How to lay out a welcome mat for the devil …

Get angry.

That’s right, one of the most direct ways of welcoming the evil power of Satan into your life is to be casual about anger.

Take a look at the opportunity the Bible says anger provides to the devil:

“And ‘don’t sin by letting anger control you.’ Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil,” Ephesians 4:26-27.

The idea of anger being a “foothold” to the devil is an important observation to be understood. Someone once wrote this about rock climbing: “There are times in rock climbing when all you need is the smallest crack to insert a finger or a tiny crevice to gain a FOOTHOLD. Then you have the leverage you need to continue.”

I’m not fond of heights, so let me put it this way – you’ll NEVER bench press as much (or anything close) as you can leg press. That’s because our legs are much more powerful than our arms, or our arms and chest together. When you can get a foothold and engage the power of your legs, you can push off hundreds of pounds! A friend who is a Personal Trainer and fitness studio manager recently posted a picture of a guy who visually didn’t look to be very fit, but had just leg pressed 750 pounds!

Anger is that little crevice of a foothold that is all Satan needs to push hard and deep into your life and cause some significant damage. That’s because igniting our anger explodes irrational thinking, and when we’re not thinking like Jesus, it’s a short step into sin.

Even though we have this warning from the Apostle Paul, it’s not uncommon in our time for Christians to spend their entire day listening to their favorite slanted news source reporting non-stop on all the things that make them angry. Being so primed, these people turn to social media and fill their day posting memes about all the things they’re angry about. This behavior is a means of keeping the fires of anger stoked day and night in such people — they might as well lay out a welcome mat for the devil the way they treat anger so casually and commonly.

Developing this habit of anger will quickly lead people to realize the truth in Benjamin Franklin’s statement: “Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.” The reason is found in this scripture:

“Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires,” James 1:20.

Not only does anger provide a foothold to the devil, it’s physically harmful to our own bodies. Check out this insight from the Spokesman – Review:

Doctors from Coral Gables, Fla., compared the efficiency of the heart’s pumping action in 18 men with coronary artery disease to nine healthy controls. Each of the study participants underwent one physical stress test (riding an exercise bicycle) and three mental stress tests (doing math problems in their heads, recalling a recent incident that had made them very angry, and giving a short speech to defend themselves against a hypothetical charge of shoplifting). Using sophisticated X-ray techniques, the doctors took pictures of the subjects’ hearts in action during these tests.

For all the subjects, anger reduced the amount of blood that the heart pumped to body tissues more than the other tests, but this was especially true for those who had heart disease.

Why anger is so much more potent than fear or mental stress is anybody’s guess. But until we see more research on this subject, it couldn’t hurt to count to 10 before you blow your stack.

We like to fool ourselves that our daily indulgence of anger is a display of righteous indignation, but deep down we know it’s a slow poison that chiefly harms us. Fredrick Buechner, writing in “Wishful Thinking Transformed,” describes the corrosive work of anger like this:

Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

The tiniest foothold is opportunity for the devil to wreak havoc in our lives, and anger is his favorite pushing-off point.

So how do you lay out a welcome mat for the devil?

Get angry.

Want to avoid that?

Focus your mind away from casual anger:

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise,” Philippians 4:8.

“Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth,” Colossians 3:1-2.

“That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever,” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

Maybe it’s time to remove the devil’s welcome mat by breaking the habit of anger in your life and, instead, filling your mind with Christ and what pleases Him. Not only will that remove a powerful foothold to the devil, but you’ll live a more peaceful, joyful life by ridding yourself of an addiction to anger.

Scotty