Overcoming Anger
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We all need someone to coach us from time to time. We all should also coach others from time to time.
To coach and be coached.
Coach: one who instructs or trains.
Christ followers get their coaching from, Gods word, The Holy Spirit, and other God fearing mentors and friends.
If any of us ever needed a coach on a subject more it is the topic of overcoming anger.
Amazon has over 50k books on anger.
Is all anger sin?
Difference between righteous and unrighteous anger.
20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
Righteous Anger: You are showing righteous anger if you get angry over millions of babies being aborted, senseless shootings in our schools, racial injustice, and if you are doing your part to diminish these and other immoral and unjust dimensions in our world - keep it up.
You are reacting to the influence of sin in our world. You are angry that Satan and his minions have such a devastating influence. You are responding to the violation of the righteous standards of God.
Jesus showed righteous anger:
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Sinful or Unrighteous Anger: You are showing unrighteous anger if you lose your temper, seek to carry out revenge toward others, blurt out hurtful targeted words of disrespect toward someone, simmer and boil internally with uncontrollable rage or resentment, or think God has wronged you in some way that prevents you from worship Him. You are sinfully angry - and like all sin that kind needs to be confessed and repented of.
18 A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.
Do you know someone that loses their temper quickly as an adult? This is an adult temper tantrum that they have not grown out of from when they were a kid.
Key verses for the sermon: Eph 4:26-27
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.
26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,
In your anger. It is human nature to get angry.
26 “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath,
Be angry. This is the permissive righteous anger.
So Paul immediately qualifies his permissive “be angry” by three negatives: John Stott.
26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,
First, “do not sin”. We have to be sure that our anger is free from injured pride, spite, malice, animosity and the spirit of revenge.
26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,
Secondly, "do not let the sun go down on your anger”.
“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” ― Phyllis Diller
So, it is okay for me to stay angry all day?
We are not to understand Paul ‘so literally that we stay angry till sunset’.
Ill: 1986 trip to Canada. Step bro 16 / me 13. New town to explore. Mom: be home before dark.
Close to 10pm / pre-cell phones.
National day of Greenland is June 21 when they have 21:20 of day light.
No, the apostle’s intention is to warn us against nursing anger. It is seldom safe to allow the embers of anger to smolder.
27 and do not give the devil a foothold.
Paul’s third qualification is "do not give the devil a foothold”. Foothold - foot in door - opportunity
The Devil knows how fine the is line between righteous and unrighteous anger, and how hard human beings find it to handle their anger responsibly. So he loves to lurk round angry people, hoping to be able to exploit the situation to his own advantage by provoking them into hatred or violence or a breach of fellowship.
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” - Mark Twain
What happens in the body if we hold onto anger?
An angry outburst puts your heart at great risk. Most physically damaging is anger's effect on your cardiac health. “In the two hours after an angry outburst, the chance of having a heart attack doubles,” says Chris Aiken, MD, an instructor in clinical psychiatry at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and director of the Mood Treatment Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“Repressed anger — where you express it indirectly or go to great lengths to control it, is associated with heart disease,” says Dr. Aiken. In fact, one study found that people with anger proneness as a personality trait were at twice the risk of coronary disease than their less angry peers.
Anger ups your stroke risk. If you’re prone to lashing out, beware. One study found there was a three times higher risk of having a stroke from a blood clot to the brain or bleeding within the brain during the two hours after an angry outburst. For people with an aneurysm in one of the brain’s arteries, there was a six times higher risk of rupturing this aneurysm following an angry outburst.
It weakens your immune system. If you're mad all the time, you just might find yourself feeling sick more often. In one study, Harvard University scientists found that in healthy people, simply recalling an angry experience from their past caused a six-hour dip in levels of the antibody immunoglobulin A, the cells’ first line of defense against infection.
Anger can shorten your life. Is it really true that happy people live longer? Stress is very tightly linked to general health. If you're stressed and angry, you'll shorten your lifespan. A University of Michigan study done over a 17-year period found that couples who hold in their anger have a shorter life span than those who readily say when they're mad.
How to Deal with Anger God’s Way
How to Deal with Anger God’s Way
1. Restrain It
11 Fools vent their anger, but the wise quietly hold it back.
This scripture does not mean that the wise bury their anger or do not deal with it, but it means that they control their anger and how they express it. When you restrain your anger, you keep it within limits. Remember to not give the devil a “foothold”?
2. Re-evaluate It
19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20 because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.
God’s way of dealing with anger is to be slow to anger. Slow down and breath. There are some things that you need to let roll off of your shoulders and not internalize or act on. When you re-evaluate a person’s words or action, you often find that there’s no need to get angry as that person really did not intend to hurt you or was merely acting out of their own biases, which is not a reflection of you.
I like to ask myself the question why did that make me so angry?
Reframe - When others make me angry I make up a story why they did what they did.
3. Release It
8 But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.
When you deal with anger God’s way, you feel it, vent it in a safe way (possibly complaining to an innocent third party) where no one is harmed, and then release it. You get rid of it from your body, heart, and mind.
4. Ask for the Holy Spirits help.
22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
The fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in our lives in direct conflict with anger.
Hard to love when you are angry.
Hard to have joy when you are angry.
Hard to have..... when you are angry.
