Irritating or Irritable?

Posted on June 29, 2025 by Barbara Harper

When one of my sons was a child, he got hold of the word “irritating” – as in, “Mo-ooom, he’s irritating me.”

We tried to teach our boys not to irritate each other on purpose, not to hit, tease, “bother,” bait, infringe on the possessions or person of the other, etc. But sometimes in everyday living together, we’re going to irritate each other.

After listening to whatever had irritated my young son, I would deal with the issue. But when the complaints of irritation grew, I would say something like, “You need to work on not being so irritate-able” (pronounced on purpose for emphasis). That was not a satisfying answer. The problem is with the other guy, Mom! You need to make him stop!

I need to heed my own advice. I find myself getting far too irritated far too often. Sometimes it’s the other thing or person that is being irritating, or causing the issue: the ~~stupid~~ recalcitrant computer, the driver who wasn’t watching what he was doing, the Alexa device that can’t handle a simple request, etc.

But too often, it’s just a matter of my own irritate-ableness. Touchiness, my mom used to call it.

Honestly, little irritations trip me up spiritually much more often than major trials.

So what can I do when I am feeling irritable?

Remember we live in a fallen world. Appliances and cars break down at the most inconvenient times. Traffic jams seem to occur when I am most in a hurry. We all have sin natures that won’t be completely eradicated until we get to heaven. I shouldn’t be surprised when things go wrong or when there are occasional misunderstandings.

Fix the issue, if possible. Find out if there is something wrong with the computer, leave early so every red light isn’t aggravating, slow down and take the necessary time to accomplish something so haste doesn’t create more problems, gently ask the other person to refrain from or change whatever they are doing,etc.

Forbear. A former pastor used to say forbearing was just good old-fashioned putting up with each other. Ephesians 4:1-3 goes a step further and speaks of “forbearing one another in love” (“bearing with” in some translations).

Humble myself. The verses mentioned speak of humility and meekness. Who am I to think that the entire world should revolve around my preferences? Colossians 3:12-14 also speaks of forbearance in the context of “kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering,” and forgiveness.

Focus on the other person. When I am fixated on an irritating behavior in someone else, I view the whole person through that lens. Instead, I need to focus on that person as another child of the Father whom He loves every bit as much as He loves me and seek ways to serve him or her.

Do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I need to remember that I’m probably unwittingly irritating someone else who is being forbearing with me. I need to handle the irritations that come from other people as graciously as I would want them to handle mine.

Don’t make excuses. There are certain times, seasons, hormones, and circumstances that make one more susceptible to irritability. I admit it is really hard for me to be civil, much less loving, when I haven’t had enough sleep. And during certain hormonal surges I’ve wondered how in the world not to blow up at someone. But God’s promises and requirements don’t have exception clauses for “those” times. He gives more grace when we ask Him and rely on Him for it.

Behold our God. II Corinthians 3:18 says we’re changed more and more into Christ’s likeness as we behold Him. When I look inside and tell myself I need to be more kind, loving, forbearing, etc., I get discouraged and fail because I don’t have it in myself (Romans 7:18). But when I look at Him, that irritability seems to just melt away.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made (Psalm 145:8-9).

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly (! Peter 2:21-23).

Pray. I often pray Colossians 1:9-14 for myself and my loved ones. Verse 11 says, “Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.” We need God’s strength to be patient. Along with His power, He also gives us joy.

Trust God to work through even this. Author and missionary Elisabeth Elliot has been my “mentor from afar” for most of my adult life. She was honest about her human failings and struggles. She wrote in A Lamp for My Feet:

How can this person who so annoys or offends me be God’s messenger? Is God so unkind as to send that sort across my path? Insofar as his treatment of me requires more kindness than I can find in my own heart, demands love of a quality I do not possess, asks of me patience which only the Spirit of God can produce in me, he is God’s messenger. God sends him in order that he may send me running to God for help.

It encouraged me that Elisabeth had some of the same feelings I wrestle with.

God uses some people and circumstances as sandpaper to smooth our rough edges. Romans 5:3-5 tells us “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” That’s true of “little” sufferings as well as the big ones.

(Revised from the archives.)

(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)

Battling Anger, Frustration, and Impatience

Posted on July 25, 2021 by Barbara Harper

You might not suspect it, but I have a short temper sometimes. I don’t yell. I grew up with yelling and didn’t want it in my home. But I tend to seethe silently, which is no better (and certainly isn’t healthier).

Of course, some anger is justified. Ephesians 4:26 says, “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” But the next verse warns, “and give no opportunity to the devil.” There are a number of warnings in Proverbs and other Scriptures about the dangers of anger.

What trips me up most often are dumb little things. Like trying to get one coat hanger, which somehow makes others fall down. Or the easy-open package which doesn’t live up to its description. Or tossing a plastic bottle into the recycling bin only to have it bounce out and roll under the car.

When a flash of anger or frustration or impatience flares up, I pray for forgiveness and try to gain the right perspective.

I pray for patience. People say not to do that because, since “tribulation worketh patience” (Romans 5:3, KJV), you’re asking for more tribulation. But I am asking for grace to respond better when even these minor tribulations show up.

Lately I’ve wondered if there’s a way to head that flare-up off at the pass. “Good sense makes one slow to anger” (Proverbs 19:11). So I sat down one afternoon and sought some good sense “to be renewed in the spirit of [my] mind” (Ephesians 4:23).

We live in a fallen world. Stuff will go wrong. The computer will mess up just as I was finishing my work. Ants will find their way into my kitchen, despite having a whole big world outside to explore. Weeds will grow faster than plants. Ever since the fall of man in Genesis 3, life has been harder than it was before.

In my early adulthood, we didn’t have the plethora of personality profiles we do today. No one had heard of the Enneagram or Meyers-Briggs. All we had to go by were the four temperaments. Some Christian books on the subject were very helpful in understanding myself. But it was a preacher who shared in passing something that was a big eye-opener to me. He mentioned that melancholics (my personality type, but not meaning sad) liked things to be right. They’re often seen as critical (and can be), but that’s an outgrowth of wanting to fix what’s wrong.

But there’s no way I can personally set everything right, from hard-to-open packages to social justice. I can only do what’s before me to do. I ask God to set things right and pray for grace to deal with the everyday frustrations of life.

Who am I, that I should expect everything to go my way? I’m running late and get frustrated with red lights, as if the whole transportation system should rearrange itself for my benefit. I get angry at the driver who cut me off or took the parking space I was aiming for, as if I had a right to those spaces over him. A lot of my frustration boils down to selfishness.

Giving way in small things makes it easier to give way in big things. I used to think it wasn’t necessarily wrong to take anger out on an inanimate object when I was alone. It didn’t have feelings, and I wasn’t ruining my testimony. But letting myself “lose it” in those moments just makes it easier to keep responding the same way. As the old hymn says:

Yield not to temptation,
For yielding is sin;
Each vict’ry will help you,
Some other to win;
Fight valiantly onward,
Dark passions subdue;
Look ever to Jesus,
He will carry you through.

Ask the Savior to help you,
Comfort, strengthen and keep you;
He is willing to aid you,
He will carry you through.

H. R. Palmer

Impatience and frustration are not Christlike. “Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2:6). “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2). Yes, Jesus got angry. But when He overthrew the money-changer’s table in the temple and cursed a fig tree, those incidents were not flash-in-the-pan exasperation or losses of temper. They were a demonstration of His authority and a small preview of the judgment to come. In His dealings with everyday people, He was meek and kind.

The fruit of the Spirit. Last week I talked about not just “don’t-ing,” not just concentrating on what we’re not supposed to do, but pursuing what we are supposed to. For the past few weeks I have been asking God every morning to fill me with His Holy Spirit and work out His fruit in my life. Then I recite the fruit of the Spirit to myself: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Keeping those things at the forefront of my mind will hopefully incline me more toward them than the flesh.

Meditating on God’s Word. In addition to the passage about the fruit of the Spirit and anger, verses like these melt my anger away:

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:30-32)

Anger and frustration are not worth the consequences, physically (high blood pressure, headaches, etc.), mentally (letting the next minutes be ruined by a sour attitude over some frustration) or spiritually.

Remember little things are just little things. Don’t let them foment into a bigger problem.

Take practical measures. Stop struggling with the package and just get the scissors. Leave the house with a cushion of time. Set reminders so I don’t forget things.

Let God use frustrating circumstances for good. Elisabeth Elliot wrote in Keep a Quiet Heart:

Everything about which we are tempted to complain may be the very instrument whereby the Potter intends to shape His clay into the image of His Son–a headache, an insult, a long line at the check-out, someone’s rudeness or failure to say thank you, misunderstanding, disappointment, interruption. As Amy Carmichael said, “See in it a chance to die,” meaning a chance to leave self behind and say YES to the will of God, to be “conformable unto His death.” Not a morbid martyr-complex but a peaceful and happy contentment in the assurance that goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives. Wouldn’t our children learn godliness if they saw the example of contentment instead of complaint? acceptance instead of rebellion? peace instead of frustration?

Elisabeth once quoted what George MacDonald said in What’s Mine is Mine: “Because a thing is unpleasant, it is folly to conclude it ought not to be. There are powers to be born, creations to be perfected, sinners to be redeemed, through the ministry of pain, to be born, perfected, redeemed, in no other way.”

A Chinese proverb says, ‘”A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.”

Amy Carmichael once wrote:

The hardest thing is to keep cheerful (and loving) under little things that come from uncongenial surroundings, the very insignificance of which adds to their power to annoy, because they must be wrestled with, and overcome, as in the case of larger hurts. Some disagreeable habit in one to whom we may owe respect and duty, and which is a constant irritation or our sense of the fitness of things, may demand of us a greater moral force to keep the spirit serene than an absolute wrong committed against us. [Houghton, Frank. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur. (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1983), 86-87]

I make my prayer Colossians 1:11 (KJV): “Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.” Not just patient and longsuffering, not just “grin and bear it,” but joyful!

What helps you to battle impatience, frustration, and anger?