Podcast-Feed29th November 2009 - Gill Harper - How To Deal With Anger
Gill gives practical steps for dealing with anger using the word of God, especially Ephesians 4:26, as our guide. During her talk, Gill read from Corrie ten Boom’s ‘Tramp For The Lord’ where Corrie recalls meeting one of the former Camp guards and the internal struggle she had with forgiving him. Dave gives a short introduction and some closing remarks.
Please note that, following the message, there is a short time of worship and then Dave leads the church through the forgiveness prayer from the Freedom In Christ course. The prayer has two parts with a time of slience between each part. Please prayerfully consider who you need to forgive and what you need to forgive them of (pinning the sin on the sinner). The first part of the prayer outlines the sin and the second part of the prayer brings freedom.
GILL’S NOTES
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Anger/Forgivness
Aim – to help people appropriate the Word of God, to apply it and so change their lives. So often we live in a muddle of feelings, of reactions to events, lurching from one to another. My aim is to help us establish clear principles and understand how to use the word of God as a tool, a double edged sword.
Eph 4. 26 “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 foothold”
Anger is not sin, anger itself is an emotion. God created emotions, he is an emotional God, Jesus wept at the death of Lazurus, he weeps with us in our pain, the Holy Spirit can be grieved by us, Jesus got angry in the temple.
It’s what we do with the anger than can be sinful – kick the cat, shout at the kids, snap at our partner, storm off with the duvet ……...
We can feed it, justify it, build up a case and allow bitterness, rage and malice to develop.
Eph 4. 31 “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice”. How we handle our anger is key to whether or not we allow bitterness and malice to get a hold in us and so give the devil a foothold.
It is important to identify what is causing us to feel angry – take time out
Different times anger can arise.
1. Indignation at unrighteousness and injustice. This can prompt us to act for change and improvement. (Jesus in the temple)
2. Anger as an expression of pain when someone does something wrong towards us personally, and so offends our personal sense of what is right. We also need to act when this happens but in a totally different way.
It is in this latter situation that danger lurks because if we feed our own personal sense of grievance we ‘give the devil a foothold’, we can grow bitter, we can gossip and slander others. Such anger will spill over into and effect those we most love. The effects of anger are damaging to those we live with, and also to ourselves.
Anger will also effect our relationship with God and so effect any gifts he may have given us to use for his glory. It’s hard to be a blessing to people when we’re living in anger with unresolved issues. We’re being doubly robbed, once by the act, and again by the ongoing pain and the lack of fulfilment in our own lives.
So what do we do?
The only effective way to deal with personal anger is to forgive, to forgive and to forgive again …….. and so set ourselves free.
Forgiveness is a mandate for every one of us – it’s the bedrock of the Christian faith. We have been forgiven everything through Jesus and he tells us to go and do likewise. (Read the story Jesus tells of the servant in debt, Matt 18.21)
There will always be sinful people in the world and in the church for as long as it is called today. Human nature is sinful and this means we are able to do and say wrong things. It may not even be our intention to cause hurt. We can act out of self defence when we’re feeling accused, we can attack when we’re feeling hurt and let down by others, or even betrayed. Sin is normal, we have to get used to it and find a way of living life without it beating us down. Sometimes we chose to hang on to anger to protect ourselves from being hurt again
You may think what has happened to you is just too awful and too wrong – no way belittle the pain some have had to endure. You may not even feel angry, you just feel numb. (Corrie Ten Boom story)
What is forgiveness and how do we do it?
1. Forgiveness is not a feeling. Don’t be deceived into thinking you can’t because of strength of feeling, or it hasn’t worked because of ongoing feeling. You may chose to forgive and still feel awful about what happened, but your feelings will change and catch up with time, with a growing sense of freedom.
2. Forgiveness is not pushing stuff under the carpet, trying to forget what has happened and refusing to talk about it – that just produces a bumpy carpet with no-go areas that you and others can’t walk over for fear of tripping
3. Forgiveness is not excusing or overlooking sin. If we do so we are effectively blaming ourselves – blame has to go somewhere, so we take it into ourselves leading to a crushed and oppressed spirit or self rejection.
4. Forgiveness is giving up the right to be judge and handing that responsibility over to God. That is not to condone or minimise sin but rather facing it fair and square. It’s letting someone off your hook because as long as you refuse to forgive someone you are still hooked to that person and chained to your past God will deal with that person justly and fairly – he is judge of all.
5. Forgiveness is a decision and an action, it’s a case or facing very specifically what has been done, of pinning the sin on the sinner and making a deliberate choice to forgive that person for that specific action. Best material is the Freedom in Christ teaching and prayer.
6. Forgiveness is something that has to be frequently practised, daily, even hourly when you are first trying to break the hold of a sin against you.
When asked ‘How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me’ Jesus replied 70×7. In other words, you don’t keep count, you just keep doing it. It becomes a lifestyle.
N.B. Transference
It is possible for a current issue to tap into a previous hurt. We may find ourselves reacting to someone’s sinful behaviour in a way that seems out of proportion, or we may find ourselves wanting to run, not wanting to face the pain, or finding ourselves growing more and more angry. When a current incident is tapping into a much bigger, unresolved issue from the past, it’s called transference, and what we find ourselves doing is transferring the unresolved hurt form the past on to the present situation. It all becomes very muddled in our hearts and minds. What we need to do is break it down, see what is going on, divide it into manageable chunks and deal with it piece by piece.
What are you going to do
John Wimber used to say, ’Life makes us bitter or better’ The choice is ours.
Either stay in a place of blame and offence, maybe in time becoming bitter, even stooping to the depths of malice …..
Or pray to forgive that person or group of people for what they’ve done, let yourself off their hook, and move on. Set yourself free. Until you let go of your anger and hatred the person is still hurting you.
GILL’S QUESTIONS
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Summary:-
Anger and forgivenss are on going life issues. We have to train ourselves to deal with anger by
i) identifying the root
ii) forgiving the specific person for the specific sin
Questions for discussion
1. What sort of things make you angry?
2. How easily and quickly do you find you can forgive?
3. Is there any way we can help one another do this? e.g. share testimony of how God healed our pain through forgiveness; encourage a ‘Freeedom appointment’.
James 5.16 says ‘Confess your sins to one another that you may be healed’ ........... forgiveness is the beginning of emotional healing.
4. Do you have a trestimony you would like to share following Sunday’s prayer?
And pray for breakthroughs. We want to set prisoners free and empower the people of God for works of service so the Kingdom of God advances.
Listen now! (0:55min / 14MB)