Mastering Anger: Finding Peace Through God's Guidance

Anger and fear are both uh intensely negative emotions and they both have a lot of energy attached to them, however anger makes me feel powerful whereas fear makes me feel powerless, and so it can be very tempting even gratifying to gravitate towards anger and I was thinking yesterday in reflecting on this how anger will come that emotion will come it's kind of like it's going to be in the car but I do not have to let it drive, but anger wants to drive, and I want to let anger Drive, and when I do that's a huge problem. [00:01:33]

Neil talks about how we each have our own style for dealing with anger or for mismanaging anger there are four of them I'll walk through them briefly give a little example from scripture for each one and you can uh self-identify here where do you think you slot it the first anger management style you know is that is the exploder um Ralph Kramden if you remember the old Honeymooners character to the Moon um this is the person that lashes out that shouts in scripture you see like King Saul when he was angry at David took a spear and wanted to pin him against the wall or King Herod when he feels like his throne is threatened uh in his anger will have all of the baby boys in the region of Bethlehem destroyed Kings often were explorers in the Old Testament. [00:02:35]

The second style of mismanagement is the underhander Neil says and that's the passive aggressive person, they may not admit even to themselves that they are angry but you know from the way that they use sarcasm from the way they withdraw from uh the way that they close doors with a little more Force than necessary from the way that they look at you or avoid looking at you I come from a long line of swedes and the most common adjective that was used to describe a Swede back where I came from was a stubborn sweet and I'm very familiar with this style because it is deep deep inside of me. [00:03:22]

The third anger mismanagement style is what Neo calls the somatizer so much from our word for the Greek word for body Soma psychosomatic and that's the person who maybe when they were young were taught one way or another it's not okay for you to be angry but it is okay for you to be sick in fact you actually get what Freud calls secondary gain for being sick you get sympathy, and in the scripture if you look at what are sometimes called the imprecatory Psalms like Psalm 69 or Psalm 109 where the psalmist has great anger actually says to God about the people at whom he is angry break their teeth bend their backs make their eyes dark. [00:05:04]

The fourth category Neil says is the self-punisher and this is where you get angry but maybe because it's safest you take it out on yourself interestingly where the kings were often exploders in the Old Testament I think the prophets are often often self-punishers um maybe because they want to view themselves as religious people so Elijah in First Kings 19 goes off in the wilderness he won't eat he won't drink um he's deeply depressed he's suicidal I'm no better than my ancestors God take my life but underneath that very clearly he's Furious he's furious at the queen Jezebel he's furious at the people for not rallying behind him he's mad that God has put him in this situation. [00:06:22]

Dallas writes about anger because in The Sermon on the Mount Jesus puts dealing with anger first on the spiritual challenges that we face and in the big book of AAA they talk about how resentment is the number one offender in its simplest form Dallas writes anger is a spontaneous response that has a vital function in life as such it's not wrong it's a feeling that ceases us in our body and immediately impels us towards interfering with possibly even harming those who have thwarted our will and interfered with our life. [00:08:13]

Anger is primarily a function of the human will that arises when our will is obstructed but as a response towards those who have interfered with us it includes a will to harm them or the beginnings thereof some degree of malice is contained in every degree of anger that is why it always hurts us when someone is angry at us and it is that that I am so tempted to indulge anger also always for me I think probably for you also includes an element of self-righteousness. [00:09:25]

I have been treated unjustice and an element of vanity and therefore distorts reality the angrier I am the more binary is the way in which I look at you other people are either all good or all bad and when anger really gets a hold of my mind I can look at somebody who I know is basically a good person but all of a sudden they're an enemy they're bad and hatred gets its grips in me and seeps out of me. [00:10:18]

So I need God's help in dealing with this I can't there's a little line in Paul's letter to the church that uh thessalonica where he talks about how you are remaining in Jesus abiding him looking forward to his coming the one who will rescue us from the coming Wrath now that's generally interpreted as the coming Judgment of God God's Wrath of just injustice and sin and and that may well be what Paul has in mind but he doesn't actually say that it's God's Wrath and Dallas would sometimes wonder in passages like that if maybe the Wrath then I need God to save me from is mine. [00:11:03]

Anger makes me feel powerful whereas fear makes me feel powerless, and so it can be very tempting even gratifying to gravitate towards anger and I was thinking yesterday in reflecting on this how anger will come that emotion will come it's kind of like it's going to be in the car but I do not have to let it drive, but anger wants to drive, and I want to let anger Drive, and when I do that's a huge problem. [00:01:33]

Neil talks about how we each have our own style for dealing with anger or for mismanaging anger there are four of them I'll walk through them briefly give a little example from scripture for each one and you can uh self-identify here where do you think you slot it the first anger management style you know is that is the exploder um Ralph Kramden if you remember the old Honeymooners character to the Moon um this is the person that lashes out that shouts in scripture you see like King Saul when he was angry at David took a spear and wanted to pin him against the wall or King Herod when he feels like his throne is threatened uh in his anger will have all of the baby boys in the region of Bethlehem destroyed Kings often were explorers in the Old Testament. [00:02:35]

The second style of mismanagement is the underhander Neil says and that's the passive aggressive person, they may not admit even to themselves that they are angry but you know from the way that they use sarcasm from the way they withdraw from uh the way that they close doors with a little more Force than necessary from the way that they look at you or avoid looking at you I come from a long line of swedes and the most common adjective that was used to describe a Swede back where I came from was a stubborn sweet and I'm very familiar with this style because it is deep deep inside of me. [00:03:22]