Don't Go To Bed Angry: Good Advice or Garbage?

Hello friends, and welcome to another post! 

Secular culture gives the marriage advice "don't go to bed angry." What do we think - good advice? Bad advice? Do we even realize we're quoting scripture?

 26 "In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27 and do not give the devil a foothold.

Eph 4: 26-27 (NIV)

And if it's scripture, it's good advice. (16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. - 2 Tim 3: 16-17)

My feelings, though, are that we've taken scriptural truth and twisted it to fit a secular marriage -ism that leads to frustration, tension, and the fracture of the team that marriage creates in a husband and wife - a God-given, God-blessed covenant that the devil would love nothing more than to shatter into a million pieces as often as he can.

We take the phrase "don't go to bed angry" and let it mean that we should be angry, find our spouse, and have a good, long talk about why we're angry. We need resolution. We need to get to the bottom of things, fight it out if we have to, and not let the sun set on the "injustice" in our homes. 

We're using what started as scripture used to equip us, as servants of God, thoroughly for every good work, and misconstruing it so that instead of going to bed angry, we're going to bed angry, hurt, and at odds with our spouse. We're arguing past bedtime, tired, emotional, and not getting any less tired and emotional for all the extra "resolution" we're chasing.

What if "don't go to bed angry" has nothing to do with our spouses and everything to do with our hearts?

If sin starts within us, within our hearts, and in our anger we should not sin, lest the devil manage a foothold, then the barrier to bedtime isn't resolution with our spouse but the dissolution of anger in our hearts. 

We shouldn't go to bed angry. We should pray. Do our best to forgive. Let go of the anger and the offense we feel over whatever it is that happened that day. 

Maybe sometimes we need to talk about things with our spouses, but not in order to convince them that they need to change because they made us mad. We need to talk in order to strengthen our marriages and provide a united front against the attempts of the devil to blister our homes. 

Don't go to bed angry. Don't give the devil a foothold. Heal your heart before bed each night by taking it all to God in prayer.

All the love,

Emily

P.S. Feel free to contact me at admin@tulipsandbasil.com!