Kindness & Goodness Crucifies Anger

All of us are familiar with anger. It’s usually our first reaction when our pride is hurt, our wills are obstructed, or when we’re wounded by others. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. God himself gets angry towards sin, wickedness, and injustice. But unlike God’s anger, ours isn’t often righteous. Instead, it festers within us and warps our ability to truly love others. Anger, properly understood, is actually a sign that something deeper is going on within us. By learning to examine our anger before reacting, confessing our anger to the God, and allowing Him to meet us in our anger, we can slowly make space for the Spirit to replace our anger with the fruits of kindness and goodness.

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 Good morning everybody. Good morning. I have done a lot of preaching, so y’all better sit down or else we’re never gonna make it through this. Uh, so, uh, my name is Whitney. Um, clearly I am not Pastor Trey or Pastor Caleb. Trey asked me to preach this week continuing our series, which is going through both the seven Deadly Sins and the, the Fruit of the Spirit.

And I, I wanna go back. I did this first service and just chastise everyone for just a moment if you would allow me, uh. When Pastor Trey the first week asked if anybody knew about the seven deadly sins out of two services, like four people raised their hands. I know. And I just want to call you all out.

You have seen the movie Seven. I know You have. You may not want to admit it in church, and that’s fine. I’m a pastor so I can, I can talk about that. But, uh, I just want to say that you guys know about the seven deadly sins and today we’re gonna be talking about anger. Um, which when he asked me to teach on this, I immediately assumed it’s probably because of gifting.

In some way, because when I think about, uh, where you guys sit, where I sit out there with you normally watching Pastor Trey and Pastor Caleb, like their gifting is really, really apparent. Um, I think about Pastor Trey, his ability to consume and recall information is just freakish. Um, just this past week, I’m in his together group and we are talking through, uh, the, the sin, the deadly sin of sloth based on Pastor Caleb’s, uh, sermon last week, uh, which is an excellent sermon, sermon.

And, and in the middle of talking about sloth, all of a sudden Trey is like, what was that thing that Saint Ignatius of Loyola said about sloth? And then he like looked around the room. As if anybody else in the room has a clue what Saint Ignatius of Loyola thinks about sloth. And it’s not just Pastor Tre though, it’s, it’s also Pastor Caleb when he’s not here.

I was in a meeting with them, both of them last week, uh, talking about this sermon. And as we were talking about it, I, I threw out a point that I wanted to make in the sermon, and Caleb like immediately leaned back and kind of raised his eyebrows, looked at Caleb and was, uh, looked at Trey and was like, that’s very Augustinian.

And Trey immediately like, confirmed this the whole time I’m sitting there. Like, I just like, thought it, yeah, like a minute ago. And the, their gifting is so obvious, like they’re, they’re brilliant. Both of them are absolutely brilliant. Their attention to detail as leaders is what makes Passion Creek so unique.

I think about the way that they’re, they’re both so diligent following through on everything that they start just so many great giftings and they’re both so cool. Am I right? Oh yeah. And so when I’m thinking about my turn to preach here on the topic of anger, I assumed it’s because of one of my greatest gifts.

I’m nice. And I think that there’s a temptation for us to assume that if you’re a nice person, you probably don’t battle with anger. You’ve like licked that sin or something like that. And I just want to go ahead and put out there for all the other nice people out there. We get angry, we feel anger, and usually the nice people, we are the ones that for some reason feel like we should hide that anger.

And I wanna welcome you nice people here along with me and let you know that you don’t have to hide that anger. That’s good all the time. That’s good. And then there are some of you that you are hiding because you show that anger way more than you wish you did. In front of your children, in front of your spouse to your parents at work.

Lots of people see your battle with anger and it may bring you here feeling like you need to hide in some way. When we bring out the sin that typifies your life, and for both of you, I want you to know we all walk through the doors of a church as sinners. You’re, you’re welcome here among the rest of us.

It’s not good company, but it is company because all of us are sinners before God. Yeah. And so when we’re looking at the topic of anger, we are gonna, uh, we’re gonna be going through the passage that we’ve been going through together, Galatians chapter five. And so I’m gonna read this out loud and I’ll ask you guys to stand with me in honor of the reading of God’s word.

And I’m gonna read Galatians five verses 16 through 24, and you can follow along there. Galatians five 16. I say, then walk by the spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh for the flesh desires. What is against the spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you don’t do what you want, but if you’re led by the spirit.

You’re not under the law Now. The works of the flesh are obvious. Sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I’m warning you about these things, as I have warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, but the fruit of the spirit, but love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

The law is not against such things now. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Let me pray for us. Father, I pray that today through your word, you will hold up a mirror. To our own hearts. And God, we ask for your spirit to give us the boldness to look at that mirror, that reflection of our own sin.

Lord, reveal to us the way that our anger, Lord, is marked by sin and needs to be laid at the foot of the cross. Help us to see you and to leave here changed. It’s in your son’s name we pray. Amen. Amen. You guys can be seated. Now. As we begin, I wanna give you just a little roadmap of, of where we’re going today and where I want us to, to end up realizing what I want us to take away is that anger, tempered by the fruit of the spirit is an essential aspect of the gospel story.

That’s good. Now. In fact, not only is it an essential aspect of the gospel story that may sound strange, but I want us to think back, uh, about one of the most influential and famous documents ever produced within the United States. Uh, it it was a sermon written in 1714 by a pastor named Jonathan Edwards.

The sermons sermon was entitled, sinners in the Hands of An Angry God. And this sermon, which you could read in like 10 minutes, you could pull it up for free right now. Don’t do that. Pay attention. Um, but it would only take you like 10 minutes to read through this sermon. And, and yet amazingly, it was received in a culture that was overrun by spiritual apathy, a culture where people showed up to church on Sundays as both a social event and a way to reclaim their status among other people who were attending church at the time.

It was totally devoid of the spirit of God, a passion and a movement for God’s glory. And it was received by those people and led to mass revival because people heard. About their plight in the face of an angry God. And they repented. And then that sermon was taken and it was passed through other pastors who read that sermon to their churches.

And church after church began to repent through the work of the Holy Spirit calling people to follow Christ through this sermon that was about an angry God. Wow. And I mean, as I think about that idea that God used the sin, the, the idea, the concept of an angry God to spark the first great awakening, I’ve gotta ask a few questions when we’re talking about anger as a deadly sin.

Sure. Or anger as a sin of the flesh as we see in Galatians chapter five, what does that mean for an angry God? Yeah. And this is important for us because God, through the inspiration of scripture, he has revealed himself as angry repeatedly, time after time, he was angry at the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart.

He was angry at his people, who in their idolatry, crafted a golden calf so that they could worship it. God was angry time after time in scripture, and he was angry when his people were whining and complaining as he led them through the desert, which should be encouraging to all parents of toddlers who whi and cry.

That’s right. You might actually be resembling God who was angry at his children for their whining and their crying. But what we see is that God had no problem revealing about himself. What a lot of us feel, we need to hide. He gets angry sometimes. But what’s really important, and what we’re gonna spend a few minutes here looking at is the fact that God’s anger is very different than ours.

And so we’re, I wanna take us through a few different scriptures here to look at God in his anger. Uh, you don’t have to flip to all of them unless you’re, you know, like state winner, superior, uh, of your, what, what vac not vacation. Bible School. What is it? Sword drill. Oh yeah. Whatever. If, if you’re a hero, you can try to flip to ’em.

Just write ’em down, you know, that’d be fine. They’re also in the notes. But, um, we’re just gonna go through some passages really quickly to, to demonstrate what God is like in his anger. And so the first one is Psalm chapter seven, where we’re gonna see that God in his anger is always righteous and just.

Let me read this for you or, or, or read a few different verses where the psalmist is coming to God at a time when he feels besieged by his enemies. And in case you’re wondering, that’s not like an internal feeling. He was literally being chased by guys with swords and chariots and armor. So he is being physically assaulted and running from his enemies at this moment where in verse one he says, Lord God, I take refuge in you, save and deliver me from all who pursue me.

Or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me. This is a visceral image. He’s painting of the danger that he is in. In verse six, he says, arise Lord in your anger. Rise up against the rage of my enemies awake, my God, decree justice, which if you are in under immediate physical threat.

From someone who is in a rage. Doesn’t it give you comfort to think that your savior, your protector, might also be capable of responding in anger at the injustice that you face? Yeah, that’s true. That’s what the psalmist took comfort in in this moment, and yet he also understood the full nature of God.

Because we see later on in verse 11 when he says, God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day. God’s anger is always righteous, and it is always just, and that should bring comfort to us when we are being dealt with unjustly, right? It should bring comfort to us when we look out at a world that is full of justice.

It should bring warmth and safety and security to us to know that our protector is capable of getting angry and displaying his wrath in a way that is both righteous and just because that is God in his anger. Uh, not only that though, we can see, uh, in Jeremiah 30, I wanna share with you this cool passage of scripture where we see an important thing that God in his anger always accomplishes his will.

Yeah. And so, uh, just to give you a little background, uh, Jeremiah 29 as this, this chapter where, uh, God’s people have been, uh, exiled from the land that he gave to them. So they’re in a foreign land living under the thumb of an evil king, and they’re being oppressed, they’re being persecuted. Their, their dream job is to be a slave inside of the castle because their state is so low in this place.

And God sends Jeremiah to them and says, Jeremiah, I need you to give a message. And what he gives, the message he gives to them, he says, I see you where you are. He says, I hear you. And he says, I haven’t forgotten you. In fact, he said, I have a plan for you, a plan to prosper you. And then he goes on and in chapter 30, we see God begin to explain that he hears their sorrow as they’re crying out as exiles.

Then he tells them in, in chapter 30 that I’m going to break the chains of the, the people, uh, of the ones who have enslaved you. And, and God says, I am going to restore to you everything that you have lost. If you are in a place where you feel oppressed, like the world has taken and taken and taken from you.

If you feel enslaved to sin enslaved, maybe to your job or to unhealthy relationships, I want you to understand God would say to you that he sees you where you are. And he’s capable of breaking those chains. And we want that God in his anger to be capable of doing those things. And at, at the end of chapter 30 in verse 24, God says, the fierce anger of the Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart.

And that tells us that God in his anger, he’s not capricious, he’s not blowing up at unexpected random times. He’s not set off by circumstances that went in a direction that he didn’t want. His anger is measured, it’s proportioned appropriately so that he can accomplish his will. God’s anger is always righteous and just it always accomplishes his will.

And then I want you to see the, the reason that we are all gathered in this room. Is because God’s a God in his anger paves the path to redemption. Amen. Just reading a passage, Isaiah 53, 5, he was pierced for our transgressions upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. That’s an an illusion to Jesus Christ.

Yep. Yep. And what it’s saying to us is that the righteous anger of God that stands, that is set against all sin, all brokenness in this world, including ours. Yeah. Like I hope I’m not the only sinner that came in the room today. Right. I mean, I don’t wanna brag, but I actually think it’s like one of my other strengths is sinning.

And so I’m grateful, yeah. That all of ga, God’s anger towards sin and brokenness and all that defiles our world. Was poured out on Jesus because that means I no longer have to wait for the day when his anger will be poured out on me. Wow. You see, in Jesus, God’s anger must be poured out because it is righteous and it is just, and yet in Jesus, his goodness is demonstrated because it, his anger is exercised against our unrighteousness.

But in Jesus also, we see his kindness that he made a way so that we don’t have to suffer under his anger. That’s right. It is in Jesus that we find redemption through the meeting of God’s goodness and anger with his kindness towards every single one of us. Good news, first John four 10 says, and this is love, that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Jesus was put in our place so that even God’s anger leads to his goodness in his kindness manifesting at the cross. Wow. And so every one of us should see and marvel at the beauty of God’s anger because it leads us to redemption. And ultimately this, this righteous anger of God does redeem us in this.

This anger though, it’s an emotion when you feel anger, it’s an emotion that you share with your creator God, which is pretty crazy to think about. I, I don’t consider often how many things I share with God. I assume not many. And yet, when you feel anger. You are feeling an emotion that God himself also feels, and to be angry is to identify with an essential part of our creator.

But here’s the rub. We aren’t God. Right? And to, to make this more personal for all of us, let me remind you, you are not God. Right? And I really feel the need to spend a couple of minutes on this because of the cultural moment in which we live at this time. Uh, because the idea that you are not God may sound simple, but when you consider the, the cultural milieu that we grow up in that is formed and shaped us.

Yep. Yeah. I want you to think about a, a book that was written by a guy named Carl Truman. Um, great fantastic book that’s called, uh, the Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. He wrote it a few years back, and I honestly believe it’s one of the most important books of the last 50 years that’s been written, just an absolutely phenomenal book.

And he talks about the way that the, the idea of self has been reshaped in our culture. Like there once was a time where every person understood themselves to be grounded in God and formed by community. And that was how everyone understood themselves, that they were created by God and that they were a part of essential to shaped by their community.

But now we live in a different time, the time that we live in now, it, it says that you, you yourself is entirely shaped by something that’s entirely internal and emotional. And in the modern self says, look within yourself to discover who you are. Right? I mean, have you seen a Disney movie in the last 40 years?

Exactly. There’s no other message that they have other than look within yourself. And if you want to be happy, be yourself. Live that out to the best of your I your ability. That is the true path to fulfillment and happiness. That’s the message that our culture repeats in every piece of art that we create.

And yet, what I want us to understand, Carl Truman looks at that and he points out that this idea that ourself is entirely internal and emotional. This is the psych equalization of ourselves, but he says there’s more to it because going even beyond that, there’s this constant pressure in message that living authentically means you have to express that, and it must be affirmed.

In order for that to be your true self. And he calls that expressive individualism. Now, what this means is that when you grow up with this idea that myself is who I am internally, and I find it by looking inside at all times and then myself is best, uh, is best formed and affirmed when I express it everywhere else.

Now you run into the problem when other people disagree with who you think you are. And all of a sudden in our culture, when people push back on whatever I feel or I think might be true, it doesn’t feel like they’re disagreeing with me. It feels like they’re attacking me. Does this sound like our culture at this moment?

Yes. In this cultural moment, disagreement isn’t disagreement. It’s hate. Not only that in this world, our anger. Not only feels justified, it feels righteous. Hmm. Is it any wonder that when you get online you see the anger and the rage poured out constantly at every corner by people who are demanding that their truth, their perspective, their idea must be honored by others, and to disagree with it is to hate them.

And this is where it gets dangerous, because when the, the modern self becomes your final authority, wow. You begin to function a lot like a God. I mean, at that moment, when yourself preach is the most important thing in your world, what that means. Is that your feelings become sovereign over all the world.

It means that your perspective is infallible. It means that your truth becomes untouchable. And if that’s the case, then your anger, it’s not only justified, it might be holy and worthy of the wrath that you can summon. Wow.

But that’s a lie. Yeah. Amen. We are not God’s, come on. Ourselves, are not formed by looking within us. It’s by confirming what God has declared about us. That’s good. And what this means is that God has told us every single one of us is born tainted with sin, which means that even when we reflect him.

Feeling anger. That anger can quickly become entangled with the sin that is inside of our hearts. And that brings me to the point that our anger is not like God’s anger. He is always holy, always righteous, always under control, and always gets what he wants. Our anger on the other side, our anger is usually reactive and pretty selfish.

It’s often rented. Uh, it’s often rooted in some sort of offense, not justice. And these can be really big things that incite our anger or really small things. For myself, I’m bald. I don’t know if you knew that. I know it. It’s okay to talk about it. Um, and I’m not angry about that. I was angry about that for a long time.

I was angry at God. Um, bald men. You understand? Uh, there’s a season that you go through like, God, what have you taken away from me? Like, I now have to talk about getting my hairs cut. ’cause I can number them. I’m almost like God. Um, but at the same time, it’s, it’s, it made me angry for a while and I had to get over that.

But it doesn’t make me mad anymore. I’ll tell you what does make me angry is that one day I had to, as a 40-year-old begin looking for a device to help me trim hair that was growing in my ear for a bald guy that just feels really offensive from God. And you have to spend time like dealing with that anger that I had towards God.

And that may be a petty thing, but there may also be really big things that keep your anger burning like a smoldering fire. The coals always hot, present, smoke drifting out inside of your soul. Yeah, and at any moment something in your life may spark that fire and turn it into a raging inferno. That kind of fire, that kind of anger may be present inside of you and usually it’s coming because of a disappointment that you experienced.

God, I thought I was going to do this and now look where I am. God, he or she said that they would do that, but look at how they’ve behaved. God, I thought we were moving towards this and you that, and like a little tiny petulant God, you are angry because you feel like you’ve been pushed off your throne because what you wanted, what you desired, what you planned did not come true.

Wow. And in this moment we’ve gotta understand our anger is usually reactive and selfish, and it, it almost never gets us what we want. I mean, how many times have you lashed out in anger and then sat down an hour later and been like, that was a good idea. I have. You had that man, how many times have you responded with a short, quick barking reply to your spouse and then late in bed later that night and thought that did it?

Yeah. All right. Tomorrow morning she’s gonna tell me, Hey, I thought about when you yelled at me, and you are totally right and I love you. Have you ever thought that? Rarely does our anger get us. What we want and desire. In fact, there’s even a passage of scripture that tells us this. James chapter four, verses one and two.

It says, what is the source of wars and fights among you? Don’t they come from your passions that wage war within you? Verse two, you desire and do not have you murder and covet and cannot obtain. Our anger is not like God’s. It does not accomplish our will. In fact, usually it sets fire to the most important things in our life.

The things that we actually want to see fixed. It makes it worse than it was because we vented our anger. So when we act like our anger should achieve what God’s anger does, that we should get our way because we vent our anger. We’re not just misled, we’re actually acting like we are a God and our will should reign.

And that’s something that scripture confronts head on. Uh, James one nine actually brings out another point about our anger is that our anger does not produce the righteousness of God. Yeah. And in fact, I think this point is probably the best reason for us to understand the importance of anger in your life.

The, the anger of God paved the way through Jesus interacting with his goodness and his kindness for the cross to be the way that all of us escape God’s anger. By hiding ourselves under Christ, our anger brings more and more brokenness. When we vent it, when we allow ourselves to be mastered by it, instead of controlling it the way that God designs.

And in that moment, if that’s you, if that’s the moment that you are living in where your anger has looked, anything but righteous, where your anger has destroyed the things most important to you, where your anger is hurting, the people who are closest to you, your spouse, your parents, your children, in that moment, your anger does not produce righteousness, but it will lead you if you will allow it to the foot of the cross.

Yes, at the feet of Jesus who will redeem you from your sinful anger. All you have to do is lay it down. At his feet. Amen. Ask him to be the one who replaces your heart of stone so that you will have a heart of living flesh, wanting the things that he wants. Yeah. Not arguing about the things that you want.

Yeah. Bring your anger to him so that he can begin to fix the relationships that you’ve wrecked because you’ve not gotten the things that you wish you could have. Our anger does not produce the righteousness of God, but it can lead us, if you will, follow it in humility to the foot of the cross to where God.

It can impute the righteousness of Jesus to us where God can begin to form us in the image of Jesus, so that we reflect more of his goodness, more of his kindness. That’s what the fruit of the Spirit is all about. We come to Christ and we tell him, God, I need less of me in my life and I need more of you.

Yes, and he fills us with all the fruit of the spirit that we’ve been talking about, but specifically goodness that cleans us from the sin that so easily entangles us. When we give way to our anger, he fills us with kindness that we can bestow like a gift of grace upon the people that we once were so angry with.

Wow, wow. Our anger does not produce righteousness, but if you will humble yourself. It will lead you to the one who will make you righteous. So scripture tells us, it expects that you are going to be angry. It is not a surprise if you’re here today hanging your head knowing that your spouse or your parents or your friends are thinking about you because of your anger.

I’m so glad that you are here. Yeah. And I want you to understand that the Bible knew people like me and people like you would struggle with our anger, and that’s why the Bible tells us to beware of the sin that can so easily entangle our hearts in our anger. But as we talk, I, I wanna take just a few moments and talk about how should we then.

Actually handle our anger. And for this, I wanna use a, a, an illustration, uh, given by, uh, Saint Augustine. Uh, that’s the fancy way of saying it. Trey likes that way. If you say Augustine, that’s Caleb. That’s, oh, that’s Caleb. Oh, man. Okay. So, which, sorry, Caleb, I threw you under the bus there, but Saint Augustine.

There you go. Had this amazing illustration where he talked about anger and he said that your anger is actually a feeling, an emotion, a symptom that’s telling you about a deeper issue. And so in that, he said that our anger is like smoke from a fire. Like there’s a fire that is creating this feeling inside of us.

But all we’re feeling in anger is the smoke. So imagine that there’s a house that you walk up on, it’s on a lovely street, but you look at it and this house has smoke seeping out from under the doors coming out through the, the cracks in the window, and you realize that house is on fire. What are some different ways that we could respond?

And I, I wanna draw out some ways that were tempted to respond that are unhelpful. Um, first imagine that your first response, seeing the smoke coming out of the house is to run into the house and just open up all the windows. Yeah. Did you help the house? No. No, the, the fire is still raging inside of the house.

The problem is not the smoke. But think about that because how many times in our anger are we tempted to vent our anger? Right? Right. Assuming that that’s actually going to help. The book of Proverbs says that only the fool gives full vent to his anger. Wow. And that idea that we would just open up a window.

All, all you’re really doing is, is spilling out your smoke, your anger onto the rest of the neighborhood without ever addressing the fire that is raging inside. Yeah. Think, think about if when we play the blame game with our anger, I mean, this may be that, uh, imagine firemen running up to this house, seeing it with the smoke coming out, flames inside, and then they run into the neighbor’s house, right?

That’s what we’re doing when we play the blame game. The fire is inside of you. Right. The anger that you feel is revealing to you that there is something burning inside of you, and yet our temptation is to point to someone else. You made me angry. I mean, I, I do this all the time. Uh, and you know, one of the worst things about preaching is that God uses the text to work on you first, right?

So like, I’m thinking about this particular part and I’m remembering like something that I do when my wife and I fight, which like Caleb, hypothetically, we don’t do that, right? Cultured people don’t fight. But when we do, there are times where I police my spouse’s tone. Anybody do that? Like, I didn’t like the way you said that to me, and I do this all the time.

Ally’s so excited to hear me saying this right now. She won’t say it ’cause she’s really kind. Um, but like, there are times where what I’m saying to her is, your tone made me angry. That’s not the way that the Bible teaches us about anger. The, the Bible teaches us that anger is something that is given to us to help us realize there’s something else wrong.

And when we point the finger at someone else, all we’re actually doing is skipping the hard work of putting out the fire that’s in our own heart. Wow. I want you to also imagine the idea of, of what the, the option that some people take, that they see the house on fire, and as they approach, they decide, Hey, we better fight fire with fire, so they go ahead and burn down the whole neighborhood.

Right. And does, does that not typify our cultural engagement right now? That we fight fire with fire. Newsflash, if your idea of fighting a fire is setting other things on fire, you’re an arsonist. Exactly. And so many of us move throughout our digital cultures as if we are arsonists fighting fire with fire.

And that’s not helping anything. I mean, Romans 1221 says to us, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. When we’re thinking about the fruit of the spirit, instead of fighting fire with fire, we should be pouring out the water of the Holy Spirit, which is grace and love and care forgiveness upon those that we’re angry with.

That’s how you fight a fire. But the truth is, that’s exactly what we need, is the Holy Spirit. To help us deal with the fires that rage inside of us. Amen. We need him to so fill the space in our heart that there’s no oxygen left for the fires that burn. Yeah. The way that Paul said it Wow, was that we need the fruit of the spirit to fill us.

We need love and joy and peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control to So fill us that there’s no room left for the fires that burn and hurt those who are close to us. So as we are getting ready to close today, I wanna leave us with just a couple of practices we can put into place to help us be better formed into the image of Jesus, to help us avoid getting ensnared in our sin, even as we feel anger.

Yeah. The first one is I want to invite you that when you feel anger flaring up, when you feel those, that smoldering fire, that’s burning, when you can feel the smoke, the heat rising, I want to invite you to pause to identify your angers source. And I want to even give you a passage of scripture that you can, you can recite like a prayer in that moment.

Because remember, we don’t point to the other houses for the fire that’s inside of us. Instead, we pray. Psalm 1 39, 23 through 24, search me oh God, and know my heart. Reveal to me if there is any evil way inside me, we ask the Holy Spirit to help us identify the source of our anger instead of venting it everywhere we go.

The second thing I want to invite you to do is to adopt the practice that when you feel the heat and anger rising in your heart, take that moment to confess instead of justify. How many times in our anger do we jump to giving reasons that we know that we are right and that other thing or person is wrong?

God would much rather us take that moment to confess the simple confession that I am angry instead of an accusation. Look what you’ve done. You can recite James five 16 saying, confess your sins to one another that you may be healed. What if we believed that confessing our sin is what would heal our anger instead of believing that attacking something or someone is what would heal our anger?

How would our relationships be healed if we believed God? In that way, if we offered kindness out of an overflow of goodness in our heart. Yeah. Because of the spirit’s work and our commitment to pausing and to confessing instead of attacking. Yes. We’re gonna take a moment right now to, to respond