SPEAKER_03: It's good to be with you.
SPEAKER_03: Big news.
SPEAKER_03: After 18 months, our projector, our other projector, is here.
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
SPEAKER_03: We had to ship it to a place I'm pretty sure that they, whatever part they needled needed, they whittled it and finally put it and got it back to us.
SPEAKER_03: So I'm grateful for that.
SPEAKER_03: It's good to be with you.
SPEAKER_03: Welcome, welcome.
SPEAKER_03: My name is Mac.
SPEAKER_03: I'm one of the pastors on our team.
SPEAKER_03: Also want to welcome all of you who are joining us from home.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks for tuning in.
SPEAKER_03: So we're at we're in a newer sermon series called Honest to God.
SPEAKER_03: And I want you to know this series is actually a response to how we've sensed God leading us as a community.
SPEAKER_03: For uh at least a year, if not more, we as a staff and as a leadership team have really felt or sensed God leading us deeper into prayer.
SPEAKER_03: And not just us as a staff or a leadership team, but our entire church.
SPEAKER_03: And so we designed this sermon series in a response, in an attempt to be responsive to how we sense God leading.
SPEAKER_03: The big idea of this entire sermon series is that honesty is the key ingredient to building a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_03: So here's the deal is God wants a personal relationship with each and every one of you.
SPEAKER_03: He wants a deep and meaningful relationship with you.
SPEAKER_03: But that kind of a relationship can only form as we show up with honesty and authenticity.
SPEAKER_03: And so the through line of this entire series is that God wants you to be honest.
SPEAKER_03: God wants you to show up honest.
SPEAKER_03: And this is exactly what we see in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_03: The psalmists speak with raw and real honesty in God's presence.
SPEAKER_03: Cameron showed us this meme uh last week, and it captures perfectly how the psalmists speak to God.
SPEAKER_03: Um, this is Ron Burgundy in a glass case of emotion, right?
SPEAKER_03: This is how the psalmists communicate.
SPEAKER_03: They're bringing all of themselves into God's presence without sanitizing their emotions or uh cleaning up their feelings.
SPEAKER_03: They're just bringing themselves as they are into God's presence, even when what they're saying risks being offensive or sounding really ugly.
SPEAKER_03: And see, this is one of the primary points of all the Psalms is that prayer is not about perfect theology, it's about radical honesty.
SPEAKER_03: You know, I heard some of the small groups were refer wrestling this week, and this is a good wrestle.
SPEAKER_03: Well, what about reverence in prayer with God?
SPEAKER_03: Well, perhaps try this on.
SPEAKER_03: That nothing is more irreverent than lying in God's presence.
SPEAKER_03: So rather than pitying these two against each other, I want to submit to you that being honest with God, even if what you're saying sounds ugly or offensive, is actually part of your reverence because you're not gonna pretend with a God who knows, anyways.
SPEAKER_03: It's about bringing all of our life into God's presence, no how no matter how messy it sounds, and whatever emotions you're feeling, whether that's sadness or grief, anger or confusion, whatever it might be.
SPEAKER_03: And today we're gonna talk about anger.
SPEAKER_03: What does it look like to bring our anger into God's presence?
SPEAKER_03: Now, when I think about anger, one of the first things that comes to mind for me is a scene from the TV show The Office.
SPEAKER_03: Now, if you haven't seen this show, that's okay.
SPEAKER_03: All you need to know about the clip I'm about to show you is there's a guy named Andy Bernard.
SPEAKER_03: He has some musical aptitude, but he uh expresses it with a certain degree of obnoxious behavior.
SPEAKER_03: And he happened to record himself singing as his ringtone, and this keeps going off all day.
SPEAKER_03: And finally, Jim has had enough, so he hides Andy's phone in the ceiling.
SPEAKER_03: Watch what happens next.
SPEAKER_02: There is a call.
SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Where is my freaking phone?
SPEAKER_01: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's in the ceiling.
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're in the ceiling.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I don't trust you, Phyllis.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm also sorry that a lot of people here for some reason think it's funny to steal someone's personal property and hide it from them.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a little news flash.
SPEAKER_00: It's not funny.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's pretty freaking unfunny.
SPEAKER_01: That was an overreaction.
SPEAKER_01: Gonna hit the break room.
SPEAKER_01: Does anybody want anything?
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So Michael had a little chat with corporate and they decided to send me to management training.
SPEAKER_01: Anger management, technically, but still.
SPEAKER_01: Management material.
SPEAKER_03: I just love that scene.
SPEAKER_03: It's so funny.
SPEAKER_03: Um, it highlights a reality though, and it's that most of us have a complicated relationship with anger.
SPEAKER_03: Um some of us, for different reasons.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, some of us are sort of like Andy, right?
SPEAKER_03: We're prone to anger, and instead of controlling our anger, there have been moments where anger has controlled us, and out of that, we've acted in ways that are harmful to those around us, hurtful and harmful to our relationships.
SPEAKER_03: For other people, uh, they've been on the receiving end of anger.
SPEAKER_03: And so maybe you've experienced this before.
SPEAKER_03: You've been the target or the recipient of someone else's anger, which never feels great.
SPEAKER_03: I'd imagine for most of us, though, it's some combination.
SPEAKER_03: We've both acted out of anger at times in ways that are hurtful.
SPEAKER_03: We've been on the receiving end of end of it.
SPEAKER_03: We've both victimized people with our anger and been the victims of other people's anger.
SPEAKER_03: Another complicating factor is that anger is such an easily accessible emotion.
SPEAKER_03: Anger is felt, um, easily felt because it's it's quickly activated, right?
SPEAKER_03: So anger is one of the fastest emotions to surface.
SPEAKER_03: And this is actually by design.
SPEAKER_03: It's anger is part of the alarm system that is designed to go off when we experience a threat or perceive some kind of of a danger.
SPEAKER_03: And so it shows up fast.
SPEAKER_03: And the thing is, is it actually bypasses the thinking part of our brain.
SPEAKER_03: As part of our alarm system, it goes off when it perceives a threat or a danger.
SPEAKER_03: And the part of your brain that's responsible for thinking and objectivity and maybe self-reflection and control, that gets pushed to the background.
SPEAKER_03: And what happens all too often then is that anger ends up in the driving seat, driving whatever happens next.
SPEAKER_03: Often with a high degree of intensity.
SPEAKER_03: I think what's more is that we're living in a culture of outrage where anger is constantly being provoked, but not just provoked, actually uh amplified and rewarded.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, we saw this play out all week.
SPEAKER_03: Think about your social media um newsfeed all week, um, given the events.
SPEAKER_03: Most of it was designed to make you angry.
SPEAKER_03: The data suggests that uh what drives engagement on social media is not positive posts that are heartwarming or prompt self-reflection, but rather because anger is so easily accessible, it targets our anger because that's what drives engagement.
SPEAKER_03: Posts that provoke anger are what uh drive likes and shares and clicks and comments.
SPEAKER_03: And so you just reflect on the last week, and that's mostly what was in our news feed, was posts designed, targeted at your anger to drive your engagement.
SPEAKER_03: It's the same thing with the nightly news.
SPEAKER_03: Sure, every once in a while they might share a heartwarming story, but most of it is targeting our fear and anxiety and our anger.
SPEAKER_03: Why?
SPEAKER_03: Because once they've hooked you that way, you're gonna keep engaging, it's hard to turn it off.
SPEAKER_03: You guys, this is cheap stuff.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is your algorithm is targeting your alarm system and exploiting it so that you like and click.
SPEAKER_03: That's what's happening.
SPEAKER_03: And so we live in a culture that's sort of targeting our alarm system, and most of us, quite frankly, don't know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_03: I've shared this story before, but this was several summers ago.
SPEAKER_03: I was at a stoplight in Delafield, it was taking forever.
SPEAKER_03: And by the way, I'm more of an introvert, so I'm probably always thinking about something in my mind, more so than thinking about what's happening out here.
SPEAKER_03: So I'm at this stoplight, it's taking forever.
SPEAKER_03: It's summer, the windows are down, and I'm just kind of like waiting.
SPEAKER_03: And all of a sudden, this guy next to me rolls down his window and starts yelling at me.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know what happened.
SPEAKER_03: Apparently, I must have glanced in his direction, but he's like, Who you looking at?
SPEAKER_03: You looking at me?
SPEAKER_03: Let's F and go! Get out of your F and car, let's go! And I'm like, I have no idea what's happening.
SPEAKER_03: I'm starting to get nervous because this guy is bigger than I am, clearly upset, and then the light turns green.
SPEAKER_03: And he was in the turn lane, it was kind of congested, so thank God I was able to keep going forward and he was sort of stuck.
SPEAKER_03: But I remember just being like, what just happened?
SPEAKER_03: Like that guy might be management material.
SPEAKER_03: Anger management material.
SPEAKER_03: This is the culture we're living in.
SPEAKER_03: On a daily basis, your anger is being targeted because it's this quickly accessible emotion, and when it gets provoked, it can often do incredibly bad work.
SPEAKER_03: And so we're left with this question like, what do we do with it?
SPEAKER_03: So today I want to preach to you on the title, What to Do with Anger.
SPEAKER_03: What to do with anger.
SPEAKER_03: I'm hoping to accomplish three things today.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, thingy one is I want to address a common misunderstanding about anger.
SPEAKER_03: Um, so that's the first thing.
SPEAKER_03: Then I want to look at how the psalmists deal with their anger, and then from that I want to sort of sketch a way forward for how we can bring our anger into God's presence.
SPEAKER_03: Sound good?
SPEAKER_03: Well, you don't have a choice, anyways.
SPEAKER_03: That's what we're gonna do.
SPEAKER_03: That's what I outlined.
SPEAKER_03: So here we go.
SPEAKER_03: I want to start with this um misunderstanding or myth about anger, and it's simply that anger is bad.
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
SPEAKER_03: So many people, and there's different reasons for this, some of it goes back to our first formation.
SPEAKER_03: Perhaps you grew up in a home where anger was perceived as bad.
SPEAKER_03: Many of us, as I talk to people, many people grew up in churches where this is the case.
SPEAKER_03: They were taught in their uh a spiritual environment that anger is a negative emotion to be avoided.
SPEAKER_03: And I get some of it because we just got done reflecting on the bad work that anger can do.
SPEAKER_03: When you're the recipient of someone's unjust anger, or you act out of anger in ways that are hurtful and harmful, we can see that anger out of control does really bad work.
SPEAKER_03: But the problem is as many people then walk around with this belief, this deeply held belief, that anger is a bad thing, it's a negative emotion that needs to be avoided or pushed away.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to say, uh, matter-of-factly, that anger isn't the problem.
SPEAKER_03: Our response to it is the problem.
SPEAKER_03: Anger is actually a God-given human emotion.
SPEAKER_03: It's actually part of the alarm system that God gave us to keep us safe.
SPEAKER_03: And we actually don't get to choose to be angry.
SPEAKER_03: Anger is an emotion that often happens to us as our alarm system gets activated.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, there's times when we can feed our anger by ruminating on things, but oftentimes the experience of anger is an automatic response to a perceived threat.
SPEAKER_03: Anger is a God-given human emotion designed to protect us and to keep us safe.
SPEAKER_03: So I want to be clear, anger in itself is not bad or sinful.
SPEAKER_03: This is why Paul says in Ephesians 4, in your anger do not sin.
SPEAKER_03: Notice the assumption behind that command that you can be angry and not sin.
SPEAKER_03: And I want to submit to you, Jesus, who we're supposed to be following, models this perfectly for us.
SPEAKER_03: You read through the Gospels and you'll notice that there were times Jesus got angry.
SPEAKER_03: In fact, there's 15 times Jesus experienced anger in the Gospels.
SPEAKER_03: Now, I've talked with some people about this and they'll go, oh, but Jesus was God, so it's okay for him to be angry.
SPEAKER_03: Well, let's be careful about not like pointing to Jesus' divinity in a way that negates his humanity because Jesus was also fully human.
SPEAKER_03: And the writer of human uh Hebrews says that Jesus experienced all the things that we do and yet was without sin.
SPEAKER_03: And so I want to submit to you that Jesus actually models for us how to relate to and even channel anger when we experience it.
SPEAKER_03: Anger is not the problem by itself, the problem is what we do with it.
SPEAKER_03: The problem is when instead of us controlling our anger, anger ends up controlling us and we do or say things that are hurtful and harmful.
SPEAKER_03: I like to think of anger sort of like a light on the dashboard of your life.
SPEAKER_03: And so when you see that anger light pop on, it sort of alerts you that there's something you need to attend to.
SPEAKER_03: So anger is a sign or a signal, it's not sinful.
SPEAKER_03: The problem isn't anger, it's when anger controls your response.
SPEAKER_03: The problem isn't anger, it's when anger takes the wheel and drives your actions and your behavior.
SPEAKER_03: The problem isn't anger, the problem is unprocessed and unchecked anger, especially when you use your anger to justify whatever you happen to do next.
SPEAKER_03: Listen, everything I'm nothing I'm saying to you is new.
SPEAKER_03: Um this is why theologians throughout church history have distinguished between, they they use different language for it, but sometimes it's righteous versus unrighteous anger, or sound versus unsound anger, legitimate versus illegitimate anger.
SPEAKER_03: There's a difference between these two.
SPEAKER_03: Like you raging out because you stepped on a Lego, which could happen at Lego night, just saying, um, is different than you being angry because you see a child being mistreated by someone in authority.
SPEAKER_03: You see the difference?
SPEAKER_03: One is righteous, the other one is you get crabby because you haven't had any food that day and rage out at your spouse, that's different than right, being upset because you see someone else being mistreated or someone violates your values.
SPEAKER_03: Those two are different.
SPEAKER_03: So there's a difference between sound and unsound anger.
SPEAKER_03: But what I want you to notice now is that the problem isn't anger in and of itself.
SPEAKER_03: Anger is part of uh the alarm system that God has given us to respond to threats and perceived danger.
SPEAKER_03: And of course, we have to do work to discern whether it's legitimate or illegitimate, which we'll get to later.
SPEAKER_03: But for now, I want to just undo this myth.
SPEAKER_03: Anger in and of itself is not bad or sinful.
SPEAKER_03: Now let's look at the Psalms because anger shows up repeatedly throughout the Psalms.
SPEAKER_03: And as I was studying this through line of anger through the Psalms, one of the things I notice is that the entire spectrum of anger shows up in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_03: So anger isn't just one thing, it exists on a spectrum or a continuum from like the mild end, you know, mild irritation that's sort of underneath the surface, all the way to the other end of the spectrum, which would be like really overt and extreme anger.
SPEAKER_03: That entire spectrum exists in the Psalms as people bring themselves into God's presence.
SPEAKER_03: So I want to show you this spectrum.
SPEAKER_03: And I'm gonna start on the mild end.
SPEAKER_03: So if one end of the spectrum is the mild side, this is as far to that end as we can go, and I'm gonna entitle this implicit anger.
SPEAKER_03: So there are places in the Psalms where anger isn't named or even acknowledged, but I think it's still there.
SPEAKER_03: It's implicit, but it's expressed as unease or or a or a disorientation with life.
SPEAKER_03: And so let me just give you a couple a couple quick examples of this.
SPEAKER_03: This is all over the place, but Psalm 42, 5 says, Why, my soul, are you downcast?
SPEAKER_03: Why so disturbed within me?
SPEAKER_03: And then Psalm 72, 2 says, When I was in distress, I sought the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: At night I stretched out untiring hands and would not be comforted.
SPEAKER_03: Again, notice that anger isn't being named directly, but you can kind of sense it under underneath the surface.
SPEAKER_03: It's part of the mix of emotion that's present here.
SPEAKER_03: And it's showing up as distress, being downcast was one of the words that is used there, being disturbed, not being comforted, this restlessness, not willing to be comforted, frustration, heaviness, and inner disturbance.
SPEAKER_03: The alarm system is going off, signaling to the writer that something is wrong.
SPEAKER_03: But it's not showing up in an overly overt way.
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
SPEAKER_03: That's on the mild end.
SPEAKER_03: Now the next notch in, so this is still probably left of center, is emerging anger.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, and here anger may be expressed without the word anger showing up.
SPEAKER_03: It's still not very explicit, but there's clearly an increase in intensity and a clear expression of frustration or complaint be named in God's presence.
SPEAKER_03: So let me give you a couple examples of this.
SPEAKER_03: The first is Psalm 10 1.
SPEAKER_03: Why, Lord, do you stand far off?
SPEAKER_03: Why do you hide yourself in times?
SPEAKER_03: Of trouble.
SPEAKER_03: If you read the rest of Psalm 10, it's like one long continuing vent of what's happening in the world around the writer.
SPEAKER_03: Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_03: Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
SPEAKER_03: My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer by night, but I find no rest.
SPEAKER_03: Alright, so a couple things to notice is this clear increase in intensity that's now, this frustration that's now being named in God's presence directly and boldly.
SPEAKER_03: And then secondly, notice that this frustration is actually being directed at God.
SPEAKER_03: You notice that?
SPEAKER_03: God, why do you stand far off?
SPEAKER_03: Why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_03: By the way, anger in the Psalms usually is expressed in one of three directions, toward God, which these two examples point to, towards oneself, regret, remorse, or towards others.
SPEAKER_03: And you never see God get upset because someone is directing their anger at him.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's really fascinating.
SPEAKER_03: That's the second one.
SPEAKER_03: Now let's move to uh the next one.
SPEAKER_03: This is a little bit right of center.
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
SPEAKER_03: So this is what I'm gonna label active anger.
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
SPEAKER_03: And this is typically anger that is expressed towards some kind of injustice or moral wrongdoing, and it often comes in the form of protest or outrage, moral outrage.
SPEAKER_03: So I'm gonna give you an example of this.
SPEAKER_03: It's Psalm 12, 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_03: Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore.
SPEAKER_03: Those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
SPEAKER_03: Everyone lies to their neighbor, they flatter with their lips, but harbor deception in their hearts.
SPEAKER_03: What's going on here?
SPEAKER_03: The psalmist is looking around and is outraged that there seems to be nobody who is faithful to God anymore.
SPEAKER_03: There's anger and there's frustration about the state of things, and that anger is now being brought into God's presence and leveraged to invite and demand that God take action, for God to right wrongs and bring about justice.
SPEAKER_03: That's active anger.
SPEAKER_03: So you've got implicit, emerging, active, and then on the far right end of the continuum.
SPEAKER_03: I guess I'd be here on your side of things, but is extreme anger.
SPEAKER_03: This is the most aggressive form of anger.
SPEAKER_03: And here, anger moves beyond just protest to explicit calls for God to bring about vengeance on one's enemies.
SPEAKER_03: This anger is best captured by what's known as the imprecatory Psalms.
SPEAKER_03: This is actually a genre of Psalms within the Psalms where writers call on God to bring about judgment and honestly horrendous stuff on their enemies.
SPEAKER_03: So here's Psalm 109 is just one example.
SPEAKER_03: This is what the author is inviting or asking God to do to his enemies.
SPEAKER_03: Again, referring to his enemies.
SPEAKER_03: May his days, the days of my enemies, be few.
SPEAKER_03: May another take his place of leadership.
SPEAKER_03: May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
SPEAKER_03: May his children be wandering beggars, may they be driven from their ruined homes.
SPEAKER_03: May a creditor seize all he has, may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
SPEAKER_03: May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.
SPEAKER_03: May his descendants be cut off, their names be blotted out from the next generation.
SPEAKER_03: May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: May the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
SPEAKER_03: May their sins always remain before the Lord, that he may blot out their name from the earth.
SPEAKER_03: Management material.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you d are you reading this?
SPEAKER_03: Like this is this author is essentially praying that his enemy would go to hell.
SPEAKER_03: God keep that person's sin ever before you never blot it out.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, this is pretty outrageous stuff.
SPEAKER_03: Highly offensive stuff.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, not the kind of thing that you see Jesus praying over his enemies.
SPEAKER_03: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they're doing, right?
SPEAKER_03: There's something going on here.
SPEAKER_03: And quite frankly, Christians throughout the centuries haven't really known what to do with these types of psalms.
SPEAKER_03: Which is why I'm going to double-click on the main point of the Psalms is to teach us to pray.
SPEAKER_03: It's not about right theology, although that matters, it's about absolute radical honesty.
SPEAKER_03: That's what the Psalms teach us to do.
SPEAKER_03: They teach us how to pray with honesty, no matter what's going on inside of us and no matter how ugly it is.
SPEAKER_03: And so here's our bottom line for today it's that God invites us to bring our anger to Him honestly.
SPEAKER_03: You got anger?
SPEAKER_03: Bring it to God honestly.
SPEAKER_03: No matter what you're angry about, whether it's sound or unsound, quite frankly, no matter where your anger is being directed, whether it's at God yourself or other people, and no matter where your anger is on the spectrum, whether it's implicit, emerging, active, or full-blown rage, God wants you to bring that to him.
SPEAKER_03: Without sanitizing it, without cleaning it up first.
SPEAKER_03: God invites you to bring your anger to him with 100% honesty.
SPEAKER_03: I would submit to you that this is one of the primary points in the book of Job.
SPEAKER_03: If you're not familiar with it, Job is this character who loses everything.
SPEAKER_03: He loses his kids, he loses all of his material possessions, he loses his health.
SPEAKER_03: The only thing he doesn't lose is his wife, who I'll just say she wasn't the greatest wife, okay, and some pretty miserable friends.
SPEAKER_03: But you can see this spectrum I just gave you, you can see this progress for Job in that order as the book continues.
SPEAKER_03: At first he starts really pious, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away.
SPEAKER_03: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: But as things continue, you start to see this implicit anger take root.
SPEAKER_03: And then it begins to emerge as he brings complaints and frustrations, and then it becomes activated.
SPEAKER_03: He starts directing his anger toward God.
SPEAKER_03: And by the end, it's full-blown rage.
SPEAKER_03: He says some pretty offensive things to God.
SPEAKER_03: And what's amazing is at the end of the book, yes, Job has to humble himself before God.
SPEAKER_03: That's part of it.
SPEAKER_03: But Job, God actually rebukes Job's friends and says about Job that Job has spoken what was right.
SPEAKER_03: And I've preached on this before, that word right in Hebrew, it's the word kun, and it implies not accuracy, but honesty.
SPEAKER_03: Whereas Job's friends spoke dishonestly, Job, even though everything he said wasn't right or accurate, he at least remained in honest relationship with God throughout, even when it was messy and quite frankly offensive.
SPEAKER_03: So I want to name this that God can handle your anger.
SPEAKER_03: What's more is that it's only as you bring your anger to God, who already knows it's there anyways.
SPEAKER_03: It's only as you bring your anger to God without sanitizing or cleaning it up, that God has the ability and the permission to speak to it, to touch it, to transform it, and channel it in a new direction.
SPEAKER_03: And so I want to ask this question: how do we do this?
SPEAKER_03: How do we bring our anger to God?
SPEAKER_03: And so here are some steps for processing anger in prayer with God, some steps you can take.
SPEAKER_03: Step one is to detect it.
SPEAKER_03: Okay?
SPEAKER_03: The first step to dealing with anger is learning to notice it, which may sound easy, but I submit to you it's not.
SPEAKER_03: And the reason why is if you've spent a lifetime stiff arming your anger, avoiding your anger, or suppressing it, um, it may not always be easy to detect that you're angry.
SPEAKER_03: Especially if you've been carrying around this message that anger is bad or to be avoided.
SPEAKER_03: But here's the deal, I want to name this undealt with anger always does damage.
SPEAKER_03: Undealt with anger always does damage.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't just disappear because you're ignoring it.
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't just go away.
SPEAKER_03: When anger is ignored or suppressed, it shows up in other ways.
SPEAKER_03: As part of this sermon, I submitted some of my notes to Angie Byers, who's a therapist, just to go, hey, would you just look at some of this to see how it uh pairs up or sinks with a like a mental health perceptive per perspective?
SPEAKER_03: And one of the things she added to my thoughts here is she named how it shows up when we don't deal with it.
SPEAKER_03: One of the things she said that I found to be really insightful is she said that anger, when it's not dealt with, it ends up turning on us.
SPEAKER_03: So depression, you guys, is anger turned inward.
SPEAKER_03: Anger turned on yourself.
SPEAKER_03: If you've learned that anger is bad, and so you avoid it or suppress it or try to push it down, um, eventually that is going to catch up with you.
SPEAKER_03: Unacknowledged anger doesn't just go away.
SPEAKER_03: What ends up happening oftentimes is that that repressed anger shifts and ends up shutting down your system in a way that's chronic.
SPEAKER_03: You end up in a place of chronic shutdown, which is the core feature of depression.
SPEAKER_03: So swallowing your anger or trying to ignore it will actually impact your sense of self in the long run.
SPEAKER_03: You guys see this?
SPEAKER_03: You don't deal with it, it could turn on you.
SPEAKER_03: The other thing that can happen if you don't deal with your anger, and at least this is more common for me, is it will leak out sideways.
SPEAKER_03: And I imagine many of you have experienced this.
SPEAKER_03: Despite your best attempt to control your anger, it still asserts itself, anyways.
SPEAKER_03: So you pretend you're not angry, but then you make a really sarcastic comment to your spouse that is a little cutting, right?
SPEAKER_03: Oops.
SPEAKER_03: Or you're in your workplace and you do something super passive-aggressive while pretending you're not upset, right?
SPEAKER_03: Like when you're angry and you don't acknowledge it, usually you can't contain it.
SPEAKER_03: It leaks out anyways.
SPEAKER_03: So it's really important.
SPEAKER_03: And oftentimes when it leaks out, it does so much more damage than if we just acknowledge it, face it, and figure out how to deal with it.
SPEAKER_03: So this is the first step.
SPEAKER_03: You've got to detect or learn to notice when you're angry.
SPEAKER_03: Secondly, is to dig into why it's there.
SPEAKER_03: Remember that anger is not a sin, it's a signal.
SPEAKER_03: It's a sign that something in your life is under threat, or at least perceived threat.
SPEAKER_03: And so you've got to ask the question: well, what is this anger trying to tell me?
SPEAKER_03: Why is it there?
SPEAKER_03: What is the threat?
SPEAKER_03: What is the perceived danger?
SPEAKER_03: And I want to just name your posture at this step, it's really important.
SPEAKER_03: It's one of compassionate curiosity.
SPEAKER_03: So do not judge your anger.
SPEAKER_03: Don't try to evaluate it right away, just observe it.
SPEAKER_03: Be gentle with yourself.
SPEAKER_03: If you judge your anger before asking why, or even giving yourself permission to ask why, you're not going to understand it.
SPEAKER_03: So be kind to yourself at this step.
SPEAKER_03: What's this anger telling me about?
SPEAKER_03: What's it alerting me to?
SPEAKER_03: Couple things to notice when you're doing this step.
SPEAKER_03: One is that anger is often a secondary emotion.
SPEAKER_03: It often shows up first because it shows up fast, but there's often an other, more primary emotion underneath it.
SPEAKER_03: So what I the way I like to think about it is that other emotions can often wear a mask of anger.
SPEAKER_03: You experience it as anger, but as you examine it, there's another emotion underneath it that's more primary.
SPEAKER_03: I'll give you an example of this in my own life, okay?
SPEAKER_03: Um, I often get really angry when something breaks in our home.
SPEAKER_03: Which, if you own a home, you know that's gonna happen, right?
SPEAKER_03: Um, and for a long time, I just get really angry at the person who broke it, whether it's me or one of my kids or Josie or whatever.
SPEAKER_03: And then eventually I began to ask a question like, why do I get so angry when something breaks?
SPEAKER_03: And I realized it's not anger at all.
SPEAKER_03: It's actually shame and fear.
SPEAKER_03: Um, shame because I I didn't grow up in a family where um my dad fixed a lot of things, so I didn't learn how to do all that.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know how to fix anything.
SPEAKER_03: So when something breaks, I get all eight of my tools out, half of which are screwdrivers.
SPEAKER_03: I get on YouTube and I give it a go, and usually I make it worse.
SPEAKER_03: And I feel so much shame about that because I don't know how to do things.
SPEAKER_03: And then when I can't fix it, I'm like, oh, we have to call someone, fear kicks in because I'm like, oh, how much is this gonna cost?
SPEAKER_03: Like, what is this gonna do to our finances?
SPEAKER_03: And so getting just just simply mad at the person who broke it, whether it's me or someone else, isn't really getting at the root of the problem.
SPEAKER_03: You see?
SPEAKER_03: Fear and shame are wearing a mask of anger, but you have to unmask it in order to get at what's really going on.
SPEAKER_03: The other thing to remember is this digging into why, asking why, reveals the legitimacy of your anger.
SPEAKER_03: Remember, I distinguished between righteous or unrighteous, sound versus unsound, legitimate or illegitimate anger.
SPEAKER_03: When you ask why I am angry, oftentimes that will expose whether your anger is legitimate or not.
SPEAKER_03: So, like yelling at the barista because she misspelled your name.
SPEAKER_03: Something that I witnessed recently is not legitimate anger.
SPEAKER_03: The line at the grocery store taking a little bit too long.
SPEAKER_03: You're getting mad because you're being slightly inconvenienced is not legitimate anger.
SPEAKER_03: But perhaps some of the things you witnessed this week is.
SPEAKER_03: You tracking?
SPEAKER_03: Like there are legitimate reasons to be upset.
SPEAKER_03: And you see Jesus distinguishing between these two.
SPEAKER_03: Most of the time Jesus expresses anger, you guys, in the New Testament, he exercises anger on behalf of others rather than himself.
SPEAKER_03: He saves his anger to intercede for the vulnerable people around him.
SPEAKER_03: So you gotta ask, why is my anger there?
SPEAKER_03: And that will expose whether it's legitimate or illegitimate.
SPEAKER_03: And then the final step is to discern what God has to say about it.
SPEAKER_03: Now, now notice I'm not just bringing God into this at this stage.
SPEAKER_03: He's part of the first two steps too.
SPEAKER_03: You're noticing it, you're asking why it's there.
SPEAKER_03: But now you're getting more explicit.
SPEAKER_03: You're going, God, okay, what do you want me to do?
SPEAKER_03: How do you want to speak to my anger?
SPEAKER_03: How do you want me to channel it?
SPEAKER_03: And I'll just tell you, I can't tell you what God is gonna say because God is God and I'm not.
SPEAKER_03: So this is where it can go in a number of different directions.
SPEAKER_03: But I'll just kind of name this.
SPEAKER_03: If you're sitting on some illegitimate anger, usually that's gonna revolve, at least in my experience, some sort of repentance.
SPEAKER_03: And if you've acted on that anger, then some sort of relational repair.
SPEAKER_03: If it's legitimate anger, that doesn't mean you just go, you know, AWOL.
SPEAKER_03: So many people use their anger to justify whatever they do next.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_03: You may not have to do anything, you just notice it.
SPEAKER_03: It may be that you have to have a hard conversation or set a boundary or whatever, but it never, ever justifies violating the ultimate law of love.
SPEAKER_03: Of loving like Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Yes?
SPEAKER_03: However, you express your anger just like Jesus, it ultimately needs to be fueling the embodiment of Christ-like love.
SPEAKER_03: So you detect it, you notice it, you dig into it.
SPEAKER_03: Why is it there?
SPEAKER_03: And then you submit it to God.
SPEAKER_03: God, how do you want me to channel this anger?
SPEAKER_03: Do I turn from it or do I step into something you're inviting me to do?
SPEAKER_03: Here's some action steps for you this week.
SPEAKER_03: I encourage you to create some space to reflect and pray.
SPEAKER_03: Um, these are some questions I came up with.
SPEAKER_03: What was modeled for you in your first formation with anger?
SPEAKER_03: Were you given permission to experience it or not?
SPEAKER_03: How did you notice authority figures relating to their anger?
SPEAKER_03: What impact did that have on you?
SPEAKER_03: That kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_03: How do you typically relate to your anger?
SPEAKER_03: Are you more inclined to suppress it or erupt with it?
SPEAKER_03: Or maybe some combination.
SPEAKER_03: And what are the differences?
SPEAKER_03: When are you more likely to suppress it?
SPEAKER_03: When are you more likely to erupt?
SPEAKER_03: Where are you angry?
SPEAKER_03: At God, at yourself, or others?
SPEAKER_03: Is there any unresolved anger in your life?
SPEAKER_03: And now might be a good time to kind of look at that.
SPEAKER_03: Alright, so here's your practice for this week.
SPEAKER_03: Again, you got to do something.
SPEAKER_03: So take something you're angry about and work these steps.
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna detect it, notice your anger, and decide to deal with it.
SPEAKER_03: You're gonna dig into it, assume that posture of compassionate curiosity.
SPEAKER_03: Why is it there?
SPEAKER_03: Why am I angry?
SPEAKER_03: And then you're gonna bring it into God's presence.
SPEAKER_03: How does God want to speak to and transform my anger or channel it?
SPEAKER_03: And if you want to go an extra step, you could actually work these steps in the form of a lament.
SPEAKER_03: Write your own lament.
SPEAKER_03: Just like we see in the Psalms.
SPEAKER_03: Making sense?
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_03: Uh just a reminder: it's coffee hour today, so instead of just walking to the parking lot, uh, grab some coffee, hang out for a little bit.
SPEAKER_03: We want to be going deeper into community, getting to know new people, welcoming people into our community as we do visitors and that kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_03: So uh if you would stand, I'd love to close us in prayer.
SPEAKER_03: God, I just know I'm so grateful.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, we are so grateful that you don't ask us to pretend with you, uh to fake it till we make it, but you invite us to be totally honest and real with you, even if our realness is a little bit ugly.
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you invite us to be honest with our anger.
SPEAKER_03: Teach us how to detect our anger, uh, to get curious about it, and then bring it right into your presence, submitting it to you so that you can speak to it, transform it, heal it, and channel it in ways that are redemptive in the world.
SPEAKER_03: Be patient with us.
SPEAKER_03: Give us your grace and your power to do this well.
SPEAKER_03: We ask it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Go in peace.