Overcoming Emotions that Destroy - Rage: Understanding the Monster Within, Part 1

What can turn a normal, rational, ordinarily nice person into an out-of-control monster destroying relationships, screaming at children, spewing threats, and alienating lifelong friends? Today we'll discover the source of that devastating power and how to control it. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram.

I'm Dave Drewy. Thanks for joining us as we begin Chip's series, Overcoming Emotions That Destroy. In the coming programs, he'll unpack the factors that trigger our anger and address how best to respond to those feelings. And if you're looking for deeper insight into this crucial topic, keep listening after this message to hear some practical advice from Chip.

You're not going to want to miss what he has to share. If you have a Bible handy, open it now to James chapter 1 as Chip kicks off this series with his message, Rage, Understanding the Monster Within. What has the power to transform the tender heart of a loving mother into a beast of fury as I watched her sling her 18-month-old baby into the front of a dryer and slam the little one down in a chair? What has the power to turn loving parents into neck bulging, vein popping, screaming adults who say the same thing over and over into the blank stares of their elementary and teenage kids? What has the power to turn good friends and passionate lovers into cold, calculated, critical marriage co-existers who only do what's absolutely necessary to live under the same roof?

What has the power to turn a festive holiday family gathering into a gut-twisting, name-calling, take-sides, no-holds-barred family feud that never gets resolved? And finally, what has the power to take a cool, calm, collected, long-time, conscientious worker into a gun-carrying, floor-by-floor-by-floor, bullet-spraying murderer that no one ever dreamed was even upset as he expressed the bottled-up anger of losing his job? What has that kind of power to turn normal human beings, who on most days are good people to be around, into people that shut down, into people that leak anger, into people that explode it? And I would suggest that the first word you want to write down in your notes, the answer is our emotions.

Our emotions. Designed as a gift from God, there are times, places, and circumstances that bring out emotions that destroy. In fact, it was during a very difficult time, first book of the New Testament, Jesus' half-brother would address people who were going through tremendous pressure, difficulty. They were dispersed abroad. They believed in the Messiah. As a result, many of them lost their homes.

They were cut out of the family business. They were persecuted. And so James would say, after considering it all joy, in chapter 1, verse 19, my dear brothers, take note of this. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. And then he gives us the purpose clause.

Why? For the anger of man does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. That single verse launched a series in my life called overcoming emotions that destroy. The anger of man, when I'm frustrated, when I'm wounded, when there's an unmet need, when someone ticks me off, when someone cuts in front of me in traffic, when I don't have enough money, when God doesn't come through, when my expectations aren't fulfilled, emotions begin to bottle up and we get angry.

And we express it in very, very different ways that we'll look at. And the great majority of people don't even know they're angry. And we're going to talk about anger and how to deal with it. We're going to talk about the shame and the guilt and the other emotions that those angry feelings that every human being has that are normal.

But they ruin relationships if you don't identify what they are, how to deal with them, and then how to turn that in a way where God can work in your heart instead of us spewing or stuffing or leaking out our anger in ways that destroy our relationship with God and others. Under pressure, we are all prone to blow a fuse or burn the house down. This was written to people under pressure. Some people are prone under pressure, financial pressure, relational pressure, screaming kids, you know, you've just done the floor and now the dog goes over the floor, you just did the laundry and now there's seven more piles, you just gave your best shot at work and you get laid off when someone who hasn't been there very long gets to stay. You just give a big gift by faith and then you find out that forty percent of your net income goes down the drain in about three or four months and you get angry. And some people blow up and some people, it's just like have a short in the wiring and you know what, when there's a short in the wiring, you can't even tell anything's wrong.

It's just you need to go out to dinner one night and you come back and your house is in ashes. And that's what anger does. Have you ever been angry when you were unfairly treated or someone blamed you or you were ignored or misunderstood or felt insignificant or someone made fun of you or you were given advice, you ever done something, someone walks up and just tells you this is how you ought to do that and you have this emotion inside going, you know, you didn't feel safe, you were given ultimatums. I love the little list because when we put this together, there's a lady who's a psychologist that wrote a couple of books for inner varsity and she listed common reasons why all of us feel angry. Let me just zoom through them and just, just, just laugh with me in your mind because we don't think we have anger as an issue. These are normal things.

I thought we're pretty good. She writes, someone cuts you off in line. Someone misunderstood what you said. Someone ignored your feelings. You have a breakup in a relationship. You feel trapped, smothered and controlled.

You feel like a failure. Someone broke your trust. You were abused by someone. Someone lied to you. You had to wait in a very long checkout line at the store. Your kids are not obeying you.

The waitress is very slow and brought the wrong food. You stubbed your toe. You find it's too late that you're out of toilet paper. That could be bad.

The line to the public restroom is very, very long. Your spouse forgot to call and they were very late. The clothes you wanted to wear are still at the laundry and the hamper and it's not washed yet. Your spouse has been unfaithful. You ran out of time and weren't able to get things done you needed to. You drove all the way across town to find the store, but it was closed. The kids continually and relentlessly demand your time. You forgot to do something you were supposed to do. You don't have time for yourself. Someone said something harsh or insensitive. A stock clerk was rude. You were in a hurry and you hit all the red lights. Your boss doesn't appreciate you.

Someone tracked dirt into a freshly cleaned house. The driver in front of you is going very, very, very slow. Someone close to you died. Does not all those things happen to every single person in this room? My point is anger is not a good emotion or a bad emotion. Let's take God's perspective. What exactly is anger?

Define it. Anger is neither good nor bad. It is a charged, morally neutral, emotional response of protective preservation. When you're angry, it's a not good or bad. It is a God-given, emotionally charged response designed to protect someone or something. Let me give you a couple of examples of how anger can be very, very positive.

It can be a healthy emotional response that motivates us to correct attitudes, behaviors, or injustices that we perceive to be wrong. Listen to the apostle Paul. He says, in your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the devil a foothold. It's a good translation.

If you look at that in the original text, it's very interesting. First of all, it's an imperative. It's a command.

The word order goes something like this. Be angry. Command. In other words, get angry. Don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger. Many of us have been taught that any time you're angry, you've done something wrong. The Bible commands you to be angry. I'll make the case that many of us are not nearly angry enough at all at the things that we ought to be angry about.

When we get angry, amazing, positive things happen. Many, many years ago, Teresa and I were starting out. We had small kids. We had laundry, but we couldn't afford a washer and a dryer. I was at the laundromat. You shove quarters in those things.

It never gets dry. I think it's a satanic cult that makes these dryers someplace. I'm sitting there and I said, you honey, you go home.

I'll do it. I'm sitting. You know how laundromats are sometimes? Very unattractive, dirty, linoleum floor. I'm there trying to get these things dried and a lady comes in. She's got about an 18-month-old.

She looks pretty unkept, a little bit rough and in a bad mood. A series of events occurred. A little kid just went around to look at something and she went ballistic, went over, grabbed that kid's hand and literally slammed it into the dryer and then took him and then started screaming. I got up. I was a pastor of this small church in Texas at the time and I came this close to hitting a lady in the mouth and not feeling guilty at all. I mean, I got up. I got in her face. I said, man, let me tell you something. You touched that child again, so help me God and I'm a pastor. I will knock your lights out. I'm not sure that was the right thing to do, but it seemed like the right thing at the time.

What are you going to do? Sometimes things happen and they bother you. I couldn't get over this one. I couldn't sleep that night.

Next day, I just couldn't get over it. I thought, I need to do something. Where's that kid and what's going on?

Then I just realized and did some research. I went down. I go to a government building. They send me here to send me here to send me here to send me here, so I end up in the child welfare department. I find out in our town it's a really big problem and they don't have enough foster parents.

We got all kinds of kids that just because of where we were and how it was, really bad situation. I said, well, what's anybody doing about it? Well, we have a committee. I mean, this is a town of 4,000. Things are not running real well.

Can you just picture what the committees are like? All right, Bob. Let's bring this meeting to order.

Okay, asshole. A lot of kids. It was unbelievable. I go to a meeting.

This is so classic. I went to my first child welfare board meeting thinking, one, what's going on here? I find out the extent of the problem and I left the chairman. It was weird. It was kind of like, well, what about this? What about this? Well, you don't know.

Are you interested? Yeah. So literally, one by one, I purposefully found some committed Christians and we filled that board because I got mad. I couldn't sleep at night with the images of that little kid and I wondered how many little kids are like that. I got so angry I couldn't sleep and stomach acid in my gut. I thought, I got to do something. I got to do something.

I don't know what. What I can tell you is because I got angry, we ended up partnering with all the churches in that little community. We took turns every Sunday talking about what size clothes we need, what families, how many kids, and each church took a turn. Then we began to take care of these kids. Then we raised some money, put some things together, and we built a home from the child welfare board.

We put it right next to that government building and we created a safe place for those kids because one guy saw a little kid slammed into a dryer and got mad. Anger's not a bad thing. Jesus got angry at the money changers and he did something. Moses got angry when he saw the people sin and he did something. David got angry and he said, what in the world's going on?

Who is that big uncircumcised giant talking about my God that way? He got angry and he did something. I want to suggest to you, anger can be a very positive emotion. What makes you angry? When's the last time you got so ticked off about injustice or something wrong that you said, you know what?

I'm going to do something about it. See, but if you unconsciously believe that when you're angry, that must be like sin, you will undermine the very emotion God gave you for him to move you to do something significant. We were in Chicago at a pastor's conference and we were talking about overcoming emotions that destroy and talking about the book. A guy called in and he goes, well, I don't know what to do with my emotions. Basically he tells the story and he says, well, my wife's having an affair and I found out about it and I'm angry.

His assumption was, that's a bad thing. He said, I confronted her and she won't break off the relationship and I just don't know what to do. What do I do with these emotions? I'm really upset and I know they can't be pleasing God. I said, dude, you ought to be really angry. I mean really mad and you ought to set some clear boundaries and you ought to confront the situation and since you both go to church and you both claim to be Christians, you need to get your church involved and your anger ought to have these kind of set of principles and rules to help her learn to repent. It doesn't mean you don't love her, but he was playing a game where she kept doing whatever and you know, I guess I'm the bad guy because I'm angry because my wife is unfaithful to me.

Give me a break. That's not only bad theology, that's not helping her. However, anger is not only a positive emotion but it can be, if unchecked, it can have amazing negative consequences and pitfalls. It can be an unhealthy and destructive emotional response to protect us from real or perceived hurt, frustration or personal attack. You go through and you listen to the smartest man who's ever lived, the wisest man who's ever lived and he talks about the issue of anger. Proverbs 19, 19, a hot-tempered man must pay the penalty.

If you rescue him, you will have to do it again. When people learn to deal with their anger in unhealthy ways, it becomes a pattern. It becomes ingrained.

Notice what he says in Proverbs 22, 24. Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man. Do not associate with one easily angered. Not only does it become a pattern in their life but you catch it.

It's contagious. My dad had a very big anger problem. I will tell you what, kids learn how to deal with their anger by watching their moms, their dads, their coaches and significant others. Third, notice Proverbs 29, 22, an angry man stirs up dissension and a hot-tempered one commits many sins. Anger splits apart great relationships, great marriages, great friendships, great churches, great ministries and great workplaces. Angry people stir up dissension and then notice the last line, a hot-tempered one commits many sins. When I'm angry, out of control, when you're angry, out of control. When I say out of control, I don't mean you're necessarily spewing it out. You may be pushing it all down. Some of the angriest people in the world, you can't see. It's like an iceberg, 90% of it is under the water. It's during those times we do some of the most foolish, foolish things that cause some of the direst consequences in our entire life.

I put a list of questions to consider. Just lean back and listen on this one. Have you ever done something you wished you hadn't when you're angry? Anybody? Have you ever said something you wish you could take back when you were angry? Have you ever made a bad decision when you were angry? A decision that you look back and you say, potentially.

I mean, just potentially. That is the dumbest thing I've ever done. But in anger, you know, it's like, hey, you can take this job and shove it. I don't care.

Then you go home, tell your wife or your husband. What happened? I quit my job today.

I'm not getting treated like that anymore. Great. So how are we going to pay the bills? I don't know. So you got another job?

No, I don't have no job. What were you thinking? Well, I just got tired of the way he's treating me.

Okay. See, we do really silly, really unwise, say painful, hurtful things. Have you ever ruined a friendship, a marriage, a family relationship, or a ministry relationship because of anger? Have you ever seen a person hurt because of someone's anger, physically, emotionally, or psychologically? My point I'm trying to make is without exception, we all struggle with angry feelings at times, and those angry feelings have done more than their share of damage in our relationships with other people.

And if you're like me, you've nodded that you have done some really stupid, foolish, painful things when you're angry. Here's what I want to tell you. Tonight, we just want to get on the same page, and there's hope.

Let me give you a little overview of where we're going to go and what we're going to do, and there is hope to deal. We're going to help you understand your anger from God's perspective. We're going to help you discover how you tend to express your anger.

We're going to help you know when it's healthy, when it's unhealthy. We're going to help you discover what is God's purpose for anger, the positive and how to deal with the negative. We're going to learn some very specific techniques to learn to share your anger in a healthy way that gets the issue on the table without attacking the person. For some of you, you're going to realize you've been angry a long, long time, and the depression that you've experienced for maybe months or years is really an anger issue. For some of you, like I just talked to a guy recently, he's exploded in remorse, exploded in remorse.

He could never figure out what was going on and why. And so what happened is he's got all these relationships where people keep their distance because what anger does, it works. When you explode and spew on people, you're not a safe person to be around. And you can come back in tears and tell them how sorry you are, and they keep giving you another chance and another chance. And I've met elders in churches. I've met people that everyone looks up to with such esteem, and they're godly here, godly here, godly here, godly here, godly here. And they've got this little window of unresolved anger, and it's a besetting sin. And they don't understand why, and they don't understand how to change. I will tell you, we're going to walk through a journey together where the truth will set you free if you're willing to be really open and really hear God's voice.

Chip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute. You've been listening to the first part of his message, Rage, Understanding the Monster Within, from his series Overcoming Emotions That Destroy. Have you ever been told you have an anger problem? Has your temper damaged or ruined a meaningful relationship?

Are the frustrations of daily life weighing you down? Well, let me tell you, there's a better way to handle these emotions. In this series, Chip reveals how we all struggle with anger and breaks down the most common ways we express it. You'll learn practical, biblical solutions to rein in anger before it destroys you and your most treasured relationships. Don't miss How We Can Be, As Jesus Said, Angry But Without Sin.

Now, if you miss any part of this series Overcoming Emotions That Destroy or want to learn more about our helpful resources, the Chip Ingram app is a great way to get plugged in. Chip, we're just getting started in this new series focused on anger and how potentially destructive it can be. Take a moment, if you would, and share why you think this is such an important topic and what our listeners could learn from this series.

Well, Dave, I actually taught this series a number of years ago and later it became a book and it's been greatly used with people that are going through very, very challenging times. And the reason I wanted to re-air this right now, Dave, is anger is at an all-time high. And whether that's that deep burning resentment or whether it's what you see people posting or the anger inside of families or in churches or workplaces, I mean, we live in a world that is so polarized and anger is one of the most destructive emotions, but it doesn't have to be that way. By the way, what people are going to learn in this series is that we all have anger issues.

Dave, we tend to think it's those people that blow up. They really have anger issues. People are going to learn that some of us stuff our anger. Others, we leak our anger and that we can actually learn that anger is like the sort of the light on the dashboard of your car. When you find yourself feeling and getting angry, God actually wants you to say, oh, there's something underneath the hood that I need to address. And then I can tell you that anger can become your best friend. We're going to learn how to resolve anger. We're going to learn how to take some of those explosive times or those things that are happening inside that make people depressed and flip them around and learn to deal with anger God's way.

I don't know. There's a time in my entire adult life where I see people need to learn to deal with these emotions that can destroy like right now. So I cannot wait to share this with our listeners. Thanks for that Chip. Well, we hope you'll make plans to be with us for this entire series.

And if you happen to miss a program, you can always listen on the Chip Ingram app or at LivingOnTheEdge.org. As we close today's program, I finished asking a number of diagnostic questions pretty rapidly. And this whole series really unearthed some issues that a lot of us think, well, I don't have any anger issues.

But let me review, okay? Just kind of lean back a little bit. Have you ever done something when you were angry that you wished you hadn't done? I mean, that kind of gets most all of us, doesn't it?

Or let me ask you this. Have you ever made a bad decision when you're angry? Or have you ever seen a friendship or a marriage, a family relationship or maybe something in ministry literally fall apart because of anger? And sometimes it doesn't mean you blew up. Sometimes you got angry and you stuffed something inside and you didn't call it anger, but you just knew I don't want to be around them anymore.

And you pulled away or they pulled away. Here's what I've got to tell you. If we're going to make some real progress here, go to livingontheedge.org and just go to where the message notes are. This is the first part of overcoming emotions that destroy. Read those questions over and maybe with a friend or with a mate, just read them over out loud over a cup of coffee in the next couple of days and say, so what do you think?

You think there's any anger issues in our lives? And I will tell you, I think God will begin to reveal some things that will really help you. You'll find the message notes Chip just mentioned in a couple of places. Go to livingontheedge.org and click the broadcasts tab. App listeners, tap fill in notes. You'll get Chip's outline, all of his scripture references and lots of fill ins to help you remember what you're learning. They really help you get the most out of every program. So I hope you'll take advantage of this resource the next time you listen. Well, for Chip and the entire team, I'm Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.