Yes! You Really CAN Change - The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process, Part 2

Do you or someone you know have a problem with anger? It is one of the most difficult emotions to ever get under control, but today I want to show you from God's Word a solution that you may have never known that I believe will give you specific strategic help to overcome your anger.

See you in just a minute. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drouie, and the mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Pastor Chip Ingram.

He's in the middle of his series, Yes, You Really Can Change. Last time, Chip unpacked the idea of spiritual training and why this discipline should matter to every believer. He continues that message in this program by addressing the importance of controlling your emotions, especially anger. Now just before we get started, let me encourage you to use Chip's message notes while you listen. They'll help you get the most out of what you're about to hear. They're a quick download under the Broadcasts tab at LivingOnTheEdge.org.

App listeners, just tap Fill in Notes. All right, if you have your Bible, turn to Ephesians Chapter 4 for Part 2 of Chip's message, The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process. The second training station is not the bench press, but over here, you know, if you go to the gym, they always say, okay, we're going to work on your, you know, like your buys and tries, and here we go now.

We're going to do some curls here. This is emotional control. If there's any area in the world that destroys our relationship with ourselves, with God and others, it's anger. It's when we either blow up or when we stuff it or we leak it out, and the emotional side of anger can absolutely destroy our journey with Christ.

And so training station number two is be angry. Deal with anger appropriately. Verse 26 and 27, it says, be angry, that's a command, yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Well, why? And do not give or lest you give the devil an opportunity, or literally it's a foothold or a crack or an opportunity in your spirit and in your life. Put it where it says, be angry, the first word, put a box around anger or angry and write number one above it. And then where it goes on, do not let the sun go down on your anger, put a box around it and put a number two, because these are two different words. There's two different kinds of anger. Our spiritual training session, number two is the goal, emotional control. In other words, we all deal with anger, how do we learn to go into training to appropriately deal with our anger? Our training command is to be angry and yet do not sin. The first word for anger here that's a command is the idea of anger which is a settled habit of the mind that is aroused by certain conditions.

A settled habit of the mind, there's certain conditions that would cause you to be angry. Condition, injustice. Condition, evil. Condition, a child abused. Condition, graft or greed that hurts other people in the company. Condition, someone abuses their mate and you find out about it. Condition, disharmony or disruption in a small group or church that's unrighteous that's bringing division. Condition, the present sex trade.

Or in my case, the condition. When Christians don't live like Christians and people outside of Christ look at the general body of Christ and say you guys don't live any different than us and they then think that God isn't really God and they turn away from him because of how we live, it makes me angry. By the way, anger is a healthy, positive emotion to motivate for life change. Jesus was angry with those in the temple because of the evil and the injustice and the graft. He was angry at the Pharisees because of their hypocrisy and he wasn't Jesus meek and mild when he said you brood of vipers, you snakes, you white washed tombs. And his disciples turned and said, Jesus, are you aware that you're making them very upset?

And they didn't know the half of it. You're to be angry. Well, when we're supposed to be angry, we're often not, we're passive. And when we're inappropriately angry, the second word for anger here means to be irritations, exasperation, bitterness, resentment. This is the unhealthy anger. This is the kind of anger that you have when you don't get your way or people cut you off in traffic and you start down this process in your mind. This is the anger that you have when one of your kids isn't responding in the way you want them to or, you know, you don't get the promotion and all of a sudden you start brewing and there's this resentment and anger. This kind of anger is when your mate lets you down and she or he doesn't do what you want them to do. This kind of anger when, you know, you have X amount of dollars and the stock market does that and you just start getting bent out of shape and you're mad and angry and exasperated and resentful. And it begins to eat at your soul and you become a negative critical person. We all have anger issues but most of us think only people that blow up have anger issues.

Anger is expressed in three primary ways. Some people I call spewers, they explode. This was my father. Part of my journey with my dad that made me afraid.

My dad was an ex-Marine. He was a big guy. He was a strong guy and when he got mad, it was scary. I mean, rah! And boy, I mean, it just exploded. And we think that that's anger that's wrong.

We've all been around people that have exploded. It creates distance. We're afraid of them. We withdraw.

We don't have trust. A second way that people express anger, some of you learned even from some of our churches unfortunately that all anger is wrong and all anger is bad. So whenever you had angry feelings about something that was unjust or wrong, like how come my brother or sister is being treated like this and I'm being treated like this? Well, that's anger.

What you learned is you don't say that, you stuff it, you stuff it, you stuff it. So experts tell us that about 90% of all depression is anger turned inward. So much of the depression that turns to migraines, that turns to ulcers is anger that's unresolved, that's stuffed down in here. And then there's other people, they're called leakers, passive aggressive. And this is when you deal with anger and someone hurts you or does something wrong and you're angry but what you realize is you don't have the courage or the tools or the skill to deal with I feel angry right now about what you just said or what you did.

And so you take it from this sort of unsafe playing field that causes conflict and you bring it over here to what you think is a safer playing field. And so you use sarcasm and jokes and you're passive aggressive. So if you know this person wants everything done neatly and on time, even unconsciously, you do it in a sloppy way and you're late. And there's just something satisfying about watching them get all frustrated. See everyone in this room, we deal with anger and anger is destructive in your relationship with God. And notice what do you put off? We're to put off anger that leads to sin and offense and then we need to renew our minds and recognize the dangers of unresolved anger.

I mean I lived in Santa Cruz. I mean there's overt demonic activity and new age and we actually had a witch in warlock across the street from the church and they had a horse's head on a pole and we had people come that were all painted up. We had overt demonic stuff and I've been to India and many places all around the world but I will tell you the great majority of demonic activity in Christian's lives are unresolved anger. And it's that you get angry because your spouse didn't respond lovingly or kindly or there was a sharp word said. And because you don't know how to resolve it and you don't resolve it, then pretty soon bitterness happens. And so in my case, Teresa and I had no idea how to do this.

Part of your family of origin teaches this so I came from alcoholic family and she came from alcoholic family. So when I was angry, you know I want to verbalize. I'm going to talk until we get it done.

She came from, she withdrew. And so when early in our marriage we're really angry and so here you know you do what I called you know you finally you don't talk about it and you argue a little bit and you hurt one another's feelings. You don't know what to do. And so I would put my hands behind my head as we're ready to go to sleep.

And I'd bounce on the bed like this. This means Teresa you still have time to apologize. The day's not over. And what I would hear from her is, which is I completely withdraw and don't like conflict because I learned that early on. And we don't have to worry about apologizing because tomorrow I'm going to pretend it didn't happen. I'm not going to talk to you.

I'm asleep. And so I realized that then after the behind the head I need to go to what I called the bounce and roll. And what you do is you sigh deeply and loudly.

You bounce and then you turn this way so that your posterior is next to her posterior with a slight bump that wakes her up enough to understand things aren't right and you can wake up and we can deal with this and you can now apologize. Unfortunately most Christians have conflict in your marriage, conflict with one of your kids, conflict at work, conflict in the church, a problem in a small group. We don't understand when unresolved anger isn't addressed you give demonic powers that specialize in lying, a foothold in your heart and in your spirit and it will destroy your relationships. The great majority of divorces aren't because some big thing happened.

Here's what happens. Your heart gets hard because you were hurt. And most of us then after what Teresa and I did is after two days we pretended it didn't happen and we just acted like everything was okay. But a scar occurred and it was sort of okay and then another scar occurred.

And then finally after about two years what you do is you start looking through this lens and you look at your mate through every time they do this or that you look at them through this unresolved anger and bitterness and you begin to connect dots that really aren't there. She doesn't really care. She's insensitive.

She doesn't respond. Well he's like this and then this is what happens. And so again I'm in the midst of this and I'm in seminary and I'm realizing okay first of all I'm a liar and I'm supposed to tell people about the truth that's not good. And so God brings this into my life and now I'm supposed to help people I'm in a pastoral counseling class of helping people and I learn about anger and how it actually works and I realize we don't know how we have no idea how to resolve it. It's impacting every area of our relationship. So I go to the professor and I asked for help and the long story is he says you know I have a brother who's a retired he had a heart attack he's a retired senior pastor really knows the Bible he's one of our best counselors and you have very predictable problems from the kind of families you come you have no business saying anything to anyone until you get these resolved and so we'll give you a special student rate of 85 to 95 dollars and you can see my brother for about 12 sessions and well this is not rocket science you can resolve this. So I'm making a thousand dollars a month with three kids going to school full time working full time I'm going to tell you that $90 a week for 12 weeks is the best investment ever made and we learned how to go into training to deal with our anger and how to express it appropriately and what I want to do now is I want to give you that tool. Two tools the training apparatus is I feel messages I feel messages when Teresa would shut down and I would talk or get very very angry what we what we learned is we we couldn't we couldn't communicate and then it shut down everything in our life and so this feels a little unfair to me but I'm going to try and deal properly with my anger because at a time when I didn't have any money at all I paid $90 a session to give to you right now for free which doesn't seem fair but what what we learned we put it on a three by five card and instead of you ought you should you always you never those those are angry words when couples or roommates or friends are fighting you ought you should or how dads talk to their daughters or how mothers talk to their sons those words are disallowed in a marriage relationship you ought you should or you always you never well no one always or never does anything see those are labeling things so what you do is you attack each other you need a tool so you can attack the issue and so what I learned in my counseling was to make I feel blank when you blank we put it on a card was on the refrigerator I put it in my Bible and so so I had to learn I feel hurt when you give more attention to the kids than me I feel disappointed when I spend this time making supper and you're always a half hour to 40 minutes late I feel like you don't love me and you don't care I feel disappointed when I feel angry when you you get it see what it does is it takes those issues and they come from your heart and you identify how you feel instead of attacking the other person we were learning how to do this and I perpetually felt like my life was overwhelmed and I would always seem like if she made a special dinner I would come home late and I learned over time we always argued about this and part of it is the differences when you get married like when you are dating I was adventuresome and spontaneous and exciting and when we got married I became irresponsible when when I was dating her she was consistent godly follow through structured after we got married and she was rigid unbending no flexibility and so you start focusing on those things and so you know we would we would she really wanted dinner at a certain time and I would just blow through it lose track of time but I did it over and over and over and over and over and so eventually I learned when I'm really late come in and be angry pick on her early because the best good offense is better than a good defense and so I'd find something about her an attacker early on when I walked in you guys are smiling some of you guys known this tactic right okay and so then we would argue and I'd feel justified and you know here's what's happening by the way in our relationship and so I come in and I'm ready to get mad at her because in the counseling obviously two or three sessions it's not helping too much because I'm not obeying it yet and so I walk in and you know everyone's already eaten an hour ago there's two candles lit there's the food is on the plate and she's seated and I'm kind of waiting for okay good come on and she was calm she goes here's your dinner I mean I'm waiting for the attack and she kind of lets me get a few bites and then she she looks at me very calmly and she her eyes are watery she said Chip I feel like you don't love me when I spend a better portion of a day preparing something for you to express my love and you disregard it and just come home an hour late this was my gift for you I feel like you don't love me I've never made the connection to me it was a power issue that statement began I just thought wait a second I may fight with you but I love you if me being home on time says I don't love you I can change that and I mean literally very few times ever after that message can I encourage you to begin to use I feel messages can I encourage you to write it on a card put it on the refrigerator and here's what I can tell you you have anger issues and some of you stuff and some of you spew and some of you the reason you have an addiction is that's how you deal with your anger the reason you eat is because of your anger the reason you watch so much TV and play video games is because of your anger the reason you stay at work is because of your anger you have a habit and the cue is you feel unrest and difficulty and pain you've developed some routine negative thing that gives you the reward of feeling better oh I feel better I ate for a while I watched this movie I went on Netflix I surfed on this I did that I went out and helped these other people because I didn't deal with my own stuff those patterns are rampant in this room and God says go into training go into training you go into training and say you know something I'm gonna be honest and then what I'm gonna do when I'm angry I'm gonna identify I'm angry and it's gonna be hard and I'm gonna give an I feel message I feel hurt when you I feel disappointed I feel used I feel angry and you begin to address those issues I feel angry when we make a budget and you spend money that we don't have I feel hurt when the attention is given to the kids and I realize we have made love in three weeks and doesn't seem to register the other tool and anger is make direct requests part of our anger is always around expectation expectations are that we think our mates think the way we think or our friends think the way we think and they can read our mind and so it's like I'm gonna be over here and I've asked you to meet me and I'm doing ABC and D of course you're gonna do at least A and B right and they don't and then we're angry and then say well did you ask him to do that no you just expected it to happen and so you make direct requests so much of our anger is I mean even at work you know you you're working with someone and you're doing this part of the job and they're doing that part of the job and you just expect that well if I'm doing this surely you're gonna do that but you don't ask him to do that and then they don't do it and then what you're ticked off and then you're ticked off and you don't say it to them you stuff it down or it comes out in a meeting three weeks later you would be shocked at what happens and again it takes courage and grace where you start making direct requests and so like back to our marriage world you make a direct request if you're a stay-at-home mom you might say honey I'm glad and I understand you've had a hard day there's been a lot going on but when you walk in the door I want you to give me the first five minutes of your day and then rather than ESPN or the Wall Street Journal I need you to play with the kids for a half hour to give me a break direct request would you do that because how long has that been made making you angry or you're a man and you say to yourself I've been on the road four days we have soccer softball basketball our weekends are blurred we're this committee we went to church and you know what we've not been together physically or had a romantic evening for believe it or not ladies guys count the days 21 days 7 days 16 days and you say direct request I'd like to set aside one evening a week where we put the kids to bed early and we have a romantic time of really talking and enjoying one another and the guys are going I've always loved the body language well that's not very romantic or spontaneous like all the movies well how's how's your way working for you I mean and you know what most women knowing okay that's the request they mentally think okay that really matters to him but here's here's the thing we don't talk to each other that way and if you don't give I feel messages and if you don't make direct requests you know what you do you will stuff you'll explode or you have these habits when you ought to be talking to God or talking to someone you love or doing something that's profitable you're on Facebook or you're watching meaningless stuff or eating food that you don't need and in Christian circles we kind of create all these kind of different ways that they're quote not really sinful well they're not sinful and they're overtly violating some scripture but they're sinful in that you're not being honest with yourself you're not being honest with God you're not being honest with others and you're not honest about being angry and yet dealing with it appropriately can you see what would happen in your life if you said okay what's the area that I'm really frustrated in what's the what's the area you get real with God you don't have to tell anybody else right now and you would say I've tried I've tried I've tried I've tried I've tried I can't change and you said okay what's the feeling I have what's the thing that I can't change and what there's a reward there's some reward you're getting out of what you're doing it's usually temporary short-term ease long-term pain and consequences and he said okay for the next 90 days I don't know how it'll impact I'm gonna be honest little things big things with myself with God anytime I represent myself with another person in speech or action that is not true I'm gonna go to them as long as it doesn't hurt them and I'm gonna confess it you do that two or three times this week I tell you you'll be more honest and you've been a long time because it's painful and ugly and here's the deal it's like when I had to go to marriage counseling I still remember sitting in that room thinking I hope no one sees me well why because I'm proud the reason I don't want to confess my pride the reason I don't want to apologize my pride when you go into training on these things God gets to the very core of the core so that the life of Christ can be formed in you question number three on your notes you'll notice here it talks about so what specific area in terms of anger against others yourself has been an issue in your life application right on a card and start using I feel messages are you willing to go into training I mean which here's the deal we've been talking about transformation really the series is gonna come the series is gonna go and you can either begin to do some of these baby steps of training you do this 90 days with me I will tell you things will happen in you that you never dream trying hard no matter how sincere certainly won't break the power of certain ingrained habitual besetting sins you have to go into training you have to go into training it's like the person I knew 42 years old had never run in their life had a friend and said you know I want to run a marathon she couldn't walk three miles she changed when she went to bed she changed her diet she walked three or four miles three months later she jogged 10 six months later 26.2 without stopping everything she needed was already in her she went into training so that God could do in and through her what he'd already deposited physically I want you to know everything you need to become the Christ like mother father student brother sister worker is already in you because the spirit is in you and he'll use his word and his people as you go into training and 90 days from now you will see a significant difference my question is are you willing to be honest and ruthless enough to spot what's the one area I want to do and go into training you're listening to Living on the Edge chip will be right back with this application for this message the role of spiritual training in the transformation process from his series yes you really can change if you're feeling burdened by your past or find yourself stuck in an unhealthy behavior don't lose hope a changed life is not only possible it's God's will for all of us so we hope you'll keep listening to this series to learn how to experience ongoing life change and we're here to help you along the way download chips message notes stream our exclusive video content or take a look at chips newly revised book and as always the mp3s are free learn more about all the resources for yes you really can change by going to Living on the Edge org or calling triple 8 3 3 3 6 0 0 3 app listeners simply tap special offers well chip as we come down to the last few days in this series I know you've received a ton of email and calls about how the series is giving people the traction they need for lasting change that's got to be gratifying to see how God's using you and the team to have a real impact how does that fit into the broader mission of the ministry at Living on the Edge we do three things for three groups for one purpose one we teach God's Word to as many people as possible through radio tv small group resources online tools like our app and in partnerships internationally all around the world second we train Christians go deeper with teaching resources and small group studies and three we develop tools for leaders for pastors and business leaders to help them impact their worlds and beyond we do all these things for one purpose to help Christians live like Christians now here's my question if you were impacted today by the ministry of Living on the Edge would you be willing to partner with us we can't do this without the support of partners like you and as you do we will change lives we will spread God's truth around the world and we will help Christians live like Christians here's my question would you join us thanks chip well if Living on the Edge is ministering to you and you've not yet partnered with us financially would you prayerfully consider doing that today it takes a team to do what God's called us to do and we're inviting you to help us help Christians live like Christians to send a gift or become a monthly partner donate online at Living on the Edge org tap donate on the app or give us a call at triple eight three three three six zero zero three your partnership is greatly appreciated well now here's chip with his application as we close today's program i want to stop for a moment because this is one that's like taking a needle into a raw nerve when you start to tell people be angry but don't sin i mean anger is one of the most volatile emotions and it's not just when we burst out with anger but it's when we stuff it down and get depressed or when we act in passive aggressive ways and we tease people and we let it leak out but if you are struggling with anger or if you know someone who's struggling with anger what i talked about the i feel message is a powerful tool but there's a whole process you need to go through because this is one that when you start talking about anger it is the tip of the iceberg what's underneath of it what God wants to do in your heart and in your life when you begin to discover you know i'm bitter i'm angry i'm resentful or i'm depressed and you know maybe it's because of anger and you know i'm not sure how i would use an i feel message or i don't have the courage to do that well what i discovered when i was teaching through the bible james chapter one and this passage on ephishians i realized what a big issue this was i eventually taught an entire series called overcoming emotions that destroy but if anger is an issue that you're thinking to yourself you know i have the shame that goes with that i've got the guilt that goes with that or my husband blows up or i don't know how to respond to my boss this is a resource that people have told me over and over and over again literally some have said that saved my life i mean that turned my life around and it's not because i wrote some good book it's because what the bible teaches about how to respond to anger is so different than what you've learned your whole life when you understand that truth it will really set you free if we could be of help let us know we would love to get that into your hands to help you be angry but not sin well the resource chip just mentioned is called overcoming emotions that destroy as a Living on the Edge listener you know we're committed to helping christians really live like christians and overcoming emotions will help you get to the root causes of your anger and then get it under control if there's someone you've injured with your anger this series may even help you restore that relationship you'll find all of the overcoming emotions that destroy resources on our website Living on the Edge dot org be sure to join us again next time when chip continues his series yes you really can change until then this is dave drewey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge