We started off by making the point that everyone deals with anger. No one is immune from it. Why? Because we are made in the image of God, and God gets angry. His anger is always about the right things, and His displays of it are always appropriate for the situation. Anger is so difficult to deal with because it is one of those human experiences that can be like God and yet so different from Him. Anger done right can be a powerfully redemptive experience that reflects the nature and face of God. But anger done wrong is a powerfully destructive experience that reflects the nature and face of Satan.
Proverbs 14:29. Notice it does not say that the persons without anger has great understanding, but the person who is slow to anger. Scripture never tells us that the goal is to be without anger. BB Warfield: “It would be
impossible for a moral being to stand in the presence of perceived wrong
indifferent and unmoved. " Best example of someone who gets angry but does not sin is Jesus.
So what is your definition of anger? How you define it says a lot about you and how you deal with it. Most people in our society describe it as a force or something in us that blows up because of the people and situations that provoke us. We need to get in touch with it and let it out. But if this is true it leaves us without hope. If anger is caused by people and situations around me which cause this volcano eruption displeasure, then it is completely beyond my control.
Proverbs 16:32 and 19:11 make it clear that you can control your anger. You do it at work or you get fired. Here is my definition of anger: Anger is an active response of the heart to something I am against,
that displeases me, that matters, and is wrong.
Let's look at destructive anger. The person with destructive anger lives in a very small
world. All they see is increasingly
about themselves. The kingdom of me is all that exists. The world becomes the size of my own self-interest.
There are three ways that the practice of anger goes band:
1. We reach when we shouldn't.
2. We have legitimate anger, it is rightly aroused, but is wrongly expressed.
3. Absent anger, we don't react when we should, you are complacent, indifferent.
There are three characteristics of constructive or redemptive anger:
1. It reacts against actual sin.
2. It focuses on God and not myself. It is concern with God's kingdom, rights, and concerns, not my kingdom, my rights and my concerns.
3. It is always accompanied by other godly qualities and expresses itself in godly ways, Ephesians 4:28-30.
David Powlisons 7 Questions to evaluate your anger:
1. Do you get angry about the right things?
2. Do you express your anger in the right way?
3. How long does your anger last?
4. How controlled is your anger?
5. What motivates your anger?
6. Is your anger "primed and ready" to respond to another person's habitual sins?
7. What is the effect of your anger?
How do we move from destructive anger to redemptive, constructive anger? Repentance and faith. Anger management is not enough because it doesn't go deep enough to deal with the source of my anger which is my heart.
Proverbs 4:20, Mark 7:20-23, James 4:1-2.
Repentance is when you humble yourself, admit you have a problem with anger, and confess your sin to God. And then you turn to Him in faith and this becomes a matter of your worship. Who are you worshipping, you or God. James 3:9-10. Here you see anger and worship in the same verse!
Notice how the same mouth expresses worship to God and curses
other people. And James says it is not
to be this way.
Changing the content of the things we worship is the one hope for
overcoming anger. Earlier I said that
the angry person lives as if the kingdom of me is all that exists. The world becomes the size of my own self
interest. The second step to overcoming destructive anger is to have a bigger
vision than your irritants, seeing that you are on a bigger stage. Believing that it is someone else’s world and
someone else’s kingdom is the one thing which can begin to re-align your whole life when it comes to anger. Worships calls us into the bigger world-view
in which our struggle with anger finds its only true resolution.
You see this in Psalm 73 with a person who starts out very angry and bitter at those he feels are getting away with sin. Look at how he describes himself in verses 3-5 and then see how he starts to change in verses 16-17. You see him describe his anger in past in verses 21-22 and then how it changed in verses 23-24.
Part of this bigger view involves living with the realization that our
Holy God is angry at sin and as you and I sin daily, we experience His grace every day. We deserve nothing less than Hell, but the
wrath that you and I should receive from Him on a daily basis was directed
toward someone else. It was directed toward Christ on the
cross. God’s wrath was poured out on Him to the point where God the Father turned
His back on His Son. It led Jesus to cry
out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!” And as Christ hung on the cross as an innocent man, enduring the taunts,
the abuse, the pain and the agony, what did He do? Did He cry out for retribution? No! He cried
out “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”
The cross is the ultimate example of redemptive anger being displayed, and provides our ultimate source of hope and help for moving from destructive to constructive anger as we turn to Christ in repentance and faith, and we seek His spirit to work on our self-centered, angry, bitter hearts. Take some time in Psalm 51 as you seek His forgiveness and ask for him to transform your heart of anger.
Stop back later this week as we talk about how to make this transition more of a reality in your life.
Blessings,
Dr. Paul
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