Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] I'm glad to be a little inconvenienced for Christ's sake.
[00:00:10] I've been inconvenienced for a lot of things, but there's nothing better than to be a little inconvenienced out of love for Jesus Christ, our dear Heavenly Father.
[00:00:26] You.
[00:00:28] You created this wonderful life.
[00:00:33] And then you taught us skills to live in the kind of way that makes it possible for us to succeed in life and live joyfully.
[00:00:48] I pray that your spirit would guide us into the truth and we could learn the life skill today of anger management and humility so that this year we'll live in a better way than we did last year.
[00:01:03] I ask it in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:07] Was watching the news this week and a man got mad at another car on the highway.
[00:01:19] And when that car got off, the man followed them.
[00:01:23] And when they stopped at a stoplight, the man attacked the car.
[00:01:30] He was punching and trying to break the window.
[00:01:34] And when he couldn't do that, he was still in such a rage, he just started kicking the side of the car.
[00:01:45] Ah, bro's got anger issues.
[00:01:51] I wish I could say this is an unusual thing, but it isn't unusual.
[00:02:01] America has created a culture that gives more and more permission for people to be ugly, angry.
[00:02:17] And the Bible teaches us that anger is an issue that we have to learn to deal with in a healthy way if we're going to live the Christian life.
[00:02:32] Do you hear this?
[00:02:33] There is no such thing as the angry Christian life.
[00:02:38] And we're studying Psalm 37.
[00:02:42] And Psalm 37 says at verse 8, refrain from anger and forsake wrath.
[00:02:50] Fret not yourself, it only tends to evil, for evildoers shall be cut off.
[00:02:59] But those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
[00:03:04] In just a little while, the wicked will be no more.
[00:03:09] And though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.
[00:03:16] But the humble shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.
[00:03:24] All right, this is a very clear statement.
[00:03:29] Refrain from anger and forsake wrath.
[00:03:33] That, that's, that's about, that's about as basic as you can get. Refrain from anger and forsake wrath.
[00:03:42] So anger comes in various forms.
[00:03:47] The anger I just described to you, that's, that's a loud, boisterous anger.
[00:03:54] But there's another kind of anger that's equally damaging.
[00:03:58] That is the ice cold anger.
[00:04:02] That is the anger that never raises its voice, but it ices you out.
[00:04:10] It slams the door in your face.
[00:04:13] It says very plainly, ah, I have disdain for you and I'm not even going to acknowledge your existence.
[00:04:26] That's anger too.
[00:04:29] Then the third kind of anger I want to bring up, it's passive aggressive anger.
[00:04:36] That is where there's never an argument.
[00:04:42] But they're always looking for an opportunity to make life more difficult for you or make life harder for you. They act like they are your friend and want to help you, but in reality they want to sabotage everything you do. All right, now listen. The Bible says these kinds of anger are not healthy and we're not going to live a quality life if we permit this kind of anger in our life.
[00:05:15] It turns out there are also degrees of anger.
[00:05:20] Ah, at the lowest level we can be angry and it just expresses itself as being annoyed.
[00:05:31] It's not really an outburst of anger. But we're annoyed on the inside if we don't do something with that.
[00:05:41] It ratchets up to it's more than being annoyed. Now we're visibly irritated.
[00:05:49] Now it's no longer just something that's happened on the inside. It starts to become our irritation starts to become visible.
[00:06:00] And then at the other end of the spectrum there is the ugly raging that I described.
[00:06:10] Ah, but the Bible talks about an altogether different degree of anger.
[00:06:17] Proverbs 19:11.
[00:06:21] Good sense makes one slow to anger.
[00:06:27] And it is his glory to overlook an offense.
[00:06:32] Did you hear that kind of anger? Slow to anger.
[00:06:36] If anger is in degrees, the best degree is to be slow to anger, to be willing to overlook an offense.
[00:06:49] I got honked at pulling into church today.
[00:06:53] Guy just had to honk.
[00:06:57] Ah.
[00:07:02] What is anger?
[00:07:05] Let's make ourselves define anger.
[00:07:08] Anger is an emotion we feel when we have a sense that we've been wronged or treated unfairly.
[00:07:18] It is a feeling that responds to the thought, I've been treated wrong.
[00:07:28] It's a response to being frustrated in our desired outcomes. We wanted one thing to happen, it didn't happen. And that frustration stirs up anger in us.
[00:07:45] But not all anger is bad.
[00:07:48] Listen what Paul wrote. Be angry and do not sin.
[00:07:54] So it is possible to feel the feelings of anger and not a sin.
[00:08:00] In fact, I believe that on occasion anger is a proper response to injustice.
[00:08:09] I think there are some things that should make us angry. There are some things that ought to arouse within us this, ah, indignation.
[00:08:23] Ah.
[00:08:25] I've shared Brene Brown's book with you on several occasions. It's the best book I know on emotions. It's called the Atlas of the Heart. And Brene believes that anger is a masking emotion that really we call anger.
[00:08:45] We call other emotions anger, and it masks the real emotion.
[00:08:52] So evidently she did a whole bunch of research.
[00:08:55] And in her research, she asked people to write down the emotions that they knew.
[00:09:02] And almost everybody ended up writing three emotions.
[00:09:08] Glad, sad, and mad.
[00:09:12] And so it's not just that they only had three emotions, it's that those three emotions are what they lumped all the other emotions under.
[00:09:28] So Brunet says that often what we call anger in ourself is really masking another emotion.
[00:09:39] Disappointment, frustration.
[00:09:43] She's got a whole page of the emotions that anger mask. All right, but, but so we can work with it. This morning, I want to say anger is our response to being treated wrong or unfairly, and it's our response to things not turning out the way we wanted them to.
[00:10:14] Now, if I'm going to live a healthy life, I have to recognize that I'm going to be probably not treated fairly all the time.
[00:10:26] It's a pretty normal thing in the world, right? If you think you're the only one who's not being treated fairly, ah, you've got an ego issue.
[00:10:39] Everybody has a sense from time to time of not being treated fairly.
[00:10:45] All right, so if that's a normal part of life and I'm going to live a healthy life, I have to have a skill that allows me to deal with the reality that I'm going to have the feelings of, of not being treated fairly.
[00:11:04] We're all going to have times where we're frustrated things didn't turn out the way we wanted them to.
[00:11:09] The outcome was not the outcome we wanted. That's going to happen in all of our lives. I need to have a skill so that when I feel that anger doesn't make things worse.
[00:11:26] So how do I manage my anger? If the Bible says refrain from anger, how do I go about doing that?
[00:11:34] What is it exactly? I'm supposed to do that when I feel anger, I can refrain from it. All right, let's start with this.
[00:11:44] Become self aware of anger triggers.
[00:11:49] Some things make you mad that don't make other people mad.
[00:11:53] Some things make other people mad that don't make you mad. So we all have anger triggers, right?
[00:11:59] And we have to become self aware that when this happens, I usually feel anger.
[00:12:07] So I recognize my triggers.
[00:12:14] Here's one of my anger triggers.
[00:12:18] We, we want, we work really, really hard to make things go well at church.
[00:12:25] Now, sometimes things don't go well and then we have an after action review and say, why didn't that go well?
[00:12:32] And whenever anybody says well, there's nothing we could do that instantly, okay? So we don't have to.
[00:12:42] We don't have to do anything because there was nothing we could do anyway.
[00:12:47] It's.
[00:12:48] And plus, it's not true.
[00:12:51] Anything that doesn't go right, you can fix it if you're willing to dig in and make sure. Okay? So I know that if I'm in a meeting and we're trying to fix something and somebody says, well, there's nothing we could do, all right? I know that I'm going to feel that, all right?
[00:13:15] So I have to have a plan.
[00:13:16] If I know it's going to have. If I know it's gonna happen, I have to have a plan. And so my plan is usually to say, yes, there is something we can do.
[00:13:28] All right?
[00:13:29] So you start paying attention in your life, and you start saying, what are my triggers?
[00:13:36] And when you know what your triggers are, you can prepare a response for that trigger.
[00:13:43] If you're unaware of your triggers, the trigger happens. It rises up in you. You don't deal with it properly, and then you start venting your anger in unhealthy ways. Isn't that the way it usually works? All right, here's what James says.
[00:14:02] Here's a way to respond to your triggers.
[00:14:06] Know this, my beloved brothers.
[00:14:10] Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
[00:14:22] Now, he just told me three things I can do with my anger.
[00:14:31] Listen a little more carefully.
[00:14:36] Before I let anger, I need to listen a little careful because I've often been angry because I misunderstood what somebody said.
[00:14:46] I thought they said one thing, and if I would have listened a little longer and responded a little slower, I would have found out that I misunderstood what they said. That ever happened to you? All right, the second thing he says. The second thing he says to us is, if you feel your anger trigger, be slow to speak.
[00:15:20] Easy said. Hard done, huh?
[00:15:24] All right.
[00:15:26] Ah, but it is. It's actually. It's absolutely brilliant.
[00:15:32] Sometimes all it takes to control your anger is not responding immediately with anger, because anger produces anger.
[00:15:47] And if I can restrain that anger, then I have a chance of not speaking in an ugly way and escalating the problem.
[00:16:02] Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak.
[00:16:06] And then I have to. I have to slow walk my anger.
[00:16:14] There's time.
[00:16:17] Don't go from zero to 100.
[00:16:22] Just do about five miles an hour. Angry for a little bit. A little bit.
[00:16:31] Then try to maybe slow down to four miles. An hour.
[00:16:35] Do the best you can to think positively that I. I'm going to slow walk this anger. I'm not going to go from 0 to 100.
[00:16:47] All right, here's another idea for dealing with anger.
[00:16:53] Take a timeout.
[00:16:56] Just step away.
[00:16:59] Maybe you don't have to argue in that moment. Maybe you can just let it go.
[00:17:07] Maybe.
[00:17:08] Maybe that other person's opinion isn't work.
[00:17:12] It's not worth being angry because you don't agree with their opinion or you don't agree with their estimation.
[00:17:19] All right.
[00:17:21] Sometimes I just have to say, perhaps we should change the subject.
[00:17:30] Perhaps we should just. Let's talk about something else. All right.
[00:17:35] That is using a life skill to deal with anger.
[00:17:42] How about this one?
[00:17:45] Breathe.
[00:17:49] Breathe.
[00:17:51] I think I've taught you this before.
[00:17:54] I use what's called boxed breathing.
[00:17:58] You inhale and count to four.
[00:18:02] Hold it, count to four.
[00:18:05] Exhale, count to four, hold it exhaled, count to four.
[00:18:10] It's called box breathing, okay? And it has a physiological effect on you. It has a genuine calming effect.
[00:18:22] And plus, you're thinking about breathing. You're not thinking about what you're angry about.
[00:18:29] You're changing your focus to counting and breathing, and it's weakening your focus on the thing that's making you angry.
[00:18:40] Four, Anger produces energy in people.
[00:18:48] You get an adrenaline rush.
[00:18:51] You get amped up.
[00:18:53] Well, you can burn that energy, burn it off on something other than anger. Get up and walk around, do some wall push ups.
[00:19:04] Do. Do whatever you can to burn off that anger energy in a healthy way.
[00:19:14] And then, because I'm a Christian, I want to do this fifth one. I want to pray.
[00:19:21] And in my prayer, I pray.
[00:19:25] Dear God, please reset my thinking.
[00:19:29] Dear God, please reset my thinking. I don't want to think about this the way I am.
[00:19:37] I know how ugly I am when I let temper have its way.
[00:19:43] I know how.
[00:19:45] How ugly I make the world around me when I don't restrain my anger. Dear God, help me to think about this in a different way.
[00:19:54] Are you with me, Church?
[00:19:56] All right, now we've got five skills. One, be aware of your anger triggers to take a timeout.
[00:20:06] Three, breathe. Four, burn off anger, angry energy. And five, pray and ask God to help reset your thinking. All right? If I will do these things, I will manage my anger better and I'll live a better quality of life.
[00:20:25] I'll treat the people around me better.
[00:20:30] I'll lower the tension instead of raising the tension.
[00:20:35] And then the psalmist said, you can't.
[00:20:40] You don't. You not Only have to deal with your anger. You got to confront your wrath.
[00:20:46] Ah.
[00:20:48] So what is the difference between wrath and anger? Well, first of all, wrath is more intense than anger.
[00:20:57] Wrath takes anger beyond the degrees I talked about. And wrath is anger on steroids.
[00:21:12] Wrath is usually.
[00:21:16] Wrath usually has a demand for revenge.
[00:21:22] I deserve to hurt you in some way.
[00:21:25] I'm so angry with you that I deserve to hurt you in some way, physically or emotionally.
[00:21:34] I want you to suffer.
[00:21:38] You can see why that is not a healthy thing for Christians.
[00:21:44] We shouldn't want people to suffer. All right.
[00:21:46] Wrath is. Wrath is.
[00:21:50] Anger can pass.
[00:21:52] Wrath lingers with destructive hostile thoughts.
[00:21:58] Wrath keeps producing hostile thoughts. I wish this would happen. I wish that would happen.
[00:22:07] Ah. Ah.
[00:22:09] I hope they get a flat Ah.
[00:22:13] All right.
[00:22:15] And sadly, wrath often produces violence.
[00:22:21] When anger slips over into wrath, it often produces violence. All right.
[00:22:27] So now the psalm is teaching us, you want to live a better life next year than you did this year.
[00:22:34] Here's a good place to start.
[00:22:37] Look at your anger.
[00:22:39] Look at your anger and find healthier ways to deal with your anger.
[00:22:47] When you're angry, be quick to listen a little longer, slow to speak, slow walk your anger. Don't go 0 to 100.
[00:23:00] Pray for God to reset your thinking.
[00:23:03] All right.
[00:23:06] It is surprising how many warnings there are in the Bible that we overread all the time.
[00:23:14] They don't catch our attention. Listen to this. Proverbs 19:19.
[00:23:19] A man of great wrath will pay the penalty. For even if you deliver him, you will only have to do it again.
[00:23:30] Do you hear that warning?
[00:23:31] If we don't deal with our anger and wrath, we'll end up paying a penalty for it in life.
[00:23:41] Proverbs 29:22.
[00:23:43] A man of wrath stirs up strife, and one given to anger causes much transgression.
[00:23:54] Do you hear those warnings?
[00:23:56] If you want a year where you pay a penalty for your anger, if you want a year where you increase the strife in your life and you increase the number of transgressions in your life, then you don't have to deal with anger. But if you want a better year than that, we all have to find a better Christian spirit in dealing with anger.
[00:24:24] Abandoned wrath quickly, as quickly as you can.
[00:24:32] Then the psalmist says, don't permit evil around you to make you an angry person.
[00:24:39] Fret not yourself. It only tends to evil, for evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
[00:24:48] Instead of being angry with evildoers, wait for the Lord. And I talked to you about that last week. Do you remember? If you don't, you can. You can go back and look it up. All right.
[00:25:02] Why should I not be angry with the wicked?
[00:25:05] Because in just a little while, they will be no more.
[00:25:11] You'll look for them, but they won't be there.
[00:25:18] Ah, so I'm shortening sermon. And this is the part I shortened. All right. Verse 11.
[00:25:28] The meek shall inherit the land.
[00:25:31] The humble shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundance of peace.
[00:25:38] Ah.
[00:25:41] Not being angry isn't enough.
[00:25:45] If I really want to be successful, I have to develop the quality of humility.
[00:25:53] Not being angry, you just break even.
[00:25:57] Not being angry is not a positive thing. It's just a neutral thing. The positive thing is in the past, when I would have been angry.
[00:26:07] Now I'm practicing the skills of humility.
[00:26:11] And let's look at that.
[00:26:14] Let's use Brene Brown's definition of humility.
[00:26:17] Humility is an openness to new learning combined with a balanced and accurate assessment of our contributions, including our strengths, imperfections, and opportunities for growth. All right. I can say that is an easier way.
[00:26:38] Renee says it's an easier way.
[00:26:42] Humility is realizing that getting it right is more important than the need to prove I'm right.
[00:26:54] Do you like that?
[00:26:55] What is humility? Humility is. I'm more interested in getting it right than proving I'm right.
[00:27:03] I'm more interested in a healthy relationship than I am in arguing people into submission.
[00:27:11] Do you know people are like that? They just beat you down.
[00:27:16] If you said Jesus Christ was good, they would say, what do you mean by good? They can argue with about everything. All right.
[00:27:25] I like the idea that humility is.
[00:27:30] I would rather get this right than prove I'm right.
[00:27:37] Humility is not being too weak to compete.
[00:27:41] I've known people who are too weak to compete and they pawn it off as humility. That's not humility at all.
[00:27:50] Humility is not insecurity.
[00:27:54] Humility is a strength.
[00:27:58] It is. It is a. It is a powerful life quality.
[00:28:05] Humility is the pathway to greater success.
[00:28:09] Listen what he says. The humble shall inherit the earth.
[00:28:15] What's he saying?
[00:28:17] If you get the quality of humility right, you're going to succeed a whole lot more than the people around you.
[00:28:24] Why?
[00:28:25] What is the quality? I would rather get this right than prove I'm right. Do you see how that adds to success?
[00:28:34] We're getting it right. We're not sitting here arguing about who's right and wrong. We're not sitting there trying to prove that you should agree with me. We've got our focus on something much better than that. How do we get this right?
[00:28:46] How do we succeed in this?
[00:28:48] How do we work better as a team?
[00:28:52] And that quality leads to greater life, success.
[00:28:56] Humility is a pathway to greater peace.
[00:29:02] The humble shall inherit the earth and they shall live in abundant peace. Humility leads to more peace. Anger leads to more strife.
[00:29:15] You hear this?
[00:29:16] The more humble you are at home, the more peaceful home you're going to have.
[00:29:20] The more angry you are at home, the more strife you're going to have at home.
[00:29:25] The more humble you are at work, the more success you're going to have. People like working with people like that, the more angry you are at work, people are going to try to avoid you at all cost.
[00:29:36] All right?
[00:29:38] And it turns out that this is more than a Christian cliche. This is at the very essence of the life that Jesus lived, if you will. Let me remind you. Philippians, chapter 4, verse 5.
[00:29:55] Have this mind in among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. Now here it is.
[00:30:19] And being found in human form, he humbled himself by coming, becoming obedient to death on the cross.
[00:30:30] Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
[00:30:49] Do you hear it?
[00:30:51] If anybody ever had the right to say, I'll prove to you I'm right. It was Jesus himself.
[00:30:59] And yet he felt no inclination to do it.
[00:31:04] He said, I'm going to get this right, even if it means being in the form of a servant. I'm going to get this right even if it means death on the cross.
[00:31:17] And listen, humility leads to success. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus Christ every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Do you hear this?
[00:31:34] Ah. Jesus Christ is the living model of confronting angry living and replacing it with a humble approach to life that God finds great delight in. And it brings success and peace to your future.
[00:31:56] Our dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for this psalm.
[00:32:01] And I thank you for the example of Jesus Christ.
[00:32:06] I. I pray for myself. I pray for everyone who's here this morning. I pray for everyone who's watching online.
[00:32:13] And this is my prayer.
[00:32:15] Dear Heavenly Father, grant us that we can escape the tyranny of anger and we can live in the power of humility. And I ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.
