Anger Management
Contributed by Nate Barbour on Feb 2, 2004
Summary: Learn to tame your temper in this simple message about anger control.
Anger Management
How To Tame Your Temper
9/24/03
I. Introduction
How many of ya’ll have ever been angry? What happened when you got angry? How did you respond to people around you? Did you say things you shouldn’t have or things you didn’t mean?
A lady once came to Billy Sunday and tried to rationalize her angry outbursts. “There’s nothing wrong with losing my temper,” she said. “I blow up, and then it’s all over.”
“So does a shotgun,” Sunday replied, “and look at the damage it leaves behind!”
Getting angry can sometimes be like leaping into a wonderfully responsive sports car, gunning the motor, taking off at high speed and then discovering the brakes are out of order. We need to learn to control our anger. That’s why tonight’s message is called “Anger Management: How to Tame Your Temper.”
II. What is Anger?
Anger defined- a God given emotional response usually tied to a goal, value or expectation.
There are generally two ways to express anger: exploding or imploding.
Exploding usually takes the form of yelling, screaming, or hitting people or things.
Imploding usually holds the anger in and the person may huff and puff or say something under his breath.
James 1:19-20 “19My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, 20for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.”
What are some things we think of when we say the word anger?
What makes you angry?
Have you heard of road rage?
The phrase "road rage" officially entered the English language in 1997 when it was first listed in the New Words edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
In Atlanta, Georgia a two-year old toddler was shot through the neck by an irate motorist engaged in an argument over a road incident with the toddler’s father (The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, 30 June 2000).
In Denver, Colorado a 51 year-old man used a .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol to kill a 32 year-old bicyclist who cut him off on the road (The Denver Post, 21 June 2000).
Near Cincinnati, Ohio a 29 year-old woman cut in front of a 24 year-old pregnant woman and slammed on her brakes in an irate gesture following her anger about the latter’s driving. The mother-to-be lost control of her car in a violent accident in which her unborn child was killed (Newsweek, 02 June 1997).
In Florida, a 41 year-old man who pulled into an exact change lane at a toll booth was shot and killed as he exited his truck to confront an irate driver behind him who was annoyed at the 41 year-old’s delay in paying the toll (Car and Driver, September 1998).
It’s amazing to see how different people control or lose control of their anger. It’s been said that, “Your temper is the only thing you can’t get rid of by losing it.” So the other option is to tame it and be in control of your temper.
III. Temper, Temper
Proverbs 25:28 GNB “If you cannot control your anger, you are helpless as a city without walls, open to attack.”
Proverbs 25:28 MSG “28A person without self-control is like a house with its doors and windows knocked out.”
The Bible says that it IS possible to control our emotions.
Galatians 5:22-23 “22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”
Ephesians 4:26-27 NKJV “26"Be angry, and do not sin": do not let the sun go down on your wrath, 27nor give place to the devil.”
The first principle for taming your temper is…
1. Admit that you’re angry
Verse 26 is a command. “Be angry” (can you obey that one?) Isn’t anger wrong?
Anger isn’t inherently wrong; in fact, even God gets angry.
When Christ was in the temple turning over tables, He didn’t do it with a smile on His face.
When He called the Pharisees a bunch of white washed tombs and a pit of vipers-- He wasn’t just trying to be politically correct. He was mad.
The Bible does say though that God is slow to anger (Ps 86:15). God’s anger lasts a moment, while his favor lasts a lifetime.
We said that anger is a God-given emotion, so if you don’t get angry, check your pulse because you’re not in touch with reality.
So, the verse is a command, but what is this command?
The command isn’t don’t get angry, its don’t sin in your anger.
There is some stinkinG thinkinG that says anger is always wrong, but God isn’t forbidding anger, He says “Go ahead, get mad.”
We’re emotional beings and we’re allowed to feel our feelings. We love to deny we’re angry because we feel guilty about it or we’re afraid of what we might do if we admitted to being angry.
SOURCE: SERMONCENTRAL
Managing Anger
Ephesians 4:26-27, Jonah 4:1-11
5 December 1999
Greyfriars Church
Introduction
Some of our emotions can be overwhelmingly powerful, can't they? We can be
almost literally consumed by emotions like love, anger, jealousy, joy and pain.
They can turn our lives upside-down. They are seemingly not under our control,
but rather, often control us.
Why do we feel these things so deeply within us? Where do they come
from?
I believe that we feel these things because God feels these things.
Throughout the Bible we find examples of God experiencing all these emotions:
love, anger, jealousy, joy and pain.
These emotions are part of us because they are part of God, and we are made
in God's image. Some people would say that we have anthropomorphised God: that
is, we have created a God who is like us, because we don't know any better. But
if this were true, why would we have made Him holy?
No, the truth is more like this: God has theomorphised us. God has made us
in his own image, and our deepest emotions reflect what is already going on in
the very heart of God. We love because God loves; we get angry because God gets
angry.
But characteristically, of course, we have spoiled and corrupted these
things in our lives, just as we have spoiled and corrupted most of the rest of
the world, so it's no longer always easy to see God's image in us.
The result of this is that for many today love is just a byword for sexual
immorality, a synonym for lust. Anger and jealousy in our world are so often
destructive, whereas God's anger is always used to acheive righteous ends: it
is constructive. Instead of the depths of joy in God's heart, so many now know
only the drug-induced rush of cocaine or heroin. And instead of using our
emotional pain to drive us to put right the wrongs, we just numb it with a haze
of tranquilizers, alcohol and hedonism.
Anyway, our theme this evening is anger, or more specifically, managing
anger. So let's see what the Bible has to say on the matter of God's anger and
ours.
Anger in the Bible
God is provoked to anger many times in the Bible by people's hearts going
astray (Heb 3:10), or following other god's (Deut 6:11), or idolatry among his
people (the Golden Calf, Exodus 32:9,10). Again and again people's sin provokes
God to anger, wrath even.
Likewise, Jesus was provoked to anger by the stubborn hearts of the
Pharisees. In Mark chapter three Jesus wants to heal a man on the
sabbath, but they are more concerned about their own laws than about
God's compassion. It says Jesus looked round at them in anger and, deeply
distressed at their stubborn heartsref he healed the man.
On another occasion Jesus drove the moneylenders out of the temple with a
whip because they were defiling his Father's house. Jesus had just cause to be
angry, and, being Jesus, expressed it appropriately.
Other people are rightly angry in the Bible as well. For example, Moses was
also angry about the golden calf incident, and when reading Galatians, it's
hard to miss Paul's anger about the false teaching in the church.
Can you spot a theme here? There are things it is right to be angry about:
the same things that God is angry about; the things that dishonour Him.
In each case the result was constructive: God came up with a plan
of salvation; Jesus was spurred-on to heal, despite the Pharisees, and
to clear his father's house. Paul was motivated to write his letter to
the Galatians and defend God's truth.
There are causes it is right to get angry about, and right responses to that
anger. But as I said in the introduction, we far more often get it wrong than
right.
Our Anger
So what about our anger? What provokes us to anger, and how do we deal with
it? I'd like you to think for a moment about the last time or two that you were
really angry. What provoked you to anger? Why were you angry? And what did you
do about it? How did you express your anger?
So, in the light of that exercise would you describe yourself as a
Spewer or a Stewer?
Spewers
There are two main ways in which people respond to their anger. The spewers
just spew it out over whoever provoked them. A spewer is someone with a hot
temper, a short fuse, someone who 'sees red'.
It's what we see regularly on the football pitch: the frustrated players who
suddenly explode and start verbally or physically abusing the referee, or one
of the opposition.
Unfortunately this kind of behaviour is not confined to the football pitch.
We often see it in the world around us. For example in road rage: I've seen
apparently sane and rational people do the most appalling and dangerous things
on the roads at trivial provocation. I've seen people injure themselves by
punching walls and smashing windows in their rage. Or what about taking out
one's frustration on some poor call-centre employee who had nothing to do with
whatever's gone wrong. When the faceless institutions have messed us around we
sometimes just want to snap, don't we? But it's a clearly inappropriate thing
to do. And which of us hasn't seen in the supermarket a parent yelling with
fury at their child?
Do you often 'have a go at someone'? If so, then you are probably a
spewer.
This is the advice of Proverbs to the spewers amonst us: A fool gives full vent to
his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.ref and
further on An angry
man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one commits many
sinsref.
Spewing out our feelings, letting it all out, giving full vent to our anger
is a foolish thing to do. It far too easily leads us into sin.
How many of us haven't said something we regret in the heat of the moment?
Or needlessly destroyed something: a possesion, or a relationship? Giving full
vent to our anger really does make a fool out of us.
So, A fool gives
full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under
control.ref That's fair enough, but we also need to beware of the
opposite extreme. We are not to be spewers, but we are not to be
stewers either.
Stewers
A stewer is someone who bottles up his or her anger, trying to bury it.
Apparently self-controlled, this kind of person is smouldering on the
inside.
But the Bible has a warning for stewers as well. The passage we had
read earlier from Ephesians says 'In your anger do not sin' : Do not let
the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a
footholdref.
You see, anger rarely goes away by itself. It is not made better by ignoring
it. Stewing in our anger, nursing our grievances, will lead us into sin just as
surely as venting our anger does, for it gives the devil a foothold.
I have to confess to you that I am much more of a stewer than a spewer. I
rarely give full vent to my anger in the heat of the moment. Frankly, I'm not
brave enough. What tends to happen is that I will internalise my rage. I'll
pick over it and revisit it, my anger growing, but still bottled up inside.
When I am truly angry it is hard to think about anything else. The anger
doesn't go away; it is like a poison. And then my thoughts turn to revenge,
which is when the devil really gets a foothold. I can become obsessed with
going over and over again how I can get my own back. It's ugly, isn't it? My
anger turns me into the opposite of someone who loves, because love keeps no
record of wrongs.
As an example of this, some while ago I was knocked off my bike by a car
driver doing something very stupid [the driver, not me]. But I wasn't hurt, and
the bike was all right. Nonetheless I burned with rage inside. I happened to
remember the number plate of the car, and as time went by I became obsessed
with getting revenge. So for weeks after that event I kept an eye out for the
car. I would take different routes to work so that I had more chance of finding
it. I fantasized about slashing the tyres or breaking the windows. It's nasty,
isn't it? Thankfully for me, I never saw the car again.
So this is the danger of stewing in our anger. It poisons our relationships
with unforgiveness, it leads us to hatred, and it can make us depressed as our
internal worlds are disordered by it. These things are what happen when we give
the devil a foothold in our lives.
So, the verse says, do not let the sun go down while you are
still angry.ref Somehow we need to find a constructive way of
dealing with our anger which is neither of our usual tendencies of
Spewing or Stewing.
Dealing with anger
First, the spewer needs to learn some self-control, how to avoid
giving full vent to his or her anger. As Proverbs says, Better a patient man than
a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a
cityref.
The Spewer must practice the habit of thinking first and speaking
later. As the Apostle James says Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to
speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about
the righteous life that God desires.ref Thinking first and speaking
later is a good habit to have in any case, for as Proverbs says, Even a fool is thought
wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his
tongueref.
But it's not so easy to hold your tongue when the anger is boiling up
inside, is it? Some people recommend the NASA technique. Make sure you count
down from ten before you blast off.
Personally, I prefer to recite the fruit of the Spirit, which are
in Galatians chapter 5, the subject of next Sunday morning's
sermon. When in danger of exploding I try to remember to recite love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self
controlref. It's a pretty good antidote, isn't it. It's humbling
when we realise that our venting our rage is the exact opposite of the
fruit that the Spirit is trying to grow in us.
Sometimes it will be appropriate to say something, to show
our anger. For example parents are sometimes angry with their
children. [Is that right, any parents?] It's right that sometimes the
children experience their parent's anger when they are being
particularly naughty, just as the Israelites sometimes experienced
God's anger against them. It's a normal part of parental disciple. But
we must always make sure that our anger is under our control. There
is no excuse for spewing it out on someone, particularly our
children.
So it's good to learn not to spew out our anger, but we must take care that
this remedy doesn't turn us into a stewer. We do need to get rid of our anger
somehow.
First it's important to try to work out what has caused our anger. Why are
we angry? Prayer will help us to do this. We do not need to be shy to bring our
anger to God; to confess to him fully and frankly how we feel. It's important
that we do this. When you are angry, pray!
As we pray and try to understand what has caused our anger, God may show us
that we are right to be angry, or he might show us that we have no right to be
angry.
No right to be angry
The reading we had earlier from Jonah is a case in point. It's
worth turning in your Bibles to Jonah chapter 4.
Jonah is furious with God. He has been preaching judgement on Nineveh, and
now God want to save it! Nineveh, a city full of the godless, heathen people.
God wants to save them!
This doesn't fit in with Jonah's theology at all, so, as it says,
Jonah was greatly
displeased and became angryref, and he has a good rant at God.
So God asks Jonah a telling question, Have you any right to be angry?ref Clearly he
thinks Jonah has no right to be angry in this case: God is God after
all; he can save people if he wants to, whatever Jonah may
think. Jonah has no answer, so God tries to teach him a lesson about
anger.
Jonah sat himself down overlooking the city to wait, still hoping that his
prophecy might come true and God would annihilate Nineveh. It's exposed and dry
and hot, so he's pleased when God makes a vine grow to shade him. But the next
day the vine dies and the harsh wind picks up, and so he becomes angry with God
again.
God says to Jonah, do
you have any right to be angry about the vine?ref Well, clearly he
doesn't have any right to be angry. After all, Jonah chose to sit
there, and God gave him a gift for a day. If Jonah learns this lesson,
then maybe he will realise that he has no right to be angry about God
saving Nineveh.
But Jonah doesn't learn his lesson. He replies I do—I do have a
right to be angry—I am angry enough to dieref.
Maybe that's an illustration of how our anger clouds our reason.
Basically, God is saying to Jonah,
"Get some perspective Jonah,
there are far more important things going on here than your personal
comfort"
.
Anyway, God wants us to be a bit quicker than Jonah. If in our
anger we can bring ourselves to pray we may well hear God saying to us
"Do you have any right to be angry? Do you have any right to be
angry?"
.
Most often our honest answer will have to be no, we don't have any right to
be angry. We will be angry because our personal comfort has been attacked, or
our beliefs have been challenged. We will be angry because we are selfish, or
self-centred. So often we are angry because of some inconvenience or other.
It's a question of perspective. When we start to see things from God's
perspective, we may find that rather than anger our correct response should
really be repentence. With the right perspective the anger will no longer
trouble us.
Every right to be angry
But from time to time when we pray, we will find that, yes we
do have a right to be angry. Perhaps someone has truly and
deeply hurt us; or perhaps we are angry on someone else's behalf about
an injustice of some sort.
In the first case, if someone has truly hurt us, then there is only one
possible response that we are called to. [How should we respond when someone
hurts us? Who said revenge?!] For a Christian, a forgiven person, our only
right response is to forgive those who hurt us.
We frequently pray the Lord's prayer which contains these words,
"Forgive us, as we forgive those who sin against us"
. I have to
tell you that I find those words really hard. I often find myself
mumbling them, and desperately hoping that God's forgiveness of me is
a bit more whole-hearted than my forgiveness of others. If God is as
meager and unforgiving with me as I am with others, then frankly, I am
in serious trouble.
But that's the point, isn't it? God has forgiven me everything. God's anger
that we talked about earlier, was directed at me. God was angry with me,
because I have offended him in so many ways.
When I am angry with someone, sometimes God begins to show me how much he
has forgiven me, the overwhelming depths of the compassion he has for me. How,
even when I was still a sinner, with my back turned to Him, he sent his Son to
die for me.
As our reading in Ephesians goes on to say, Get rid of all bitterness, rage and
anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind
and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in
Christ God forgave you.ref
Yes, as Christians, we are called to forgive in the same way that God has
forgiven us. This may take much courage, it may mean more pain, it may mean
facing rejection again. But God has given us his spirit in our hearts to help
us to do this, and, believe me, God really knows about all these things.
As Christians we have no option but to forgive. Right after Jesus
gives us the Lord's prayer he says this: If you do not forgive men their sins, your
Father will not forgive your sinsref.
As we wrestle with forgiveness, we can know that we are doing God's will,
and he will heal our anger. This is a very positive way for us to use our
anger. Please, if you are angry with someone tonight, I urge you to make every
effort to forgive, and make whatever amends are necessary. The sun has already
gone down, but it is not too late yet.
Sometimes though, forgiveness is not the issue. Perhaps we are angry about a
cause like injustice, or about someone slandering God with false teaching, or a
particular evil in the world.
In cases like this our anger is a great motivator to do something about it.
It can be God's antidote to our indifference. Well-controlled anger is the sort
of thing that leads people to do great tasks like causing the abolition of
slavery, or sparking off the reformation, or campaigning against tyrannical
dictators, or fighting drug smuggling.
This is what Jesus did with his anger. It motivated him to heal on the
Sabbath. It motivated him to try to keep his father's house undefiled.
Maybe God has put that kind of anger in your heart, that kind of
passion. In which case, go with it; use that energy, but take great
care that you stay close to God, as our passions all too easily make
us stray. As the Revised Standard translation puts it, Be angry, but do not sinref.
© Copyright 1999, Ben Edgington.
Inline scripture quotes are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.
Linked quotes are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version®. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. http://www.crosswaybibles.org
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