Don’t Lose Your Cool

These days, it seems like so many people are so angry. From social media to the nightly news, you’ve probably felt your buttons being pushed at some point. The truth is, we all get angry. But as we’ll learn in this episode, holding on to our anger comes at a great cost.

This week, Yael explores ancient biblical teachings about what holding onto anger can do to us. And more importantly, what we can gain by letting go of our anger—and giving it to God.

Staying angry only harms ourselves… but standing in prayer is one of the most spiritually healthy things we can do. Listen now—you won’t want to miss this episode!

Episode Notes:

Today’s podcast focuses on the Bible verses found in on Numbers 31:13-16, as we near the end of the fourth of the five Books of Moses:

Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle. “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the LORD in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the LORD’s people.”

This incident followed God’s command to take vengeance on the Midianites who had tried to destroy the nation of Israel by corrupting them spiritually. Specifically, the Midianites had sent their women to seduce the men of Israel and trick them into committing idolatry.

These verses tell us that Moses became angry with the officers of the army because they didn’t completely fulfill the Word of God and had allowed the Midianite women to go unpunished. Even though Moses’ anger seems totally appropriate, it wasn’t without negative consequences.

Yael turns to the Talmud in this episode to explain that when we’re angry, it causes us to lose wisdom, clarity, and many other blessings—and that’s exactly what happened to Moses. We can’t avoid getting angry, but we can learn to let it go and let God take care of the rest.

Yael relates this lesson to her own life, as she has grown upset when Israel is slandered in the news and across social media for defending the Jewish people’s right to exist. Instead of fuming, she applied this same lesson Moses had to learn—that if things are out of our control, it’s best to turn to God in prayer. Anger will only hurt our hearts, but trusting in God will make our situation better. As King David wrote in Psalm 37:8, “Refrain from anger and turn away from wrath, do not fret—it leads only to evil.” Nothing good comes from being angry, but it isn’t always easy to control our anger. Yet, as Yael points out, our job is to keep practicing. The more we practice, the more we will succeed, and the more we succeed, the more blessings we will receive.