All The Feels Week 1: Anger

I know Gen Z and Gen Alpha probably don’t send as many emojis when they’re texting each other as much as Millennials and Boomers might, but I’m SURE you have your go-to or favorite emojis. Let’s hear from a few of you. What’s your favorite or most-used emoji?

Those are some great options and are some of my favorites as well.

Sometimes the best way to say what you’re feeling in a text message is to find the right emoji. Honestly, sometimes a single emoji in a text is enough to say what you mean.

But can we get real here? Some of the emojis are more than a little odd, and I’m not just talking about the awkward…

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👯‍♂️ cat-ear-leotard-wearing-twins

Even some of the basic emoji faces are a bit strange. For example, can we talk about the

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🙃 upside-down-face?

What is that one even supposed to mean?

And why in the world do we need four different kiss-face emojis?

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😘 face-blowing-a-kiss

😗 kissing-face

😙 kissing-face-with-smiling-eyes

😚 kissing-face-with-closed-eyes

I mean, I know that they’re not exactly the same, but are they different enough that we really need all four?

Whether or not you use emojis, even the strange ones, sometimes they actually do a pretty good job of communicating how you feel. Feelings are complicated, and emojis can say a lot with just one little icon.

Over the next few weeks, we are going to spend time in a series we’re calling “All the Feels.” Each week, we’ll look at a healthy emotion and see what can happen if we don’t figure out how to channel that emotion in the right direction.

Before we look at our first emotion, there are a few quick facts I want to cover to make sure we’re all on the same page:

First of all, everyone has emotions and feelings. Granted, some people feel their emotions in really big ways, while others might not. Some might have a difficult time using words to describe what they’re feeling, while others might be able to tell you exactly how they feel at any given moment. And because everyone’s brain is different, there are some people that have a little more difficulty processing their own emotions and interpreting the emotions of others.

The truth is, even though each of us may experience and express them in different ways, we all have emotions. We all have feelings. It’s part of being human. Second, each of us experiences emotions and feelings because God didn’t just create us to think and process information. He also created us to feel. Sometimes, those emotions will make us feel great, like when we’re happy or excited. Other times, we will experience emotions that make us feel not so great, like when we’re sad, scared, or hurt. Not every emotion is pleasant, but experiencing emotion is part of what makes us who we are.

Also, as a teenager, you’ve likely experienced a blending of different feelings and emotions. When you were little, you most likely experienced a limited number of basic emotions such as joy, sadness, fear, disgust, and anger (we’ve all seen Inside Out, right?).

But as you get older, those feelings tend to get more complicated. Emotions that used to be simple become more complex and nuanced. For example, what a younger child might call sadness, you might call loneliness, disappointment, or embarrassment. And while all three of those things have a lot in common with sadness, they are most certainly not all the same thing.

Plus, being a teenager also brings the blending of emotions, like when you feel sad, angry, and disgusted all at the same time! To say the very least, being a teenager is an incredibly complicated time, especially when it comes to emotions.

One final thing before we jump into the Bible together: When we allow our emotions and feelings to linger inside of us without processing them in a healthy way, they can sometimes become more difficult to handle than we anticipated. And if we’re not careful, those unchecked emotions can have a negative impact on our own emotional well-being and on our relationships with others.

So, with that in mind, I want to kick things off by looking at how we deal with this little emotion right here:

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😡 ANGER

If you’re asking me, I’d say this is one of the most accurate emojis in the entire emoji keyboard. Nothing says, “I’m super angry,” like sending one (or a couple hundred!) of these in a text.

Now, you may be thinking, “Wait, I thought you said in this series, we’re going to be talking about how healthy emotions can become unhealthy. I thought it was wrong to be angry.” If that’s what you’re thinking, nice work because it means you’re paying attention!

But the truth is anger on its own isn’t wrong. Anger is often an initial reaction when we’ve been hurt or wronged by someone or when we experience some type of injustice. Most often, that reaction happens before we even really know what’s going on. As we’ll see, often, the real challenge is figuring out what to do with our anger once we feel it.

SCRIPTURE (What does God’s Word say?)

To find out what Scripture has to say about anger, we are going to look at the book of Ephesians. While we often refer to Ephesians as a book, it’s actually a letter written by the apostle Paul to a particular group of Jesus followers in a city called Ephesus, which is modern-day Turkey.

Paul was a Jewish leader who had a radical encounter with Jesus that changed his life forever. After meeting Jesus, Paul spent most of his life traveling all over the known world, telling people about Jesus and starting little gatherings of people who decided to follow Jesus. These small gatherings became some of the first churches outside of Jerusalem, and Ephesus was one of those churches.

In this letter, Paul urged these new Jesus followers to live their lives as God created them, but in chapter 4, Paul got really specific. He told them to stop lying, stealing, and using foul language. He argued that the Ephesian church should be an example to everyone else in the city, arguing that if they would show others what it looked like to truly follow Jesus, more and more people might follow Jesus.

It's in the middle of this argument, starting in verse 26, that Paul specifically addresses anger. Let’s see what he had to say:

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26 And “don’t sin by letting anger control you.” Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, (Ephesians 4:26 – NLT)

Did you notice that he didn’t say, “Don’t be angry”? Like we said earlier, it’s human nature to get angry, right? But what Paul is talking about here is what we do after we get angry.

You’ve been there, right? In that moment, right after someone makes you angry, your blood is basically boiling and smoke is coming out of your nose and ears just like a cartoon character? It’s in that moment that Paul is telling us that we have a decision to make: Are we going to control our anger or let it control us?

Jesus also had some things to say about anger during a sermon He gave in Matthew chapter 5. During this sermon, Jesus touched on all kinds of topics, like what the Kingdom of Heaven is like and why it’s so important to show mercy to others. But in verses 21 and 22, He has some very interesting things to say about anger:

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21 “You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ (Matthew 5:21 – NLT)

You may be thinking, “Umm… did He say murder? I thought this message was about anger!” Don’t worry. He’s getting to it…

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22 But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell. (Matthew 5:22 – NLT)

This is a passage that has been confusing people for thousands of years. Is Jesus really saying that if you get angry or call someone a name, you’ll be in danger of hell? Well… sort of. Actually, if you’ve ever heard or read much of Jesus’ teachings, you probably already know that He said things that made people uncomfortable. And this is certainly one of those times.

Here’s what I mean: When Jesus said, “You must not murder,” I’d imagine that everyone listening immediately thought to themselves, “Phew! I’ve never murdered anyone, so I’m good.” But the problem is that not murdering anyone doesn’t make you a good person… it just makes you not a murderer… which really isn’t saying much, is it?

But then, Jesus completely flips that idea upside down when He says, “But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment!” Suddenly, the entire crowd went from “Look at me, I haven’t murdered anyone!” to “But hasn’t everyone been angry at someone?”

Essentially, Jesus is saying, “Stop thinking you’re good just because you haven’t murdered anyone! Instead, try to do something that’s actually difficult… like controlling your actions when you get angry.”

It’s probably good to mention that a few other ways to translate the Greek word that Jesus uses for angry are “enraged,” “full of contempt,” or (and this is one of my favorites) “given over to fury.” Those paint a much more intense picture, don’t they?

This type of anger that Jesus is talking about is the kind of anger that might lead one person to harm the person they are angry with. This is the type of anger that, if left unchecked, leads to hatred.

So, while Paul is warning us to not let our anger control us, Jesus is saying that if we let our anger control us, we may find ourselves doing something that we can’t undo. Although they’re both saying it in slightly different ways, both Jesus and Paul are warning us that if we aren’t willing to deal with our anger, it can very easily grow into something we never wanted.

INSIGHTS (What might this Scripture mean?)

So, if every single one of us will get angry at some point in our lives (let’s be honest, for some of us, it’ll likely happen before we even get home!), what can we learn from these passages to help us process that anger in a healthier way? There are a few things I want to call out from these passages that might help.

The first is…

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1. Unchecked anger doesn’t end well.

Chances are pretty good that most days, each of us will experience people and circumstances that will make us angry. Like we said, initially, anger is just a normal response to moments that we find frustrating. It’s simply part of life since we live in a world where we don’t always get what we want and people don’t always do what we expect.

If I asked you to list things that make you angry, it wouldn’t even be difficult. You could probably list dozens of examples off the top of your head, right? The more challenging question, though, is, “When you get angry, what do you do next?”

When we’re angry, we have a few choices. We can choose to process our anger in a healthy way (like talking to a trusted friend or making a plan to change the situation that made us angry in the first place), or we can allow our anger to grow. The second option is the one that Paul warned us about in Ephesians 4:26.

You see, Paul knew that when we don’t process our anger and just let it continue to grow, it can very quickly become something that we can no longer control. In fact, it can grow to the point that it controls us, and that’s a very dangerous place to be. Anger can cause you to do and say things that you normally wouldn’t. It can cause you to hurt others and ruin relationships. In short, it can cause you to become someone you don’t want to be.

And more often than not, when that anger is directed toward another person, it can grow into intolerance, bigotry, prejudice, and even hate, which is why it’s really important that we understand our second idea that…

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2. Anger isn’t always wrong… but hatred is.

While anger itself is a natural emotion and isn’t always bad, hating another person is always wrong. This is how the Apostle John described it:

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20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? (1 John 4:20 – NLT)

Now, if you’re like me, you probably immediately thought, “Wait a minute! That only says that I can’t hate other believers!” I don’t want to disappoint you, but Jesus actually covered that Himself when He said…

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43 “You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44 But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” (Matthew 5:43-44a – NLT)

Jesus didn’t just say that we shouldn’t hate our friends, our family, or our neighbors. He took it to the extreme and said that we shouldn’t hate our enemies. But then, He didn’t even stop there! He says that we should, in fact, LOVE our enemies!

So, based on what both John and Jesus said, we need to do whatever we can to not allow hatred for others to take hold in our hearts. And that starts by making sure we respond to our own anger in a healthy way.

ACTION (How could we live this out?)

But how do we do that? How can we make sure that we don’t allow our momentary anger to turn into something worse, like hatred? Here’s a few steps I think each of us can purposefully take this week to help us become more aware of our anger and process it in healthier ways.

The first is…

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Identify your triggers.

Pay attention to moments when you feel anger this week. Keep a note on your phone or use your journal to write down what triggered your anger and how you reacted. Then, at the end of each day, look back and ask God to help you see any patterns or areas where He can guide you to respond differently.

I know this sounds easy, but I want to warn you that keeping track of your triggers is easy… but actually taking the time to examine that list and identify patterns might not be. That process might make you aware of some people or situations that cause you to be more angry than is necessary. If that’s the case, I think it could be a great opportunity to ask yourself why that person or situation makes you so upset. And, if you’re willing to be honest enough with yourself, you might end up uncovering a bias (an unfounded preference for a person, place, or thing) or prejudice (a tendency to judge people or situations without actually knowing enough about them) you didn’t even realize you had.

To be sure, that process can be painful, but I want to encourage you to be open to what God might show you during that time. And if He reveals something in your life that you realize needs to change, I want to challenge you to own it and also encourage you to do the work necessary to change it.

The second thing you can do is…

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Let go of grudges.

As you’re looking at your list of what made you angry each day, my guess is that you’re going to start seeing some of the same names listed over and over again. If that’s the case, I’d encourage you to ask yourself whether or not you might be holding a grudge against that person.

For example, yes, we all know that little siblings can be aggravating, but is it possible that you’re holding a grudge that might cause you to get angry before your brother or sister even did anything to annoy you?

Or is it possible that the only reason you’re still angry at that person who used to be your best friend isn’t because they keep doing anything wrong, but instead, it’s really because you just haven’t forgiven them yet?

I know this is easier said than done, but I want to encourage you to take these words from the Apostle Paul to heart:

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13 Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. (Colossians 3:13 – NLT)

As Jesus’ followers, we have the opportunity to experience forgiveness in ways that we simply don’t deserve, and this verse reminds us that we can also offer that same forgiveness to others.

But what if you’re angry and it’s because you see injustice in the world around you? What if you’re angry because someone else is being treated poorly or being made fun of simply because of who they are? If that’s the case, then I want to challenge you to…

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3. Turn your anger into positive action.

Even if you’re angry for the best possible reason, it’s still not a good idea to bottle that anger up. Instead, try turning it into action.

For example, if you see someone treating someone else poorly, say something! Or ask a trusted adult to step in and help. Or, if you see injustice in the world, find a way to contribute your time and energy to volunteering or raising awareness. There’s so much that you can do to make your world a better place, but you can’t do that if you let your anger control you.

Anger can either motivate us for good or turn into something that consumes us. So, let’s take a moment to ask God to help us become more aware of our anger and to show us ways to process it healthy, positive ways.

Then, after we pray, we’ll head to our small group conversations, where I hope you’ll choose to be honest about how you experience anger and open to finding ways to keep it from becoming a controlling force in your life.

Let’s pray.

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