Love is not irritable
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Introduction:
Introduction:
BANG!! you slam the door shut, crank up your music put your head in your pillow and just yell, AHHHHHH why is everybody just so annoying, can’t I get just 10 minutes to myself at the end of the day, don’t people care about me, everyone is just so irritating.
Problem:
Problem:
Now you may not have had an experience as dramatic as this, but we have all had days where all we want is for people to just leave us alone. We are tired and hungry, and everyone just seems to provoke a small amount of anger in us, whether it be your class mate who doesn’t study but still gets a better mark than you, or a sibling who just seems to make your life hell whenever they are in the same room as you, maybe it’s just the traffic getting to or from school. Whatever it is we all get irritated and annoyed by someone or something. Now we could sit here all day and complain about those things and then we would all leave blaming the world for the irritation that we are experiencing. But what if the irritation that we experience isn’t someone else’s fault, what if the irritation and frustration we are experiencing reveals in us a lack of love towards the person who is causing us frustration. How do we know if we have a loveless heart, as we have already talked about, we get irritable, which leads to us gossiping about the people that irritate us, which then leads to us pushing people away, and the final outcome is anger towards those who we don’t love.
How do you respond to irritation? How should you respond to irritation?
The Ideal:
The Ideal:
As we continue in our series on Love, we look to , here we see what the ideal of love is, that love is not irritable. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, how can I never be irritated we have already talked about how there is so much in the world that irritates us. But, what this word means is actually to be provoked to respond to irritation. That means it’s not about trying to eliminate all the irritating people in our lives, but rather loving in a way that we don’t blow up and push people away because they can be annoying some times.
To understand this we are going to look at a story of Jesus.
Jesus and the little children:
Jesus and the little children:
In , we have a story where Jesus had been teaching all day and he and disciples would have been getting tired, and then parents started bringing their kids up to Jesus to be touched by them. And when the disciples saw it the started sending them away, the disciples responded to the irritation by lashing out at the parents and the kids. But Jesus, does not respond in the same way, he responds by saying “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” I’m sure Jesus was tired and hungry and maybe could have easily dismissed theses parents and their kids and just allowed the disciples to send them away. But Jesus responds with love, he welcomed them. And this is a picture of all of us, Jesus never gets irritated by us, he never sends us away. More than that he wants to take our sin, which is ultimately the most irritable thing about us, he takes it and deals with our sin, he takes our old loveless heart and gives us a new heart which helps us to be less irritated by those same people.
He wants to take our irritation from us
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016), .
Application for us all:
Application for us all:
I know that not all of you are Christians and so to say to you that you should love because Jesus first loved you, and that he never sends you away or snaps at you when he is tired, so you should love like Jesus. That doesn’t mean much to you, so I’m going to speak to you from a purely worldly perspective. Who here wants to succeed in life? in your career, with your family, when you go to university, or in sport? If you want success in these areas of your life you will do well not to respond with irritation when people annoy you, the reason is this. First, you can be irritated by anything and everything and so you will become someone people won’t want to be around.
Next time it happens look to yourself not to the other person and see what is in your heart that is causing you to irritated.
Application for Christians:
Application for Christians:
The first thing you should do is pray, pray that the love of Jesus would fill your heart so that it can overflow into the lives of the people around you, this is something you can pray for every morning before you even leave the house, the other time to pray, is as soon as someone begins to irritate you, when that class mate who just grinds your gears and really rubs you the wrong way you know it’s time to pray.
Why should we pray?
Because we are called to love in the same way that Jesus loves. And the only way we can do that is through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. And when his love begins to take over the response is to bear with the irritations of people, Jesus welcomes us all in with open arms not for his personal gain but for the benefit of those he welcomes in. So, next time someone irritates you instead of blowing up and pushing them away, go to them and bear with them, talk with them, invite them to hangout with you and your friends. Pray for them, point them to Jesus. We can even forgive them.
To finish I want to show you how I have implemented this into my own life and specifically with my wife. Toilet paper, For the first few years of our marriage I used to always get frustrated at how my wife would put the toilet paper on the wrong way, and we used to fight about it I get irritated and yell at her every time I went to the bathroom and found it like that. But what slowly happened God started challenging me he was basically saying to me do you love your wife more than the 2 seconds extra it takes to change it yourself or just leave it as it is? So then I stopped yelling out to Jess every time I went to the bathroom, and I started to have self control and choose to love Jess by not getting irritated. And you know what happened, eventually I actually stopped getting annoyed about the toilet roll all together and it no longer bothers me. I stopped pushing Jess away by yelling at her, then I started to love her by accepting that she is just a person who puts the toilet paper on the wrong way, and I’m OK with that.
Pray
Pray