Resilient - It's Emotional, Part 1

Emotions are great, aren't they? I mean, when you're in love, they just take over and everything is awesome. But there's also a dark side to emotions. And we know that anger, depression and anxiety are at an all-time high right now.

How do you master them, so they don't master you? That's today. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is a teaching and discipleship ministry dedicated to helping Christians really live like Christians. I'm Dave Drouie, and in this program, Chip continues our series called Resilient Withstanding the Storms of Life. If you've ever had anger get the better of you, Chip's message is going to shed a lot of light on how to get anger to work for you instead of against you. You know, it might be helpful just before we get started to do a quick download of his message notes for this one. He's got a lot of fill-ins on his outline and all the scripture references he's using. Just go to livingontheedge.org and the broadcasts tab to get those before we jump in.

App listeners, tap fill-in notes and you're set. Well, if you have a Bible handy, open it now to James chapter 1. And let's join Chip now for his message, It's Emotional. Well, I have to tell you, as we begin part two of this series on resilient, it's just a joy to be with you all.

And of course, any time I get to partner with my son and do a series, it brings, you know, great joy to his dad. And just by way of reminder, let's get a definition because I can't think of anything more important right now after what we've been through and what we're going through personally and as a nation. I just can't think of anything more important than this ability to bounce back, to respond to difficult times. By way of definition, resilience is the ability to withstand and recover quickly from difficult conditions.

It's basically that ability to bend and not break. It's bouncing back after a big loss, a financial loss, a job loss, maybe a major disappointment. And the research indicates that resiliency is actually the best future predictor of future success. So one of the greatest things we can do is model resiliency.

We don't get stuck. We go through hard times. We're all going to have difficulties. We're going to have disappointments, pain, losses relationally, financially, vocationally.

I mean, that's life. We're talking now about how do you bounce back? Ryan spoke and told us that one of the dangers to being resilient or literally not being resilient is when we've been through difficult, painful times, we're more vulnerable to temptation than ever. And so he talked about where temptation comes from and how to respond to temptation in James Chapter 1 verses 13 through 18. And now what I want to talk about is how are we going to respond to emotions when we are disappointed, discouraged, when we experience injustice, when we're vulnerable, when we're hurting. We're tempted to take shortcuts. We're tempted to get angry. And one of the things that can happen is if we don't have a handle on our emotions, everything can blow up. When life's not fair, when we have a blocked goal, when we feel like someone's attacking us, or just when the sheer fatigue and stress and difficulty of what's happening in our lives, that's when we've got to be very, very careful. And that's why I want to talk about it's emotional.

And I want to ask you a question. What do you do with those emotions inside of you? What do you do specifically with your anger? What kind of relationship do you have with anger? The fact of the matter is, is anger at its best protects, but anger at its worst poisons.

Your relationship, listen carefully, with anger will either make or break you in the middle of a crisis like we're living with today. And what's exciting to me is God gives us very clear direction about how to respond to our anger. It doesn't surprise me that as James is writing to these Jewish Christians who are literally fleeing persecution, they've left homes, they've left businesses, they're under financial pressure, and they're wondering, what do you do?

How do you walk with Christ in the midst of a world that literally is falling apart? And after he talks about considering it all joy and that God will give you wisdom and having a divine perspective, then he talks about temptation and then he says, my dear brothers, verse 19, and sisters, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which is able to save you.

And the idea of save here is not so much our salvation, but will deliver you. The word of God implanted in you can deliver you from the kind of anger that destroys relationships, that ruins your life, that causes you to make a decision or to say something that for the rest of your life, you will regret and say, oh, why did I do that? Now, lest you think that all anger is bad, let me give you a couple definitions of anger.

The first one is one that I came up with with Dr. Becca Johnson. I actually had the chance many, many years ago as I was teaching through the Book of James, and I hit this little section on anger. And because my background in undergraduate and graduate schools in psychology, and because I pastored for quite a while, I knew this is a big issue. And so rather than just sort of zooming on through, I got to this passage right here, and I kind of pressed the pause button, and I took a little cul-de-sac, and I talked about overcoming emotions that destroy. And Dr. Becca Johnson was a psychologist and an author with InterVarsity. And as she heard the message, she said, you know, that would make a really good book. And she had written a book on good guilt and bad guilt.

And so we teamed up together, and it came, a book called Overcoming Emotions That Destroy. And she really helped me, and here's the definition of anger that we came up with. Anger is neither a good or bad emotion. It is a charged, morally neutral emotional response of protective preservation.

Let me say that again. Anger is neither good nor bad. It is a charged, morally neutral emotional response of protective preservation. In other words, there's times where a small child is being hurt, or there's injustice that causes you to get so angry that you respond and do something good. That's a good side of anger. But it's also an emotionally charged emotion that can bring great destruction. I love Gary Chapman describes it this way. Anger is the emotion that arises whenever we encounter what we perceive to be wrong. The emotional, physiological, and cognitive dimensions of anger leap to the front burner of our experience when we encounter injustice.

I like to think of anger, a word picture, as like a wild stallion. When I was a little boy, I would visit my grandmother. And, you know, grown-ups would go and they would talk in the house. And on this particular occasion, my grandmother said, we're boarding a horse for someone. She had kind of a farm-like area. And then there was a fence, and then it went like straight up this hill. And she says, whatever you do, that is a wild horse.

It was a palomino. It was a huge horse, like 15 hands high. And she says, do not go near the horse.

Well, with my personality, that was like saying, hey, you know, there's really something fun that you're going to get to do. So I get my two sisters to go out there with me, and we feed him a little bit and get him close to the fence. And then I kind of figure out how to get the bridle. And then my sisters pet his nose, and I get in there. I've never put a saddle on an animal in my life, and I figure out how to get that saddle on top of him. And then I cinch it up the best I can.

I mean, I literally am like 11 years old. I have no idea what I'm doing. I can barely lift the saddle. And like a foolish young child, I get on that horse, and my favorite shows back in the day, remember all those westerns, you know, I'm really dating myself here, but the Lone Ranger, Wagon Train, you know, Sugarfoot, some of you are nodding and some of you are going, what is he talking about?

So anyway, I love those cowboy shows. This horse, it's about a 45-degree angle up this hill of about, oh, 300 yards. This horse turns and runs on a dead run straight up that hill. And I'm holding on to, you know, the, I don't know what you're called, the little handle in front and the reins, and I'm going and going and going and going, and I'm thinking, this is awesome, this is awesome.

I'm so excited. I felt like one of those real cowboys. And then he stopped. And then he turned around. And then he came straight down the same speed.

I got about halfway down and I thought, he's not going to stop. I'm going to get killed. And about, I was near the fence, you know, about another 40, 50 yards, I'm going to hit that fence and my sisters are going, you know, waving their arms like, stop, stop.

So I jump off the horse and I kind of roll and they get the horse. And here's what I learned. Anger is a lot like that horse. It's powerful, it's strong and under control and tamed.

It's a great resource. But when it's out of control and wild, I am telling you, it can kill you and kill others. And so what I want to talk about in terms of accomplishing resilience is I want to help you tame the anger. And it's interesting that right in this passage, he tells us step one, two and three about how to tame our anger. It's a biblical prescription of taming the wild stallion of anger that's in all of us. And before I go on, having taught this a couple of times, there's some of you that I can hear in the back of your mind, oh brother, I don't really want to listen to this, I don't have an anger problem. You know, I don't blow up, I don't yell, I don't scream, I don't have an anger problem. And what I would suggest to you is that anger wears many masks.

I don't have time to develop them fully, but just so that you get to participate with us, there's three major ways that people express their anger. Some people are what I call spewers. You know them. They're the people that we think have anger issues, right? They yell, they scream, they can be violent.

I mean, they power up. You know when they're mad. You say, are you mad? Yeah, I'm mad, and you better do what I say. They can be even physically violent. And what we know is you better stay away from them. Their anger is explosive, and they spew it out.

The second group is what I call stuffers. These are some of you who would say, oh, I don't have an anger problem. What you do is when you see injustice or when you have those angry feelings, you stuff them down inside, and it produces inner bitterness, and you keep score. You have resentment. You can be calm. You can be cool. You actually can withdraw, become rigid, sullen.

You bury things. Oh, me? I'm not angry. I don't have a problem. 90 to 95 percent of all depression, researchers tell us, are caused by anger turned inward.

And so what I have to say is really important to you. If you're not a yeller, a blamer, a screamer, an exploder, but you're a stuffer, you've got an anger issue. The third area is what I call leakers. Psychologists call them passive aggressive. These are people that take their anger, and they don't want to confront, and they're a little bit like the stuffer. They stuff it, but they take the anger to a different playing field, if you will.

Maybe they get hurt over here on the baseball diamond, metaphorically, so they take it over to the dugout. And this is the kind of people that, in their anger, they can be critical, sarcastic, withdraw, and some of it is absolutely subconscious. If they really know that you are a very prompt person, these are the kind of people that can be late. Oh, I'm so sorry, I forgot, and they're sincere. But what they've done is they've stored up anger and they've stored up resentment, or this sarcasm is a big sign. They don't want to confront you with something, so they'll make a joke about something where they really want to say you did that or you were wrong or why don't you shape up, but the moment you respond, I was just kidding, right?

I was just kidding. They can forget. They can avoid things.

They cannot show up. And so what I would tell you, we did a little survey at Living on the Edge when we did the Overcoming Emotions series, and here's what we found. Now, this is not scientific, but I think it's fairly accurate. About 35% of the 1,000 to 1,500 people that responded said we are spewers. About 28% said we are stuffers, and about 38% said we're leakers, which I think really says something because as many of us as Christians, we learn that anger's wrong. We learn if you're ever wrong, that's a bad thing. That's like sin.

And so we learn to stuff it or we learn to leak it. And what God would say is anger is this charged, emotional response to injustice, real or perceived, when it's real, acting on it appropriately is a very godly thing to do. The word wrath or anger, the wrath of God is toward injustice or sin.

When it's perceived but it's inappropriate, we can hurt people and hurt ourselves. And so all I want to say is as you hear God's plan for resolving anger, his three steps, I just want you to know that it probably applies to all of us, not just some of us. So step number one, what does it say?

Be quick to hear. The word literally means eagerness to listen or learn. It's like keep your mouth shut, just be open. Listen, don't respond, don't react. It's our immediate response to God, other circumstances, and our anger, listen carefully, to be a receptive listener, not a reactionary responder.

You have to go into training for this. I mean, so many of us, and you know, guilty as charged, when something happens, my mouth opens, you know? And I just have had to go into training to say don't spew, don't stuff, don't leak it. See, the key question is what is this anger telling me?

Kind of what's going on inside? And a little bit later, we're gonna explore, there's three basic reasons why we get angry, and I'm gonna give you a very practical tool about how to address those issues, because what you want to be, you want to be resilient. You don't want to find yourself moaning and angry and disappointed, and are you gonna watch the news and be angry forever and ever?

Are you gonna just talk about injustice and not do anything and be angry forever and ever? I mean, we are God's people. We're the salt of the earth.

We're the light. We need to be able to bounce back from our own stuff, and we need to overcome temptation for sure, but we also need to handle our emotions. Step two is not just be quick to listen.

Notice it's slow to speak. The wisest man in the world said these words. Proverbs chapter 10, Solomon said, when words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. In Proverbs 13, three, he says, he who guards his lips guards his life, but the one who speaks rashly will come to ruin. And then in Proverbs 29 verse 20, he says, do you see a man who speaks in haste?

There is more hope for a fool than him. And what I want to tell you is the interim response to God and others and circumstances with our anger is to think before we speak. Let me ask you, have you ever said anything that you wish you could take back? Have you ever done something that you regret when you were angry? Have you ever made a bad decision because you were so ticked off? You know, said something stupid like, you can take this job and shove it, and then you go home and you tell your wife or you tell your husband, well, I'll tell you, this is what happened and I'm sick of it and I quit today. And after about 24 hours, you think, I don't have a job. Or maybe you really got fed up with someone and you blew up at them, and has your anger cost you a relationship, a friendship, a marriage?

Is there a son or a daughter, a parent that you don't talk to anymore and they don't talk to you because anger got in the way? All I know is learning to think before we speak is absolutely critical. Some real practical ways, I mean, some of these are really old school, but you know, they work. For some of you, especially if you're a spewer, count to 10. Or if you're a real spewer, count to 20. If you have issues, count to 25.

I mean, all you wanna do is you have to buy some time. The emotions, they literally, they go from down in your gut, up into your heart, up into your head, and you're ready to explode. And when you have that feeling, just, I mean, one, two, three, four, right? Or walk away.

I mean, I had to learn early in my marriage when I got really, really angry, I just, at times, I would put up my hands, and it was my issue, it wasn't my wife. You know what, honey? I'll be back, just a few. I just need to take a little walk. Because I wasn't thinking straight. I knew I would say something or say it in a way that was gonna be totally unhelpful. For those of you that are in meetings or in a situation where you can't walk away, try biting your lip. I mean, just really just say to yourself, you know what, I can't say something until the Spirit of God is back in control, and my anger and my emotion is not going to drive me. So be quick to listen, slow to speak, and then slow to anger. Solomon would write in Ecclesiastes, do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.

What he's saying here is that really bad decisions, really unwise choices, relationships get violated and destroyed because of anger. Chip's gonna be back with his application, but just a quick reminder, this message is from our series called Resilient, Withstanding the Storms of Life. Navigating life's storms is never easy, but as believers in Christ, God gives us the resources we need to keep standing strong, no matter what comes our way. Chip's teaching provides a fresh perspective from James chapter one on not only how to do it, but how to do it well and bless others along the way.

For a limited time, the resources for Resilient are discounted and the MP3s are always free. Now to order your copy or to send it to a friend, visit us at livingontheedge.org, tap special offers on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. I'll be right back with some thoughts about today's message, but before I do, I know a lot of people pray and support the ministry because you hear of exciting new things that we're doing, whether it's in China or the Middle East or working with pastors, but I'd like you to consider something else. The Bible is very clear that where you are spiritually ministered to, there's a moral responsibility to financially support.

That's not me. That's the apostle Paul. And you know, there's about a million people every week that are hearing God's word, about three million that are in small groups, and God is using the teaching ministry of Living on the Edge to help Christians grow in Christlikeness, and that changes families and communities. If you're one of those people, would you pray about giving back if, indeed, Living on the Edge is ministering to you and helping you grow spiritually? It's just a principle that I think is very important.

Would you pray about it and do whatever God chose you to do? If you're already a financial partner, thank you. With your help, Living on the Edge is ministering to more people than ever before. And if you're benefiting from CHIP's teaching but haven't yet taken that step, now would be a great time to join the team. Now, to send a gift or become a monthly partner, donate online at livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003.

That's 888-333-6003. Your partnership is greatly appreciated. Well, now here's CHIP with his application. As we wrap up today's program, let me ask you a question because I'm sure that as you were listening, in your mind you were thinking, now let me see, am I a spewer, a stuffer, or a leaker? And then for some you're saying, gosh, I do all three, right? Most of us have a tendency. Most of us tend to either, you know, we blurt it out, or it's very situational. It's interesting that people where we feel like we're more powerful than them, we tend to spew. With people that we feel are more powerful than us, we tend to leak, right?

Because we don't really want the conflict, you know, we really want to pay people back. Here's what I can tell you. Anger is one of the most powerful emotions that God has given us. It can be used for good, but wow, can it really do some damage. So you, number one, need to grasp and understand what is your tendency with anger, right? Do you spew? Do you blow up on people?

And if so, there's some tools, there's some practices. Number two, are you a stuffer? I mean, do you push it down, push it down, push it down? What I can tell you is you struggle with depression, and you need to learn how to identify what you're angry about, become aware, and deal with that. Or third, are you a leaker? Are you passive-aggressive? Are you the joker? You're the person who's, you know, telling sort of the little comments, the little digs that are getting back at people, but then you can always go back, oh, no, no, I was just kidding.

These kind of things will destroy your relationships. But here's what I want to tell you. Anger is a secondary emotion, and we're going to learn a lot more about this in our next broadcast. It tells you that something is wrong under the hood, if you will.

It's like a red light on the dashboard. You don't want to miss our next broadcast as we learn how to get anger to actually work for you. Just before we close, would you stop for a minute and pray for Living on the Edge? We've never seen a greater need for God's truth to go out than right now. And by God's grace, Living on the Edge has been able to provide encouragement, teaching, and personal discipleship resources to more people than ever before. So thank you to those who support us with your prayers. God is doing amazing things. Well, until next time, and for all of us here, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. Music