The Healing of Our Anger - Vineyard Columbus

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Edited December 9, 2008

The Healing of Our Anger Rich Nathan November 1-2, 2008 Everything Your Parents Should Have Taught You (But Probably Didn’t) Proverbs Series Proverbs 29:11

I grew up in a home that was punctuated by frequent outbursts of anger and rage. My parents never learned how to fight fairly so they often had knock-down, drag-out fights to the point that the police had to be called to our house on several occasions to break them up. My mother and father have definitely changed and have mellowed over the years, but when my dad was younger he had a violent temper. My mother could dish it out just as well as he could. And dad not only was violent with my mother, but also with us as children. I remember one time my dad chased my sister, who locked herself into the bathroom, and dad just ran through the bathroom door. He took the door, the frame, and everything right off the hinges as he himself became unhinged. On one occasion my sister and I were fighting around the breakfast table. She picked up a glass of milk and threw it at me. The glass hit the wall and milk and broken glass ended up all over the wall and the floor. My sister than ran upstairs and told my father that I threw a glass of milk at her. Well, my father responded like one of the bulls in the city of Pamplona. He started to chase me around the house. Pretty soon we were racing around the table as I tried to explain to him that I didn’t throw it. But he was so enraged that I knew that if he caught me, he would beat me. So I tossed a couple of chairs at him to get him out of the way which only enraged him further. Rage can be frightening. Sometimes rage can be traumatizing to a child or to a weaker person. I am taking as a given for today’s talk that we all struggle with anger. Not everyone here is an alcoholic. Not everyone uses pornography. Not everyone has an affair. But everyone struggles with anger. It doesn’t matter if you look at a group of 5-year olds play on the playground, or if you look in a corporate boardroom in a large bank. Whether we are talking about my parents, or Vineyard church members, or people in city government, or deans down at OSU, I take it as a given that every human being struggles with anger, including me. Now, many of us don’t express our anger in the volcanic way that my parents did. Some of us certainly do. We find ourselves shouting, yelling, or cursing, or using our fists or feet to kick or pummel something or someone. But for the most part, most of the time, anger wears a mask and we don’t admit that we are angry at all. We’re not angry. We’re just frustrated. We’re stressed out. Disappointed. Misunderstood. Anxious. We’re tense or burned out. We’re not angry, though.

© 2008 Rich Nathan

While some of us will unload and dump our frustrations on a waiter or store clerk who is trying to help us, or show open hostility and aggression in an email that we send out occasionally even to a pastor or fellow Christian. Some of us do snap at people and bite folks’ heads off. Most of us hide our anger in ways that even deceive us. We rehearse speeches in our heads of what we want to say to the other person and then we fail to deliver that speech when it is time to confront. We smile even though inside we’re seething or annoyed at being put upon. Or we’re passively aggressive. We don’t talk openly about our relational problems with a person. Rather, we talk behind the person’s back. We give verbal acquiescence; “yes, I agree with you,” but inwardly we say there is no chance in the world that you are ever going to get my cooperation on this project.” We are not open or vulnerable with our upset. We don’t explode. But we are inwardly defiant and do what we want to do anyway. Anger can be expressed in open aggression. But anger can wear the mask of passive aggressiveness in which we quietly learn to control situations and people through manipulation. Anger can wear the mask of depression. You feel weary with life. You find it harder to smile. You verbalize more pessimism, more cynicism than in the past. You are feeling put upon by forces outside of your control. Oh, you aren’t angry; you just feel pity towards this other person. We say that. “I’m not angry; I just feel pity for her.” If you say, “I just feel pity for her,” you are probably disguising our anger. Now, a change is supposed to happen when someone becomes a Christian. When God grabs a hold of a human being, when the Kingdom of God breaks into your life, something is supposed to happen. You can’t remain the same person if you have been truly touched by God. So many people who attend church don’t understand this idea. People say, “Well, I’ve prayed the prayer. I went forward at a church service. I touched my TV set just like the TV preacher told me to. But nothing happened.” The Bible never says that if Christ comes into your life you will necessarily have a dramatic experience. You aren’t promised that you will immediately feel something, or tingle all over. The mark of being born again, the mark of entering the Kingdom of God is not that you will necessarily feel overwhelming joy in the moment, or incredible relief, or feel a sense of being loved from head to toe. Many people do experience these things. I did. But not everyone does. Many people experience incredible things when they first kiss their spouses. For me it was like standing under a giant church bell. My head rang the first time I kissed Marlene. But our temperaments and our wirings are all different. Not everyone on their initial encounter with Christ or with their spouses feel overwhelming feelings.

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Feelings should come, by the way. Don’t get me wrong. Experience is normal. But sometimes the experience of God’s love, or the experience of joy, relief, or freedom comes later. Sometimes these experiences come quite unexpectedly when you aren’t looking for them, or they come in times of great crises when you are desperate and you entirely give up control. Many people have incredible experiences of God’s presence during a crisis – when they are in the hospital, when a loved one is in the hospital, when they are going through a divorce, when they are at the end of their rope. But the mark of God’s kingdom breaking into your life is not a certain level of feeling. The mark of God’s kingdom grabbing a hold of you is life change. Saved people are always changed people. And if you aren’t changed; if your attitudes, your life goals, your priorities and values are not changed; if there is not a reordering and redirecting of your whole life; if you aren’t changed at the core of your being, then it is likely that you’ve never come under the sway of the kingdom of God. You may be on the way; you may be right now taking steps towards God. But if you don’t see any life change, it is likely that you have not yet entered God’s kingdom. And so let me pause and ask you: For those of you who say you’ve received Christ, do you see a change in your life as a result? Can you say with all sincerity, “I used to be like that, but when Christ broke into my life, he remade me and now I’m different.” Can you say, “For me it’s more than church-going; it is more than trying to be a good person, or to be a moral person; it is more than religious activity; it is even more than a set of things I believe; I’m really different at the core of my being because Jesus broke into my life.” Can you honestly say that? One of the areas that we ought to see change in our lives, if Christ has really broken into our lives, concerns our anger. I’ve been doing a series from the book of Proverbs, a series that deals with the question of wisdom. Wisdom is, as I’ve defined it repeatedly, Skill in Living We learn skill in our relationships, skill in relating to God, skill in relating to all sorts of people, and skill in relating to all kinds of circumstances. Wisdom includes mastery or skill in handling our emotions. We’ve been talking about that the past few weeks. I spoke about lust two weeks ago and great last week. One of the subjects that the book of Proverbs deals with in great detail is our anger. This is an area, as I said, that we all struggle with. Today I’ve called my message, “The Healing Of Our Anger.” Let’s pray. Proverbs 29:11

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Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end. Anger has a destructive impact. Anger destroyed doors and walls in the family I grew up in. It can destroy people’s bodies. Anger, according to the book of Proverbs, is dangerous. It is explosive. And if you give it full vent, Proverbs says, “you are a fool.” Why? It has the power to destroy relationships. Anger destroys relationships Proverbs 29:22 says: Proverbs 29:22 An angry person stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered person commits many sins. The picture here is of a person who has short fuse, who regularly goes off like a bomb. They’re ready to explode at any moment. I think of people who are always picking a fight, who always seem to be looking for a reason to argue. An angry person stirs up dissension. An angry person stirs up strife. Everywhere an angry person goes, there is conflict. There is conflict at home. There is conflict in their small group. There is conflict in their marriage. There is conflict with extended family. If you see conflict trailing a person, the person gets in arguments with their neighbors and the landlord and the mailman and kids playing in front of their house, their mother-in-law, church pastors – if you see someone who is often embroiled in lawsuits or someone who is often arguing over the phone, or with customers, or someone who can’t hold a job because of conflict, you are probably looking at an angry man or woman. Anger is dangerous. Anger destroys families Proverbs 22:24-25 say this: Proverbs 22:24-25 Do not make friends with the hot-tempered, do not associate with those who are easily angered, 25or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared. In other words, the way we express our anger is often learned in the home, or in our close relationships. We pick up styles of anger from other people. In some families children learn how to explode with rage. In other families we learn how to hide our displeasure and to manipulate others by sulking or smiling and just doing our own thing, or by slandering, or by slamming doors, or slamming cabinets. Parents are often shocked when they hear one of their preschool or

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elementary age children let fly with a curse word. “Where did you learn that? I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap!” “Well, Daddy says…” The parent who routinely complains about traffic, or complains about the weather, or damns anyone who they are frustrated with around the kitchen table, disciples their children in the same. You know, we often argue about nature or nurture when it comes to good things or bad things in people’s lives. Are we like this as a matter of nature; or were we nurtured in it? The Bible says both. Good and evil runs through everything. We have a creation-nature that is good and a fallen nature that is bad. You can be nurtured in grace and good things, or nurtured in sin. And our families and our friendships can be breeding grounds for nurturing us in unhealthy patterns of expressing anger. Do you see that in your own life? Were you nurtured in unhealthy ways of handling anger? To tie this off, Proverbs 13:20 says: Proverbs 13:20 Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. We become like the people we surround ourselves with and that includes not only their perspectives and attitudes, but their way of expressing anger. Anger destroys ourselves Anger affects our bodies Every part of a person’s being is involved in anger. Anger is not merely a feeling. Anger involves your body and it can actually destroy your body. There will be in your body an adrenalin surge. Your muscles will clench. Your stomach will churn. Proverbs uses two words in speaking about anger. One focuses upon a person’s nose and the other has to do with burning. If you’ve ever seen a really angry person, you’ve noticed their nostrils flare, their breathing becomes loud and irregular, blood flows through the capillaries and heats up their skin. That’s why we call someone “hot-headed.” The Greek words in the New Testament for anger communicate steaming or smoking. We use the same image in English. There is a physiological reaction when we are really angry. That’s why we say, “Hey, that person is becoming hot under the collar.” “They’re steamed up.” “They’re breathing fire.” “They’re seeing red.” “They’re hot-blooded.” Anger affects our emotions

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But it is not just our bodies, but our emotions are impacted by our anger. Again, you don’t need to rant and rave; it doesn’t have to be that you’ve exploded like Mt. St. Helen’s. You might just walk around all day grumpy, or self-pitying, or sulking. Or you use cutting remarks and sarcastic humor as a way to cut people down. One of the worst forms of anger is cold-blooded disdain. People talk about looking into steel-cold eyes of a killer, looking at a frozen conscience. And of course, anger not only affects our bodies and our emotions, it affects our minds as we rehearse speeches. It affects our behavior as some people throw things. Other people threaten. Other people walk out of the room. People give other people the silent treatment; slander, gesture, use the finger, give a disgusted sigh. Anger is destructive. It destroys relationships. It destroys families. It destroys ourselves in all of our beings. Anger destroys our morals Again, Proverbs 29:22 says: Proverbs 29:22 An angry person stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered person commits many sins. Proverbs 25:28 says: Proverbs 25:28 Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks selfcontrol. Ancient cities were protected from invaders by city walls. A city without a wall is defenseless and opened up to invasion. And what Proverbs is saying is that if you don’t learn how to deal with your anger, if you live with anger and don’t heal your anger, you are like a city without walls. You are defenseless and capable of being invaded by all kinds of other evil things. The New Testament echoes this in Ephesians 4:26-27: Ephesians 4:26-27 “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. The devil can work all kinds of mischief in your life and in your home and in your family, in your relationships, if you live with unhealed anger. What you are going to find when a person has unhealed anger in their life is that other sins multiply. The person has opened the door to the devil and you are going to find other sins present. So a person might turn to alcohol to deal with grudges that haven’t been healed from childhood. Sexuality immorality is often tied to anger. One

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counselor said that one of his clients told him that his use of pornography was “simply a way of throwing a temper tantrum at God.” I am ticked off at God, so I’m going to use pornography. Adultery is often a way for a spouse to get even. I’m so angry with you that I’m going to have an affair. Self abuse; burning one’s self with a cigarette; cutting one’s self; hurting one’s self – it all can be rooted in anger that is unhealed. Even suicide, on occasion, is a way to lash out at people. I have no other way to get back at you, but you are going to feel awful after I kill myself and you will have to live with the guilt. Of course, not all anger is wrong. God, who is perfect, is often in the Bible said to be angry. The anger of God God is a perfect being. He is absolutely perfect in all of his ways. He never makes a mistake, he never sins, he never evaluates things wrongly, and he is never cruel. He is never manipulative. He is never selfish. God is the angriest person in the Bible. Romans 1:18 says: Romans 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of human beings who suppress the truth by their wickedness Proverbs speaks a lot about God’s anger. We read verses like this: Proverbs 11:1 The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him. Proverbs 11:1 talks about dishonest scales and accurate weights. In the ancient world, of course, things were measured and weighed out with a balancing scale. On one side you put the item that you were selling such as wheat or barley, and on the other side you put weights that were supposed to be calibrated – a one pound or a five pound weight. Now, the balance scale could be made deliberately inaccurate by a bent crossbow, or false weights. So, sellers put on the other side of a scale stones that were too light to make it seem like they were selling more than they were. Buyers put stones on the other side that were too heavy. But the idea is that God gets angry at deceptive business practices. When a person defrauds a consumer, when we cheat a supplier, when a job seeker lies on their application, when an employee is steals from their workplace. God gets angry. Cheating buyers or cheating sellers are, according to the literal rendering

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of Proverbs 11:1, an abomination to God. Abomination! We don’t use that word anymore at all in the 21st century. But that is the literal meaning of the word “detest.” We’re talking about something that evokes God’s anger and his punishment. The word “abomination” or “detests” in the TNIV is used 21 times in the book of Proverbs; 12 times we read that something is an abomination to the Lord. One Bible commentator said that what makes an attitude or an activity abhorrent and detestable to God is “the intention to inflict harm by deceiving, by humiliating, by abusing, or even by defrauding another person.” In other words, anything that deliberately hurts another person, anything that destroys community is an abomination to God. God not only gets angry according to Proverbs, but he often goes to work to punish the deceiver, the defrauder, the liar, the abuser. But God is not a hot-head. Exodus 34 tells us that God is “slow to anger.” God says, “I get angry, but I’m slow to get angry. I’m quick to forgive, but I’m slow to get angry.” God is actually the opposite of us. We’re quick to get angry and it take us a long time to forgive. God is slow to get angry and he is always quick to forgive. Now, a lot of people struggle with the anger of God. They say, “I believe in a God of love, not a God who gets angry.” Lots and lots of folks say, “I just struggle with this whole Christian idea of an angry God.” I don’t think about God like that at all. I believe in a loving God, not a God who gets angry, not a God who punishes, or who judges people.” Any of you feel this way? But the Bible says that if you want a God of love, then you must, by definition, have a God that gets angry. My favorite Christian author, CS Lewis, put it this way. He said: Anger is the fluid that loves bleeds when you cut it. Anger is what comes out when something or someone you love is injured. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, talked about “the anger of love.” When God looks at evil, when God looks at the wreckage that sin causes, anger is His loving response, when God looks at sex trafficking – American men traveling to Mexico or Thailand or Cambodia, or here in the U.S., going to a house where there is a room full of elementary school girls and picking one of the 8 or 9 year olds to have sex with – God’s love for that child does not permit him to be indifferent or to remain aloof. God’s love for people means that God gets angry when a person is abused, when an innocent spouse is lied to, when a person is victimized by someone’s fists or words, or by someone’s lust or greed. True love always gets angry. If you love your child, if you love your spouse, if you love a friend, then you are always going to move to deal with the threat that

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has come against your child or your spouse or your friend. If you look at the things in your life that you get most angry at, and then you look at your heart and ask yourself the question: What is it that I’m defending? What am I protecting? You will discover very quickly what you love. Do you get most angry when your car is scratched in the parking lot? Then you love your car. Do you get most angry when someone gets in your way on the highway? Then you love your own reputation for promptness. Do you get angry when your neighbor’s leaves blow on your lawn? You can quickly find out what you love by seeing what makes you most angry. Jesus got most angry when people failed to show compassion to someone who was suffering. We never read that Jesus got angry because someone damaged his possessions or scratched his things. Because God loves us, he is angry at what harms us. Do you know that the gospel is all about God’s “loving anger?” The gospel is all about God expressing his love towards people by expressing his anger. At the cross God delivered us from the penalty that our sins deserve through the atoning death of his Son Jesus. As we abandon ourselves to the person of Christ and trust in his sacrificial death for our sins at the cross, Jesus’ blood, that is his sacrificial death, becomes the foundation for us standing right with God. Why? Paul explains the way it works in Romans 3:24-26 when he says: Romans 3:24-26 And all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. In other words, Christ’s sacrificial death completely satisfies God’s demand for justice. The old word was “appease” or propitiates – the anger of God. The gospel message is that you can choose to remain under God’s anger, or you can choose to escape God’s anger. Being the subject of God’s anger, and the ultimate judgment of hell that proceeds from God’s anger, is a choice that we human beings make for ourselves. John 3:18-20 says this: John 3:18-20 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the

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world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 All those who do evil hate the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. We pass judgment on ourselves by rejecting the life that God offers us in Jesus Christ. When we reject Christ, when we reject his sacrificial death for our sins, we choose for ourselves the wrath of God. The good news is that you can make a different choice. You can choose to experience for yourself God’s loving embrace, God’s welcome. You can choose to experience for yourself God’s blessing, God’s favor, and God’s kindness. But whenever we choose defiance against God, even as Christians, whenever we choose to rebel against God and to walk in the dark, then we do feel in our own experience, the anger of God. There is a war inside when we defy God, Galatians 5 says. The Spirit of God is always forever angry at sin. God’s Spirit is a burning fire. He is forever angry at sin. Not just the sin of non-Christians, but our sin – the sin of Christians. That is why we have sleepless nights. That is why our consciences weigh us down. That is why we lack peace. That is why we are stirred up inside. When we are walking in sin, we experience in our own beings the anger of God. When we talk about anger, we are not only needing to consider the anger of God, but the fact that many people are angry at God. Anger at God. You know, many people experience terrible circumstances in life. As a pastor, people tell me of horrific abuse as children – mind-blowing sexual abuse; parents force siblings to have sex with each other; violence in the home; rejection; betrayal; the sudden loss of a spouse or a child without warning. But many, many people experience very hard, very disappointing circumstances – a sudden request for a divorce by a spouse, the discovery of an affair, the sudden lay-off, an accident that leads to permanent disability, the radical rebellion of a child. And some people, as a result of these very disappointing, very painful experiences lash out at God. They target God with mocking and cursing, bitter accusation. Proverbs speaks over and over again about someone they call “the mocker.” In fact, some people choose not to believe in God because they’re angry with him over some painful life circumstance, perhaps something their father did, so in rage and defiance I will not put my trust in my heavenly father. Maybe some of you are in this place today. As a result of deep hurt, you choose not to believe. There is a fascinating book about atheism called The Psychology of Atheism by Paul Vitz who was a psychologist at NYU for many years. What Paul Vitz

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discovered was that when you look at the family relationships of the best-known, out-spoken atheists, whether we’re talking about Freud, or Karl Marx, or Bertand Russell, or Madeline Murray O’Hare, almost all of them had dreadful relationships with their fathers. We project onto God our broken relationships with our own fathers. Now this is not the only cause of atheism, but often our unbelief is not entirely intellectual; there is a huge emotional component. We are hurt so we push away from God. Many therapists today say that if you have suffered, and if you’ve gone through a traumatic experience, if you’ve been through a painful situation in life, it is not only OK to be angry with God, it is actually healthy and right and you need to tell God how you feel. Tell him you’re angry. If you need to lash out at God, go ahead and lash out at God. He’s a big boy; he can handle it. I would like to dispute that notion and suggest to you that it is always wrong to be angry at God. It is always wrong to be angry at God Anger is a judgment we make when we decide something or someone is morally wrong. Someone has wronged us, or deceived us, betrayed us, intentionally hurt us. Anger is a moral judgment. And the reason why it is always wrong to be angry at God is because we are accusing God of wrong-doing. We’re saying, “God, you betrayed me. You blew it. You were cruel. You don’t care. You are not good. You were asleep at the wheel.” Kay Arthur, in an old book titled Lord, Heal My Hurts, put it really well when she said: You get angry with God because God did not do what you thought he should, or the way he should do it, or when he should do it. Anger with God is telling God “you’re wrong.” We do not know God’s reasons for bad things in our lives. But it is wrong to attribute to God cruelty. It is wrong to attribute to God spite or ignorance or to deny his goodness or his wisdom or his power. You ask, “Well, what about the expression of anger in the Psalms?” What about the Psalms? There is never cursing of God in the Psalms. There is never a mocking of God. There is never a rejection of God, never the sentiment, “I’m not going to believe in you, God, because of what happened.” There’s no blasphemy in the Psalms. The people who wrote the psalms are dismayed, they’re upset because they know that God is good and they know that God is powerful. And they struggle, oh, they struggle. They are in anguish to try to reconcile what is happening in their lives with what they know of God.

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It is always right to bring to God your doubts, questions, complaints, pains, and anguish See, anger towards God moves you away from God. It causes you to put your hand up and push yourself away from God. But complaints, doubts, pain, anguish, hurt – the psalmist is always moving towards God. He is pouring out his heart to God. The person is saying: Father, it is because I know that you are loving and that you are powerful that I’m struggling with what looks like the absence of these things in my life. It is because I know that you are good that I am so confused by what has happened to me. It is because I believe you love me that I don’t understand why I suffered the abuse that I did. And I don’t know why you were distant from me when I needed you so desperately. All of that is legitimate. We communicate those feelings in humility, in reverence – that we are like an ant trying to understand the elephant. You know, as a pastor, I have found it interesting over the years to discover that people who are most angry with God, who move away from God and lash out at God and choose to disbelieve in God, often don’t suffer any more than those who choose in crisis to move towards God. Our circumstances do not produce our reactions to God. Some people who have been horrifically abused have moved towards God with their hurts and grief. And others who haven’t suffered nearly as much have ended up blaspheming God, mocking God, lashing out at God and lashing out at God’s people in the church. It is always right to come to God with your questions, your doubts, your confusion, with your pain, with your hurts. Go to God with your wounds. It is always right to do that. But I can’t accuse God of being wrong. I can’t accuse God of screwing up. I can’t accuse God of being ignorant regarding what he’s doing. Well, how do we heal our anger? Anger’s healing The kind of anger that is destructive, the kind of anger that is not tinged with love for a victim – how do we heal our anger? Anger that can end up destroying us, destroying our families, destroying our kids, destroying our morals. Let me suggest three basic questions that will move us towards healing. First of all, ask yourself: Did I get angry about the right things? What you’re doing here is pulling the mask off your anger, your upset, and you are slowing down enough to examine what’s going on inside of you and you’re

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saying, “Why am I so angry?” You are getting in touch with yourself. Why am I so angry? Am I angry because I’m stuck in traffic? Why do I demand that I get to where I need to go in a convenient way at a convenient time? I’m angry because someone made me late and as a result I’ll be embarrassed in front of my friends, or my coworkers, and that wounds my pride. Maybe I’m angry because someone disagreed with my opinion. I’m angry because I was overlooked. I wasn’t acknowledged. I wasn’t thanked. Often, healing for anger can be found in answering this first question. Did I get angry about the right things? Why am I so angry? We’ll often find that we’re angry about the wrong things. I’m not angry about sin – my sin, someone else’s sin. I’m not angry about abuse or deception or meanness. When I get to the root of why I’m angry, I can often repent right there and say, “God, forgive me for my pride. Forgive me for my lustful craving that wasn’t satisfied in this case.” Forgive me my impatience or my disdain for the opinions of others. The second question to ask is: Did I express my anger in the right way? Proverbs 29:11 says this: Proverbs 29:11 Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end. Just because you have a right to be angry, doesn’t give you the license to express your anger any way you feel like it. Just because someone hurt you; just because you’ve been offended; just because someone’s been insensitive, didn’t take you seriously – it doesn’t give you the right to vent or vomit all over everyone. Fools, it says, give full vent to their anger. Wise people don’t explode. Just because you’ve been offended doesn’t give you the right to punish someone else by sulking – let him guess why I’m angry; she should be able to read my mind. We don’t have a right to punish people by making them crawl over broken glass or beg for our forgiveness. It is wrong to manipulate people through passive aggressive behavior – to smile and then defiantly do whatever you want to do anyway. To control people through manipulative behavior. It is always wrong to express your anger by destroying another person. I just wish he would disappear. I wish he was somehow eliminated. And destruction’s ultimate form is – I wish he would just die. It is always right for anger to want to destroy sin, not the person, but sin. So in a clear way, in an assertive way, you can confront sin. In a clear, frank, assertive, confrontation way, it is right for you to draw a line and say, “Enough! I won’t allow myself to be abused any more. I’m not a door mat that you can wipe your feet on. I’m not going to tolerate your continued pornographic use. I’m going to

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withdraw myself from abuse. Continued relationship with me depends on the elimination of this sin.” No explosions…no pouting…no self-pity…no rehearsing conversations. Clear, assertive confrontation of sin. We confront the lying, the deception, the betrayal, but we shouldn’t want to destroy the person. You know, Proverbs 15:1 gives us a hint regarding the proper way to express anger. Proverbs 15:1 A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Someone says something that bothers you; you receive an angry email, the appropriate approach to someone else’s anger is not to match them tone for tone and scream for scream. But in style and in substance to offer a thoughtful response, to try to pour water on the fire, if that is at all possible. A gentle answer is like salve, like balm on sunburned skin. A harsh answer pours gasoline on a fire. See, there is a secret regarding the right way to respond. It is found in Proverbs 16:32: Proverbs 16:32 Better a patient person than a warrior, those with self-control than those who take a city. Who is the real hero? Proverbs says that the real hero is not the person who is a military hero, who takes the city. It is way better, and way harder to overcome your own passion; it is way more difficult to overlook a wrong, to let something go, and to forgive than to be a military hero. It is way easier to battle flesh and blood than it is to battle spiritual forces like anger. In fact, what makes a true military hero is not defeating a flesh and blood enemy. What makes a true military hero is someone who shows extraordinary valor, shows bravery, and masters their own fears. My father-in-law, Joe Schultheis, was a war hero during WWII. He won a couple of Silver Stars. He won a couple of Bronze Stars. He won a Silver Star for jumping on a truck that was full of live ammo and was on fire. With another guy, he unloaded a truck full of live ammo to save this truck of munitions because the Germans had surrounded his position. In order to save the other soldiers from being completely wiped out, he had to save the ammo. His heroism was in dealing with and mastering his fear. It is far more difficult to master ourselves than to take a city. The right way to deal with anger is self-control.

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Real healing occurs when I not only get angry about the right things and express my anger in the right way, but I ask myself the question: Do I have the right goal? Do I have the right goal? For other people, what’s the right goal? That this person would be freed from their sin. God have mercy on me. I should not want this other person to be eliminated. I should not want this other person destroyed. I should not want this other person to die. What I should want most of all, what I should pray for is that they would be freed from their horrible sin; sin that will ultimately end up in their destruction because God you are always angry at sin. And if they don’t repent, you will judge them. Sin is giving them arthritis of the soul. Their sin is killing them; their sin is killing other people. “Please destroy the sin that is destroying them, dear God.” Can you imagine that other person without their sin? What I should want for myself is that in my own life instead of carrying around grudges and bitterness, ill will towards another human being, I should want in my own life that I manifest the fruit of God’s Spirit. Here is what Galatians 5:19-23 says: Galatians 5:19-23 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and selfcontrol. If you go down the list of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit, everyone of them is an opposition to holding grudges, to strife, to explosions, to sulking, to manipulation. I should want a life that is full of the Holy Spirit. We should set as a goal for our own lives to look like Galatians 5:22-23: Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. This can only come about not by will power, or trying harder. We need spiritual power to produce these opposites of anger in our lives. As we yield our lives to Jesus, as we abandon our right to hold a grudge, as we ask God to heal our hurts, and extinguish our anger at the cross, the Holy Spirit releases us from the crippling effects of anger and ill will.

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That is the wise life. That is the Christ-like life. It is a life of someone who is healed of anger. Let’s pray.

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The Healing of Our Anger Rich Nathan November 1-2, 2008 Everything Your Parents Should Have Taught You (But Probably Didn’t) Proverbs Series Proverbs 29:11 1. Anger’s many masks 2. Anger’s destructive impact A. Anger destroys relationships (Proverbs 29:22) B. Anger destroys family (Proverbs 22:24-25) C. Anger destroys ourselves D. Anger destroys our morals (Proverbs 25:28)

3. The Anger with God (Proverbs 11:1)

4. Angry at God A. It is always wrong to be angry at God B. It is always right to bring God your doubts, questions, complaints, pains, and anguish 5. Anger’s Healing A. Did I get angry about the right things? B. Did I express my anger in the right way? 1. The wrong way 2. The right way C. Do I have the right goal? 1. For others 2. For myself

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