Overcoming Emotions that Destroy - Turning Anger from a Foe to a Friend, Part 1

Do you know someone with an anger problem? Their outbursts of anger ailing at you, maybe those you love?

Do you wish you could help them stop losing their temper? You can learn today to help others turn their anger from a foe to a friend. Stay with me. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drew and the mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. Thanks for joining us as we continue our series, Overcoming Emotions That Destroy. Now in this program, Chip suggests that anger can actually be used as a tool for good rather than as a weapon for evil. For more practical guidance and advice on this complex topic, stick around after today's message for some additional thoughts from Chip.

Well with that, turn in your Bible now to James chapter one for Chip's talk, Turning Anger from a Foe to a Friend. I was an adventuresome eight or nine year old. It's probably hard to believe, but I was a very high risk loony kid that was in the emergency room regularly. And so we were visiting my grandmother and she lived out in the country in West Virginia and had this huge hill right behind her house and there was a little barn. And of course when I got there, I was about nine, maybe 10, I can't remember exactly, but she said, someone's keeping a horse in the big field that goes straight up. Don't go near the horse. The horse is wild.

It hasn't been written in years. It's a huge horse. You could really get hurt. Chip, do you hear me? Don't go near the horse. And I'm thinking, I got that one down.

Absolutely. You know, I knew exactly what I was going to do. So I got my sisters to help me and we found some stuff and we fed the horse and we got him closer and closer. And then I saw there was a saddle.

I'm 10 years old. Me and my sister, you know, here, you feed him here and we got him. So we put the saddle on and I'm not sure how to do it. I start pulling stuff, you know, watch those westerns. You can figure this out.

So I, you know, it's a little loose, but this is not at work. And you know, we had a rope. I didn't know how to do, you know, the bit through the mouth and all that. So we just put a rope around his neck and, and so, hey, now Punky, that's my sister's name. Now you, you keep feeding him and I'm going to get on him, you know, and, and you know, in the back of my mind, my grandma, now don't you touch that horse, you know? So I get on this horse and I know you're not supposed to hold onto the horn, but when dear life begins, so this horse bolts up, I mean, and I mean, it's like a 45 degree and there's rocks and he runs as fast.

And I got to tell you, I was having a blast. I mean, it was like, and he gets all the way up to the top and then he stops and then he turns around and I'm going, oh, and he goes straight down. And I mean, now I'm just hanging on like this, like this, like this. And I'm realizing, I mean, we're going for this fence and I'm thinking I'm going to die. And so I thought we're going so fast if I bail out, it's going to hurt. If I hit the fence, it's going to hurt more. And so I just jumped off the side of the horse and hit a rock and roll a little bit. And then he was angry and ran and tried to nip me in the rear end and I got out of there. And you're thinking, what does this have to do with anger?

Many years later, after learning that a horse can be really wild and dangerous, I have a friend who trained horses and I went to this little camp and I got on this horse and he described the horse. He says, if you want it to do this, say that. So what do you mean? You just say it? Yeah. He said, if you want it to do this with your knee, you go like that, he'll do this with your other knee.

If you tap here, he'll do this. I'll just make this sound and he'll back up. I said, I'll get out. It was like driving a car.

I mean, it was an amazing deal. Now here's the deal. They're both big, strong animals. One was a wild stallion out of control.

The other with a bit put in its mouth became a source of great joy, good transportation and a lot of fun. That's the picture I want you to have about anger. Out of control, I'll tell you what, it's like a fire outside the fireplace. Under control, focused, understood and used.

It's like a fire in the fireplace that brings light and warmth. And so what we want to talk in this session about is, well, how do you do that? How do you make anger work for you?

I just touched on it. I want to go through the A, B, C, D's of anger. As we do that, I'm going to ask you to pull back in your memory my aha moment. I actually learned this. Sometimes God does something and you have this aha moment.

What I've learned to do is say, God, how did you do that? I was studying all this stuff. I came home. I was lonely, hurt, struggling. I got mad.

I didn't even know I was mad. I went to bed. I got up and yelled at my kids and was a jerk as a husband.

Okay. Then I got, I sat in my car. I sat there for 10 minutes and I realized I'm angry because I'm studying this right now.

And then once I acknowledged my anger, I backtracked to the primary emotion and I realized anger is not the problem. I'm sad. I'm lonely and I'm disappointed. And then number three, what I do, I considered the cause. I had hurt and expectations. I expected everyone very unrealistically at nine 30 to be waiting on the edge going, Oh, daddy's home.

Life's wonderful. But I didn't think this all through. And then finally, the last thing I did is I determined how to best deal with it. And my moment of truth was do I sit in this car, stuff it, leak it later, like at dinner, Hey honey, what's happening last night?

So if you give a sleeping pill to all the kids, you know, did you have a good day? I did, you know, you know, and that's what I would do. Or do I walk in there, feel very vulnerable, very naked and say to my wife, I feel hurt and lonely and disappointed because I needed you and you're my best friend and you weren't available and I understand why and I understand my expectations were totally unreasonable, but I need to be around you.

By the way, I never finished that story. It's just, I can tell you right where I was in the kitchen. My wife put her arms around me and she said, hun, I understand.

And you, why don't we just, when you get home tonight, let's take a walk, grab a cup of coffee and I just want to hear what's going on. And I got this great hug and you know, I had, I had a little decision that turned an entire day instead of stuffing anger, getting mad, leaking later and probably not having a good day being mad at other people, I'd find other people to blame. And instead I acknowledged my anger, A, I backtracked to the primary motion, B, I considered the cause, C, my expectations, D, I determined a course of action and in this particular one, although I wish I could say it's, I do it all the time, I did the right thing and I experienced God's grace.

I went from a wild stallion out of control, make your bed, have you had your quiet time, take out the trash, to a father who's forgiven, filled with the spirit, reconnected with my wife and with my kids. My anger taught me something, it helped me grow, it also helped me realize the extent of need that I have and it told my wife something, a lot of women, especially married to people that are kind of, have a lot of energy and it let my wife know, I really need you, I need you a lot and so it actually communicated love to her. And so I'm going to encourage you that when you get angry, and by the way, this will be very hard for stuffers, you may need people to tell you you're angry because you've been so trained in stuffing it. You actually need to give them permission that when you start behaving in certain ways, they can say, I think you're angry. But this can be a tremendous process and now what I want to do and the real practical is the who, what, how and when of determining how to deal with your anger. Okay, I mean, so what, what do you do?

I mean, so here's the questions. You want to ask at who am I really angry? Myself, someone else, the situation or God? Now this may sound simple but I expressed my anger, I thought I was angry at my son for not, you know, having his chores done or my daughter for not making her bed or my wife because she had the audacity to say I'm being unreasonable with the kids. But that's not who I was angry at. And until you get clear on who you're angry at, you can't deal with it rightly and you can't heal. My friend Dr. Becca Johnson in her counseling tells the story of the young woman who was date raped, been in counseling for a long time and was not making progress and she said, you know, had a breakthrough in one of the sessions and this young woman discovered that her anger's focus was really not so much on the perpetrator but she was mad at herself and she was taking on the guilt which is not uncommon with rape victims. It was why did I ever go out with that guy? I saw a little red flag, I mean obviously nothing and so she was blaming herself, mad at herself and it wasn't until she realized, you know what, I'm angry with me that then she could say, now wait a second, are you responsible when people hold you down and do unmentionable things?

No. See until you understand who you're angry at, you have a hard time dealing with what are the real issues and we believe a lot of lies. By the way, you know, we do a series on spiritual warfare. If you think this isn't an arena where the enemy, he's a liar, he's a condemner, he's an accuser, in fact the key passage is what? Be angry yet don't sin, don't let the sun go down on the anger and why? Lest you give the devil a foothold. So a lot of these, when you have unresolved anger, there's all kind of Christians that never think there's demonic, satanic, powerful forces. He doesn't need to have things move in your house or scare you to death if he has you believing a lie about condemnation and ruining your present relationships. I mean why should he show you himself when he has you buffaloed now? And by the way, some of you are starting to deal with anger issues and starting to talk about things and it gets really hard and really difficult and really threatening. I've got news for you, there is huge spiritual opposition about you doing and obeying and listening what we're talking about.

It's a stronghold. So the first thing you need to find out is who are you angry at? I have a very, very close friend, godly young woman known for years and about every six months to 13 months she has a complete meltdown. She's been single, she's now in her late 40s and attractive, bright, all the things you would ever think and she gets depressed. It took about five years to realize and for her to admit she's mad at god. She's really mad at god.

Why haven't you brought someone into my life? And she has some really warped views of god and so she thinks god is punishing her and she has a lot of things but until she came to the point where she realized she wasn't mad at these guys who asked you out once, these guys that once you get sort of serious back away, she wasn't mad that Christian guys seem to be, she had her anger in all kind of different areas, she finally realized I'm mad at god. And by the way, at least from the book of Job and from the Psalms, god doesn't seem to be too upset when people are honest and candid and angry with him in order to get to the heart of issues.

He can handle it. The lord is near to the broken hearted, he's near to those who are crushed in spirit. He's near to those to come him in truth. Isaiah quoting god says, call to me, present your cause that you might be proved right.

God longs more than anything else for us to be honest and come to him with the raw pain and the hurt that we have. So number one, as you go through this, you acknowledge your anger, your backtracking, then you want to say, well, who am I mad at? Second, what should I do?

Right? Okay, now I've discovered who I'm mad at. Well, it's my spouse, it's one of my kids, it's me, it's god. Well, what should I do? Express it directly or release it indirectly? Do I confront the situation or do I conceal it? Will my plans make matters worse or make them better?

This is where I'm going to ask Dr. Becca Johnson, she says it in two paragraphs because this is critical. What do you do when you realize, A, you're angry and B, you're angry at someone? Do you directly go at it and deal with it and when do you not? She writes, when we find ourselves in an unwanted situation with angry feelings, we basically have two choices.

Do I express my feelings directly to the person or do I release them indirectly through various activities? Dealing with it directly means choosing to confront the situation. We try and change it. We act rather than acquiesce. We take action and appropriately let the person involved know about our anger and its root emotions, what contributed to their existence and what we would like to be different. It's best to express ourselves clearly without blaming or attacking. We let our anger be known, but in ways we previously discussed, I feel blank when you blank.

I wish you would versus demand. We get it out wisely and carefully, never impulsively or without consideration of the consequences and the causalities. Dealing with our anger indirectly gives us more options. Sometimes it's best to accept things the way they are, conform and not to share our anger with those involved, conceal, but it's important to make sure our motivation isn't from an uncomfortable situation. We choose this option not by default or out of hopelessness, but out of a calculated conclusion that it would be best not to stir the waters or rock the boat at this particular time in this particular situation. Wisdom sometimes demands that we choose not to provoke or reprove someone when past history or other circumstances dictate it to be an unwise practice. Sometimes we have to find a new job, do business with a different company, discontinue an unhealthy relationship. We choose not to confront, but to quit.

We should consider this only after we've weighed all other options carefully and determined that letting go is the best course of action. Does it make sense? See, there's times where you work for a boss and he's making sexual advances. I feel uncomfortable when you make jokes like that and they continue to make sexual advances and you understand that your role in the company is of the kind that there may be a time there's someone here to report this to and you need to directly say this is the way it is and understand the consequences. There's other times where maybe it's a different situation and you realize no matter what you do, you're powerless. Your role in the company, your role in the relationship, you've said it 78 times, it's the 79th, nothing has changed, you're trying to reprove a mocker and you realize you know something, all it will do is inflame the problem, I've prayed about it, I'm willing, I'm not uncomfortable, I would do it and you pray and God says you know something, this is not one, don't go down this road again. How many times do you need to knock your head against that wall for that bump on your head to get bigger and bigger and more painful and realize on this one, you know what, there was a time, what did Jesus say to some of the disciples? Get the dust off your feet, move on to the next town. You don't always have the ability and sometimes it's not God's will to resolve everything with everyone. You do the best you can as far as it depends on you and that's why by the way we have a Holy Spirit. He will show you if you're willing and open what to do in various situations.

The third issue is not only the who or the what but the how. How do I deal with the situation? Should I do it in person? Should I do it on the phone? Should I do it through a letter? How do you know what to do? I would say the best way if at all possible is in person.

It's the hardest way but that's the best way because one, you can read the body language and you know the goal is you speak the truth in love. I feel hurt, I feel disappointed, I felt used when and really you get to express your anger to a person when your motive is I love them and I want to restore the relationship. Not this will make me feel better because I'm getting vengeance. The goal of most anger is vengeance and so you need to forgive the person, right? I'm going to release you, that's what forgiveness is all about. I'm going to be merciful to you the way God has been merciful to me but I'm not going to be a doormat. I'm going to tell you I feel this way when you do this but I'm doing it not because I can guarantee the result, it's because I love you and you need to know the truth and the truth will set you free and I'm not going to sit on this and bury this and stuff this and pretend that things are okay and have an inauthentic relationship. In person is usually the best way but sometimes because of how the person might respond you might say well gosh I did that once and that's how when they rewired my jaw, right? Or I did that once and it was and so maybe a letter is the best way to go to a person that whether they're dead or whether it would be totally inappropriate and you know the response to write a very specific letter I feel blank when you and because you and you write it out and list it out and you get it out here. I remember a time where the long story I won't go into it but I was a guy called me under the premise of something and was trying to trap me and recorded the conversation trying to make me say something bad about someone else and then never played it but told people I'd said things and you know it was a I was pretty young you know I was like 38 and I was livid I mean I was just I found out about I was I mean livid I mean I had anger fantasies you know like pretending terrible things happened to him and saying stuff does the Lord you know and I and I was eating up and I couldn't sleep and I was angry and I remember eating lunch with a fellow pastor a really godly guy and and he said you know what Chip you need to do you need to write that guy a letter you need to get it all out you need to get it really straight and man there's a brother that really loves me and so man I did and I wrote it all out wrote it all out wrote it out and said let me read that thing and and I he read it all he goes wow so the motivation for this letter was well man this guy did this terrible stuff and he needs to know so so the so the motivation is justice right and then I noticed that there's some little innuendo here except it's not very innuendo it's like you're kind of you're really slamming this guy that's true well okay it's true but so you really want to pay him back I don't know if I'd call it that that sounds too much like vengeance and that sounds like something only God should do and anyway I I wrote that letter and he said why don't you try rewriting it again when you feel like the goal of the letter would you restore his relationship to God and his relationship to you it took me three or four days for I could get to where I was willing to do that I eventually did it I wrote out a letter and then he challenged me said you know what I encourage you to do why don't you take that letter put it in an envelope and put it in your briefcase and why don't you sit on it for 30 days and I did and all the venom all the junk all the injustice then God began to speak to me and then in that particular case that letter became just a little monument of God I'm gonna trust my reputation to you at the end of it the core of my anger was not what he did the core of my anger was I was zealous for my reputation I was zealous for what people might think and for me it was a step of faith to say I'm gonna trust that to you Lord and I watched after years later God took care of all of that I never sent the letter there's a time to send a letter there's a time not to send the letter for some of you you write a letter and you have a good friend look at it and help you process but there's some people in this room I guarantee that have 10 20 30 40 years of pain and resentment that's buried towards parents or people or someone who walked out on you that is unresolved and it's been a poison in your soul and you need to sit down maybe this afternoon and write a two or three page letter of what they did how you actually felt how angry you really felt the negative impact and consequences it's had on your life and you get down to the end and then by the grace of God when you can say it and mean it and I forgive you and you may never need to send the letter and make sure someone reads it a couple times before you ever send anything Kip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute you've been listening to the first part of his message turning anger from a foe to a friend from his series overcoming emotions that destroy anger has always had the reputation of being a wrong or unhealthy response but did you know that anger is often the byproduct of a deeper problem and if properly handled can actually be used for good in this five part series chip uncovers the genuine sources of anger in our lives and explains how we can turn our frustrations into a helpful tool if you're ready to better understand and control these feelings of anger and don't miss a single program for a limited time all the resources for this series are discounted whether you're looking for the small group study guide the message notes or the book chip wrote on this topic we've got you covered to learn more about overcoming emotions that destroy go to LivingontheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003 that's 888-333-6003 or LivingontheEdge.org app listeners tap special offers now before we go any further chip i can see you want to jump in here and share something that's really special to you one of the great joys of my life is the letters emails facebook messages that i get from people literally all around the country and all around the world and they tell me these amazing stories of how Living on the Edge has been a tool used by god to change their life maybe you're one of those people that have really been impacted by the ministry i mean i hear from people from every age profession background every person imaginable and what i hear is this same constant drumbeat of god spoke to me i took a step of faith now god's using me and what i want you to know is that that's the heart of our ministry we want to put teaching and tools and small group materials and downloadable things that we actually give away to help people not just live like christians but be ambassadors and agents of change and grace in their homes their schools and their workplaces and if you're one of those people that god has impacted you and actually you're impacting others because of Living on the Edge i have a very specific request would you consider becoming a monthly financial partner and of course it helps us practically no doubt about it it would really help us to know that x amount of dollars are coming in from a monthly partner but literally even more than that it's about a group of people saying we want to be a part of this mission to make a difference in the crazy world that we're living in we want to make an impact and we want to make an impact with you all god's spoken to us god's changed us we want to help you help others and so here's my request today would you pray and just simply say lord if this is part of your desire for me to partner with Living on the Edge on a monthly basis will you show me and then show me what that looks like and how much and what i will say is whatever amount that is it's perfect whatever god shows you but what i long to see is people who partner that are on the team a part of the family and we make a difference together each and every day thank you in advance for doing whatever god shows you to do as you prayerfully consider your role with this ministry i want to remind you that every gift is significant when you partner with Living on the Edge you multiply our efforts and resources in ways that only god can do now to send a gift call us at triple eight three three three six zero zero three or go to Living on the Edge dot org that's triple eight three three three six zero zero three or Living on the Edge dot org app listeners tap donate your partnership is a great encouragement now here's chip with his application as we close today's program i'll remind you of the little story that i compared anger to a wild stallion you know there's nothing wrong with the horse but out of control dangerous under control useful that's your anger anger is not bad it is not sinful it is not wrong it is a neutral emotion that can be used for great good or great damage and most of us really have no idea how angry we are and then we talked about you know the the very specific game plan of be sure you know who you're angry at what you should do and then how to deal with the situation well i have a friend i was visiting and we're good buddies and he's a fellow pastor and we were talking and he went through a huge leadership issue in his church i mean just one of those deals that as a pastor you just wake up one day and you go what in the world happened and then he he talked to me apparently i dropped him this book in the mail a year or so ago and he said i started reading this book and he said i realized some of the big issues i mean bad things were happening out there and some ungodly things but he said i never in my life thought i was angry he said i realized i had major anger issues but i was a push him downer and a leaker and then i began to see how that had infected the leadership culture he said i read that book god did something crazy and then pretty soon i was sharing it in counseling he told me chip he said i just said ah forget it i bought a case of these things he says what i do now is i get in counseling i realize they got an anger issue i say you know what let's stop the counseling go ahead read this book come back in a couple weeks and he said thanks a lot you've helped me out so all i can tell you is you know even pastors we just people that we all think are so godly and so wonderful and they are but um anger is one of those issues that most of us have thought is so bad or we don't think we have an anger issue at all we never realize that god wants to use it for good how about you what do you need to do with your anger let's get out of the denial why don't you pray honestly god show me show me where i'm angry and how i can deal with it and i'll tell you what he'll meet you as we close i want you to know that as a staff we ask the lord to help you take whatever your next faith step is now if there's a way we can help we'd love to do that maybe give us a call at 888-333-6003 or connect with us at livingontheedge.org and while you're there you'll find resources on all kinds of topics many of them absolutely free well i'm glad you've been with us and until next time this is dave druy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge