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Welcome to Bethany, especially if you are a guest today. Could I ask you to sign the attendance pad and pass it on to your neighbor and as it comes your way especially notice if someone is sitting in your row that you do not know. Or did not know their name and be sure to introduce yourself.
Also look at the ministry opportunities that are placed in the pads. You have the opportunity to be of service to the children and parents of our church by serving in the nursery during worship in the upcoming weeks. I know you want to be of service.
I have been using some summer blockbuster movies at the theme for my messages and today is: Hulk.
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Play Video Trailer
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Here’s how the Hulk Story goes: Research scientist Bruce Banner has a problem. He has a forgotten and painful past, which comes to light during an experiment gone awry. During an accidental explosion, Bruce’s heroic impulse saves a life, but exposes his body to a deadly dose of gamma radiation. Remarkable, he survives, but he begins to feel something different within him. It’s a massive creature known as the Hulk, which begins to make sporadic appearances when Banner gets angry. The unleashed Hulk cut a path of destruction that terrified the public and engaged the military against him. But, how can the Hulk be stopped?
As Bruce Banner says, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I’m becoming. But I know one thing for sure - you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
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All of us have experienced inner anger, hostility and rage. It is part of the human condition. The Hulk’s incredible popularity is due to the amazing connection to the human dilemma that we all experience.
And where does that inner anger and hostility most often exhibit itself? In your relationships.
In any relationship that you have, conflict is inevitable. You’re going to have conflict because human beings disagree. That Hulk with in us leads to dissension. Conflict in your home is inevitable but combat is not. You must learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. You’ve got to learn how to argue without assassinating.
In every relationship, when you have a conflict, you will either have a breakdown or a breakthrough. There is opportunity to a breakthrough to a new level of maturity and intimacy and fellowship. That did in the end happen in the Hulk. The key is how you handle your anger.
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The Bible says in Proverbs 11:29 that mishandled anger can cause enormous damage in relationships. (Living Bible) "The fool who provokes his family to anger and resentment will finally have nothing left.”
What does the Bible say about how to handle your anger? How can you lose your temper for good so that you don’t have to turn into a monster like the Hulk.
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HOW CAN I LOSE MY TEMPER FOR GOOD? I want to share with you some ideas I got from some reading of Rick Warren on dealing with anger.
A. I MUST ADMIT MY ANGER.
I need to stop denying it, stop pretending it’s not there. When I’m angry I just need to say, "I’m angry"
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Ephesians 4:25-26:
"Stop lying to each other; tell the truth. When we lie to each other we are hurting ourselves. If you are angry, don’t sin by nursing your grudge."
"Don’t sin by nursing your grudge". There is a constructive way to get angry and there is a destructive way to get angry.
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Anger is not sin. God gets angry. 375 times in the Old Testament it says God got angry. Jesus got angry—remember how he cleared the temple?. It is not a sin to get angry. In fact, if you never get angry in a relationship it means you’re not in touch with reality. There are some things you ought to get angry about. Sometimes anger means "I care!" Sometimes anger is an expression of love. Sometimes anger says, "I’m not going to stand by and watch you waste your life."
When you have the idea that a Christian should never get angry that is not only unreasonable, it’s unbiblical because even God gets angry. It’s not how you get angry it’s what you do with your anger that makes it a sin or not. He says learn to get angry without sinning.
The writer of the Ephesians passage says, "stop lying to each other". In other words, it’s wrong to deny it when you’re angry. You say to someone, "You’re angry." "No, I’m not!" "Yes, you are." "No! I’m not angry!" "I can tell you’re angry!" "I’m not angry!"
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The Bible says that anger isn’t necessarily a sin, but lying about it is. When you’re angry and you won’t admit it, now you’re sinning. The starting point is to admit my anger. I can’t work on it until I admit it.
Research suggests that one of the roots of depression is anger. Depression is often frozen rage. It is angry feelings stuffed down, taking itself out on my body in the form of depression. Some of you who are depressed this morning should stop saying to yourself, "Why am I depressed?" and say, "What am I angry about?" Because that’s the real issue. What am I angry about and I don’t want to admit? What am I swallowing in anger that’s causing me to be depressed. The issue is not how to eliminate anger from your relationships but how to express it appropriately.
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So How do you lose your temper for good? You admit it—that’s the first step.
Say to your neighbor ADMIT YOUR ANGER!
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Next--
B. I MUST UNDERSTAND MY ANGER.
There are different kinds of ways of expressing anger. There is a way I call the underhander. The underhander is the person who will throw darts at you, sarcastic little jibes at you. When you draw back they’ll say, "Just kidding!" They’re slippery and really hard to pin down because they don’t like to admit that what they’re doing is being angry.
Then there are the people who are the martyrs. Every time something happens they’ll say, "You’re right. It’s my fault. It’s always my fault. It’s me!"
Then there are the people who take their anger and they will not admit it for anything. But what happens is they take it out on their bodies. And their bodies have all kinds of reactions to at least 4 or 5 different specific illnesses that could be related to swallowing your anger.
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Proverbs 19:11 "A man’s wisdom givers him patience"
Proverbs 14:39 "A patient man has great understanding but a quick tempered man displays his folly."
The point of this is to begin to look at yourself and ask questions like, "Why am I angry? Why does this situation upset me so much?"
Anger is a warning light in our lives that lets us know that there’s something very deep that’s causing us to be upset. We get irritated over inconsequential things. But when you get really angry that’s a clue to you that you need to stop and ask yourself, Why? and What’s so upsetting in this? Because it’s touching a life deep issue in your heart.
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Arguments rarely start with the real issue. In your relationships most arguments begin over surface issues. Really dumb, dumb things!
One woman shares her experience in her marriage in this way: “One of our most famous arguments was over soap and what kind of soap I bought for our house. I thought Dial soap was perfectly fine and I saw no reason why I shouldn’t buy that every season for all of our fifty thousand years of life. What’s the problem with that? My husband decided that was not OK and I needed to buy different varieties of soap. Somehow this called into question my skills as Susie Homemaker and I got very, very angry about this. So we had this gigantic argument over soap. So to please him, since he liked variety, I went out and bought him every kind of soap that they make. And I put them in a big box and he can shower with any he wants to and be happy with variety.
But that was not the real issue. The kind of soap was only the surface issue. We had to go beneath those issues to see what it was that was really causing us to be angry. We had to hang in there.”
You’ve probably had silly arguments over how to squeeze the toothpaste, which way to hang the toilet tissue on the roller, how to park the car in the driveway or countless others. But those are only surface issues. How do you get to the deeper meaning of an argument?
Maybe this will help—I’m going to suggest five basic root causes for the anger that we experience in relationships.
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1. You get angry when you feel unaccepted. When someone in the family feels rejected you for who are, when you feel like you’re compared to other people, when people in your family maybe make fun of you or criticize you, you get angry. I hope you will never make the mistake of comparing your spouse to someone else. That is so devastating to feel like your husband or wife is holding you up against someone else and asking why you can’t be like that person. I hope you never make the mistake of comparing your children to somebody else’s children. It’s devastating to a child. To them that’s rejection. It makes he or she angry.
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2. You get angry when you feel unappreciated. When other people in your family take you for granted. When they don’t value your effort or notice the work that you’ve done. When you feel like everything else is more important to others than you are, you get angry. Many women may experience anger because they perceive that they are at the bottom of the pile of their husband’s attention. His work, job, hobbies, friends, extra-activities, everything comes before his wife. But there are also men and children who get angry about that who feel like their wives or their mothers give everybody else attention and then when it comes to them, have nothing left. When you feel unappreciated you get angry.
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3. You get angry when you feel unsupported. When you perceive that the people in your family are working against you instead of with you, when they don’t share their load of responsibilities.
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4. You get angry when you feel unprotected, when the situations in your life seems out of control you feel like other people don’t care about your needs, when you feel vulnerable, that makes you feel unprotected and you usually get angry.
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5. You become angry when you feel uncertain. If you don’t feel like you can trust another person or you don’t know that the other people in your family are telling you the truth.
The bottom line: the root of most of your and my anger is about hurt, frustration or fear. That’s usually beneath the surface of every kind of angry situation that comes up.
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If you say to your spouse, "You make me so mad!" he or she is just going to get defensive. But if I turn to her and say, "That hurt me. I’m afraid when you talk like that. I’m so frustrated with this situation in our relationship." Then you can begin to talk. As long as I’m putting her on the defensive by telling her how mad she makes me, we are not going to get to the root of the matter.
You need to teach this to your children as well. You have to teach children how to express their feelings in positive ways. You have to tell your children to say to their brothers or sister, instead of "You make me mad!" or "I hate you!" or "Why did you do that?" instead to say "I feel hurt" or "I’m frustrated" or "I’m afraid".
You may have to professional help with this to be able to learn to express your fears and frustrations to either your husband or your children, "I’m afraid. I’m afraid of this situation. I’m afraid of your feelings. I’m afraid of my feelings. I’m scared. What you’ve said or what you’ve done has hurt me."
It will never happen, you will never reach those breakthroughs until one of you has the courage to actually begin talking about the deep inner things that are in your heart.
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Say to your neighbor UNDERSTAND YOUR ANGER!
What’s the next step of how to lose your temper for good?
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C. DEAL IMMEDIATELY WITH MY ANGER.
Don’t procrastinate dealing with it. Don’t delay it. Read this verse out loud with me.
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Ephesians 4:26-27 "Never let the sun set on your anger or else you will give the devil a foothold."
The Bible says don’t go to bed with unresolved anger. Why?
Job 18:4 says "You are only hurting yourself with your anger."
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In a book titled Make Anger Your Ally by Neil Warren, he describes anger as a physical state of readiness. It’s a physical state of readiness that prepares us to act. It’s good that God has given us anger. Warren explains the physiological changes that happen when we get angry is more adrenalin starts coursing through our bodies, more sugar is released, your heart begins to beat faster, your blood pressure rises, the pupils of your eyes dilate and widen and you become in this highly alert stage.
This is good because if God had not given us anger we would be totally vulnerable in this world. We would not be prepared to act to protect ourselves. You wouldn’t be able to get yourself out of the way of an oncoming car if you didn’t have those physical reactions going on inside of you. Anger prepares us and gives us power to act.
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The problem is when we use that very powerful emotion in the wrong way. Then it becomes dangerous. Have you ever noticed the difference between "anger" and "danger" -- it’s just the letter "d" in the front. Anger expressed inappropriately is dangerous. Anger expressed inappropriately can completely destroy lives, can destroy jobs, can destroy relationships.
It’s common knowledge that most of the murders that are committed in our country every year are not committed by strangers. Most of the murders are committed by family members, relatives, friends, acquaintances who, for one tiny moment, allowed that powerful emotion to be out of control.
I told you about all those different ways of expressing anger: the person who’s a martyr, the person who explodes, the person who swallows it, the person who’s real slippery or underhanded and you can’t pin down. You have reacted that way to anger most of your life. You’ve acted that way to anger so long that right now it seems automatic. When you get angry you automatically respond in that certain way now. So much so that if somebody says, you really need to change that, you say, "Well, that’s just me. That’s the way I am. I’ve always been that way." That’s not totally accurate.
To a large extent, you have learned your expression of anger in your family. You learned it as a young child in your family by watching either parents, brothers or sisters, a friend or relative -- somebody that you looked up to. You patterned yourself after them and the way that they expressed anger.
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The good news about that is that because it is partially learned behavior, you can unlearn a large part of your response pattern to anger. No matter what age you are, you can unlearn that destructive pattern of expressing your anger. And the sooner the better.
Because anger is a state of physical readiness, because your body is in this hyped up position, hyped up mode of operating, if you stay that way for very long it’s destructive to your physical body. The Bible was so wise when it tells us to deal with each day’s anger as it comes. The Bible knows that for us to stay in that continual state of readiness is destructive.
Unresolved conflict keeps growing. And unexpressed anger becomes bitterness and often turns from that into hate and hostility.
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How to lose your temper for good? The Bible says we’ve got to admit our anger. The Bible says we need to understand our anger. The Bible says we need to deal immediately with our anger.
Say to your neighbor DEAL IMMEDIATELY WITH YOUR ANGER!
THE BIBLE SAYS I NEED TO LEARN
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D. TO CONTROL MY ANGER.
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Proverbs 29:11 "A fool gives full vent to his anger but a wise man keeps himself under control." A mark of wisdom is the ability to control your anger. If you have a hot temper that you can’t control, that means you need to learn wisdom. Wisdom is shown in the ability to control your anger. Wisdom will help you learn to lose your temper for good
How do you do that? The Bible gives us four very practical ways to control our anger.
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1. I must realize the cost.
Proverbs 29:22 "A hot tempered man starts fights and gets into all kinds of trouble."
Have you had your anger into get you into all kinds of trouble? "People with hot tempers do foolish things." Anybody want to give a testimony?
I read this about a guy killed his car because he got so angry at it. He ran it into a snow bank and couldn’t get it out so he got out a tire iron and smashed all the windows. Took a pistol and shot all four tires, reloaded, opened the hood and shot the engine. The police called it autocide. We do really stupid things when we lose our temper.
The Bible says realize the cost before you lose that cool. Realize what you’re loosing. The first verse said, "The fool that provokes his family to anger and resentment will finally have nothing left." More relationships are destroyed from anger than anything else. Realize the cost.
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2. Reflect before reacting.
Stop and think before you speak. Put your mind in gear before you put your mouth in gear.
James says this, 1:19 "Be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry." There are three things to do in that verse. If you do the first two, the third one is automatic. If you’re quick to listen, and you are slow to speak, you will be slow to get angry. The problem is, we jump the gun. We jump to conclusions. We’re in a hurry and we just let it out. We say things that we later regret. The Bible says reflect before reacting. Think about what you’re going to say before you get into trouble.
The New English Bible says, "A stupid man gives free rein to his anger but a wise man waits and lets it grow cool." Circle "lets it grow cool". The quickest way to cut your own throat is with your own sharp tongue. Just be very careful. Think before you speak.
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3. Release my anger appropriately.
I need to learn how to release my anger appropriately. Ephesians 4:29 is a very important verse. "Do not use harmful words in talking. Use only helpful words, the kind that build up and provide what is needed." Use words that build up not tear down. Be helpful, not harmful. It’s all in how you say it and what you say on whether it’s going to be appropriate or inappropriate
Suggestions:
1) Be brief. If you have the ability to hang for 20 minutes without coming up for air, it might not be getting through. Learn to state your case without having to go on and on...
2) Be specific. Instead of making general condemnations like "You’re so messy! You’re just a pigpen!" be specific "Would you mind picking up your dirty underwear in the middle of the living room floor?" "...not leaving your dirty socks on the coat hangers and door knobs." Get specific.
3) Be humble. Be humble or you’ll stumble. Proverbs 13:10 "Only by pride comes contention." Pride is at the root of every argument. It’s ego against ego bouncing together. "Only by pride comes contention." When you’re prideful in an argument you’re prolonging the argument. When you’re humble you’re reducing the amount of time needed and you’re also getting to the solution quicker.
The way you do that is by making "I" statements rather than "you" statements. You statements are always accusatory. "You always..." "You never..." I statements are "this is the way I feel." If you want to be humble, use "I" statements not "you" statements.
Illustration: Let’s say that a husband is repeatedly late for supper. He seems totally indifferent about punctuality and he permits any little thing to delay him. When he arrives late for the fourth day in a role, his wife says in an accusing tone, "You’re late again! Look at this supper. It’s cold. I went to a lot of hard work and you spoiled it all. You spoiled it all!" That’s an attack. How do you think he’s going to react? "Hey, you’re right. I’m a jerk!" No. It’s human nature to defend yourself when under attack. The most likely response is, he’s going to justify his lateness. He is probably going to attack her back for being inconsiderate and not understanding of why he couldn’t get home on time. He may even suggest that she puts too much emphasis on the dinner.
Here’s an alternative. At the right time the wife could say, "When I prepare a nice supper and it’s left cold, I feel unappreciated. I know you must have a good reason for being late, but I just feel like my effort is unimportant." There is no "you" statements there. It’s all "I" statements -- the way "I feel". What if he brushes off her feelings? Now she’s got another opportunity and she might say something like this: "Honey, I tried to tell you that being late makes me feel unappreciated and unimportant. When my feelings about that are just brushed aside as unimportant that makes me feel even more unimportant." Got him! He’s got no excuse now. She’s just reporting to him what happened, without being accusatory.
In addition it rarely helps to condemn. Those "you" statements. Those absolutes. "You always....", "You never...", "You must...", "You should be ashamed of yourself." You never change people by condemning them. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work on parents, children, husband/wife, employees. Condemning never motivates anybody to change. That’s why I don’t condemn you. Because I’m interested in changing you. I could get up here every week and condemn you. I could do a new series: Why You’re a Jerk. Be sure and invite your friends. All it would do is make you defensive. It doesn’t work. We don’t change from condemnation. We change when people show us how we can change. When somebody says to me, "You’re lousy. You’re no good. Here’s what you’re bad at." I tend to say, "You’re right" and reinforce what they’ve labeled me to be. It doesn’t make me change. It just makes me get stuck in where I am. Don’t tell it like it is, tell it like it could be.
But when somebody says, "Here’s what you could become. I see potential in you. With Jesus Christ in your life, here’s what you could become. You could be better at .... " that motivates me to change. Jesus said, "I didn’t come to condemn the world. I came to save it." If you want to be like Jesus, eliminate condemnation from your vocabulary.
Jesus said, "I came to save the world not to condemn it."
So you don’t change people, you don’t change anybody by putting them down. You change them by showing them a better way. Never condemn.
And watch out for what I call the challenge, ie, offering threats in your marriage or other relationships. It’s like you throw down the gauntlet. "Just try that and see what happens." That doesn’t work either. Remember when you were a kid and your parents used to say to you, "I don’t want to hear a peep out of you." And you wanted to go "Peep!" Only I was such a rebel when my dad said, "I don’t want to hear a peep out of you" I’d say, "Poop!"
Typically in marital relationships people challenge by using three threats: sex, money, divorce.
What does challenging with threats accomplish?
No relationship is perfect. You can have conflict. Conflict is inevitable, but combat is not inevitable. You can disagree without being disagreeable. You can argue without assassinating.
Some of you have tried all these things. You say, "I just can’t change. I can’t get control of my anger. I just can’t stop losing my temper." That’s because it takes more than willpower.
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4. I must rely on Christ’s help.
Romans 15:5 "May God who gives patience help you to live in complete harmony with each other, each with the attitude of Christ toward the others.”
Conflict, in many ways, is like childbirth. There’s enormous pain and it almost feels like you’re going to die. But if you’ll hang in there, you’ll give birth to a new level of understanding, a deeper relationship, a more satisfying level of commitment and intimacy in your relationship. If you will hang in there and walk through that tunnel. The way to intimacy is through the tunnel of conflict. You get to the truth and quit living at the superficial level. You admit your fears and your frustrations and your hurts.
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Have you ever considered this, part of the reason for your anger is that you are expecting other people to meet needs that God wants to meet in your life. You’re looking to other people to fill a hole, an emptiness that only spiritual growth and maturity can fill. There is no one person in the world that was ever meant to meet all your needs. Because every human being is imperfect. There are some needs in your life that only Jesus Christ can meet.
So who do you want to be your model for managing anger—The Hulk or Jesus Christ?
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Prayer:
Finding Freedom From The Hulk Within!Sin separates you from others and from God. Bruce Banner certainly discovered this to be true when his inner monster made him a very lonely person.In Romans 3:25 we read: “For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God’s anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us.”God’s Incredible Promise:Galatians 5:22-24 promises that “when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control... Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. A Simple Prayer to Overcome the Green Guy in All of Us:Heavenly Father, I put my trust in Jesus, who sacrificed his life for me. Please forgive my sins that have separated me from you. I accept Jesus as the leader and savior of my life. I ask that your Holy Spirit would fill me with love, joy and peace, helping me overcome my inner sinful nature. Thank you for your promise of eternal life with you Cont’d on next page, amen
Thank You, Father, that Your love is greater than any other problem -- fear or anger. Thank You, that when we’re filled with Your love, it changes us. We pray this in Your name. Amen.
Discuss commitments—response tab
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Next week I am beginning a series of messages on “Cross Training”. —the essential exercises for the people of God at Bethany in order to achieve spiritual health and maturity .
Next Sunday I will discuss training patterns and practices that help to take you deeper into knowing and worshiping God, understanding and applying God’s word, and seeing Jesus live his life through you.
Be here and invite your friends too.
