enough not to charge me the $150.00 restoration fee plus a host of other fees since the removal of my website was “somewhat” their mistake.  What???  This is when I lost my patience.  I repeated the word somewhat in disbelief.  I had clearly contacted their company and paid what they required.  The changes made to remove my website was not “somewhat” their mistake.  Clearly, in my mind, it was all, every bit, totally their mistake.  I certainly didn’t agree to pay them this large amount of money so that they would take my website down within 48 hours.  Duh?  But, just as I was about to blow my stack the technician, who needed to log in to try to restore my website, asked for my domain name.  I realized that I had to tell him that it was john1633christiancounseling.com.  Christian being the key word.  I had to stop and think this one over.  He already knew how upset I was.  I had also told him in no uncertain terms that this was not “somewhat” their mistake, it was all their mistake and I would hope that they certainly would not want me to pay a restoration fee.  So, I figured I better think this one out for a minute.  Could I blow up on this guy?  I mean he didn’t make the mistake.  He’s not the person I talked to several days ago.  He is just the poor guy on the receiving end of someone else’s mistake.  He’s the poor guy who is trying to clean up someone else’s mess.  So I did the best I could do to calm down and he walked me through a process after which he told me that they would try their best to restore my website but they could not guarantee that my users would be restored or past blogs would be restored.  So I did what I should have done prior to making the call, I prayed.  I prayed to God to restore my users and my blogs and I trusted in Him to do just that.  That removed my anger.  You see when I stopped myself from getting angry and trusted in God, I had nothing left to be angry about.  I trusted God to fix it.  I didn’t trust Godaddy, but I trusted God.  As I told my friend about what had happened I told her that I knew that God would restore my past blogs and that God would restore my users.

All Godaddy could tell me was that within 24 hours they hoped to have my blog restored with nothing lost from it.  But I couldn’t worry because I knew what God could do.  So, now, less than 12 hours later I am typing my blog.  The topic is different than  what I had planned, but It is what God taught me through this experience.  It is also what I felt He wanted me to share with you today.

I have learned that every potentially bad situation is really just a learning experience.  I have also learned that if I don’t learn from it and pass the test there will be many more tests along the same lines.  I made a choice this morning to be slow to speak, I had to calm down first.  I tried to slow my anger that was building and desperately wanting to erupt like a volcano.  I had to put it in check.  But most importantly, I had to listen.  I had to listen to God.

The devil would have liked nothing more than to destroy my witness right there on that phone call, but I didn’t let him get the best of me.  I am so glad that I didn’t let him have his way.

The other scripture that comes to mind from this situation is 1 Peter 5:8-9 Be serious! Be alert! Your adversary, the Devil, is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.  Be firm in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are being experienced by fellow believers throughout the world.  The devil is working on all Christians, we are definitely not alone in this fight.

God is so good to me.  The least I can do is control my anger and treat people the way God calls me to.  It seems like such a small price to pay for all He has done for me.   So try to remember this when people or situations make you angry.

Have a great day!