What Your Temper Tells You

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.” — Galatians 5:22 (KJV)

How do you know if a life is really surrendered to God? Murray’s answer is very practical. Look at how you treat people.

He points to Galatians: “The fruit of the Spirit is love.” If the Holy Spirit really has more of us, we should become more loving. Murray asks a searching question: “Has it been our experience that the more we have of the Holy Spirit the more loving we become?”

Then he gets specific, and it is a bit uncomfortable. He talks about temper. Some people told him he made too much of it. He disagreed, and explained with a picture:

“Think for a moment of a clock and of what its hands mean. The hands tell me what is within the clock.”

If the hands are stuck, or wrong, or running fast or slow, you know something inside the clock isn’t working. In the same way, Murray says, “Temper is a proof whether the love of Christ is filling the heart, or not.”

That is worth thinking about. You can sing passionately at church and then snap at your parents on the drive home. You can post a Bible verse and then be cruel in a group chat. Murray would say: watch the clock hands. How you speak to your brother or sister, how you react when someone annoys you, how you treat the kid nobody likes: these show what is really going on inside.

This isn’t meant to make you feel hopeless. It is meant to point you to the source. Murray explains that love is the fruit of the Spirit because God is love, and “God’s nature is to be always giving.” Love isn’t something you squeeze out of yourself by trying harder to be nice. It is what grows when God fills you. He says: “Give yourselves up to love, and the Holy Spirit will come; receive the Spirit, and He will teach you to love more.”

He also says this matters for whole churches and groups, not just individuals. A cracked jar can’t be filled with water. A divided group can’t be filled with God’s blessing. Unity and love among believers really matter.

So next time you lose your temper, don’t just feel bad. Treat it as a clock hand. Ask God what it is showing you, and ask him to fill you with his love.

One thing to do this week: notice the moments this week when your temper flares: at home, with friends, on your phone. Each time, afterwards, ask God: “What is this showing me about my heart?” If you hurt someone, say sorry to them.