[Gary Petty] Anger can be one of the most destructive forces in our lives. Allow this emotion to be uncontrolled and you can let it ruin your life, or it can energize us to positive actions like what we saw in Jesus.

[Narrator] Join our presenters from the United Church of God, as we bring you help for today and hope for tomorrow directly from your Bible here on beyond today.

[Gary Petty] How many times have you in anger or frustration blurted out a devastating remark to a friend, husband, wife, coworker, even a child?

Are you a person whose anger is a slow burn? You're calm on the outside, scheming on the inside so that your enemy is eventually hurt or destroyed in revenge. And even if you never carry out the plan you still harbor the fantasy of releasing your anger on people who've hurt you, or maybe you just don't like. Maybe you're the type that lets anger build up inside of you. You seldom raise your voice or show anger, but inside you're bitter and churning until one day you get sick or even have a heart attack. Or are you the type of person who is constantly yelling, you're just letting it out all the time, you're screaming at war with it seems like everyone in your life.

You know, anger is one of the most powerful emotions we can experience. An uncontrolled anger can destroy marriages, wreck careers, break up friendships, and even damage your health. We can't experience healthy relationships with others until we learn to deal with a powerful and potentially destructive emotion of anger. So today, we're going to take a biblical overview of anger, how it affects your life, and look at some instructions on how to control anger.

Now understand, not all anger is unhealthy. Paul actually wrote to the Ephesians, he said, "Be angry and do not sin." You know you're actually designed by God to experience anger. In fact, it's impossible not to feel anger in certain circumstances. Paul wrote that we must learn to deal with anger so that we don't sin, by doing damage to others or damage to ourselves. The Bible tells us that God even experiences anger. In fact, in Psalms, David wrote, "God is angry with the wicked every day."

Now it's very important to understand though, God's anger isn't like our dysfunctional anger. Our anger many times is destructive. God's anger is always a response of His goodness against evil. Our anger, well it's for a lot of reasons, many of them are actually selfish. And one problem we have as human beings is that we can experience anger so often that it becomes a predominant emotion. A person can think angry thoughts so much, that they feel angry even when there's nothing to be angry about. I mean, have you ever heard someone describe another person by, "Wow, he's just looking for a fight." And it seems like no matter where you look, social media, the workplace, the news cycle, political discourse, almost everywhere and almost everyone seems to be irrationally angry.

Well, in the New Testament, the Apostle James wrote this about anger. He said, "Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak and slow to wrath. For the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God." Our sort of normal human anger does not produce the righteousness of God and righteousness is God's standards for a relationship with Him and how we treat other people. So let's face the ugly truth. It is easy for us to feel that our anger, whatever you're feeling, when you're angry about something, is justified because your anger's good. And you can then say, "How I treat another person, well they're justified that they deserved it." And they become the object of your wrath.

James is teaching that we must develop reasoned anger instead of uncontrolled unreasoned anger, and the only way we can learn to control irrational anger is to learn to control our thoughts and how we think about anger. So James makes three points. It helps us to understand how to control anger. He said, "Be swift to hear." In other words, learn to listen to understand before you do anything. He said, "Be slow to speak." Learn to think before you speak. I remember this as a child I was told, "Listen, count to 10 before you do anything." Because I was always in trouble, because I'd lose my temper and then like, "Oops, I wish I wouldn't have done that, or said that." Count to 10. And then he also said, "Be slow to wrath." Learn to control the anger response, we have an anger response. And it's like we can say don't have anger, but you can't do that. You have to control the anger response.

So why are these three steps so hard to do? Why is it so difficult to listen to others, think before you speak, and learn to control the anger response? Well, anger is a very complicated emotion in us. To understand more deeply, let's look at a few sources of anger. This is why we get angry. First, I just call this hereditary disposition. Some of us are predisposed to have a quicker temper or be more intense than other people. I mean, how many times have you heard someone say, "Oh, she has the same quick temper as her dad." But this can't be used as an excuse for uncontrolled behavior. But at times it can help us understand why we might struggle with say a quick temper when we see other members of our family that way. We also feel angry when we respond to a threat to our life, our wellbeing or our self-image. When you feel threatened, the brain creates a fight or flight response. Fear and anger motivate us to react, or we wouldn't react. It is the fight response that causes us to turn and face the attacking dog instead of running away. There's some anger in that.

Now here's the problem. We can experience the same emotional intensity when we feel someone has done or said something that attacks our self-image. Someone hurts our feelings, so we fight back as if we're fighting an attacking dog. Another source of angry response, it's influenced from our environment. Let's face it, we're all influenced by everything that happens to us every day, things that happen around us. When children see others react in unreasoned anger or witness violence as a viable solution to problems, they begin to accept that that's proper behavior. One biblical proverb says this, "Make no friendship with an angry man and with a furious man, do not go, lest you learn his ways and set a snare for your soul." The point of the proverb is that we will often become like the people we see as friends, the people we hang out with.

We can also be conditioned to anger by our modern media environment. It seems like the news media sells fear, victimhood and anger, addicting their followers to an angry response all the time. Sometimes you must step back and seek inner peace with God.

Anger can also become an impulsive response because of repeated negative experiences. Repeated experiences, especially childhood trauma, and some of you have gone through physical, emotional or even sexual abuse can cause and create a deep seated anger. And this anger becomes irrational. Making a person incapable, it seems of long-term relationships or results in their violent behavior and an inability to interact with others in a healthy social environment.

Now we've looked at some sources of anger in our lives. Now let's look at some ways we can allow anger to control us in an unhealthy way, okay. One is uncontrolled venting. Uncontrolled venting is screaming, name calling, sarcastic put downs, throwing things, even violence. You know, many therapists suggest vicarious venting, like hitting a punching bag, or going someplace where you can be alone and scream. Some suggest looking at yourself in a mirror and talking to yourself about your anger. And you know these behaviors may be a helpful way of dissipating anger, but it doesn't help us always understand why we're angry.

Another unhealthy way of dealing with anger is repression or bottling anger. This person can have learned to outwardly control their temper, but the anger's still there, it's churning inside. You may know somebody like that, you may be like that. The unresolved anger causes them to become bitter and negative about everything in life. And repressed anger can suddenly be released in unreasoned actions. Think of a woman who has asked her husband and her children for years, "After dinner, take the dirty dishes, please help me and put it at the sink or just put them in the dishwasher. Okay, just put them in the dishwasher." And years go by and nobody ever helps. And one day the family, they've had a good meal, they're sitting around laughing and talking and they hear coming out of the kitchen screaming and crashing noises, and they go in the kitchen and find mom smashing the dirty dishes on the floor in frustration and anger.

And then there's denial. This person simply denies their anger, and it takes a toll on their emotional and physical health. How many times have you looked at a person who is obviously angry, and when you ask them what's the problem, they reply, "Nothing!" And you know, there's going to be a showdown, okay.

What can you do to reason through anger so that you aren't damaging relationships and harming your own wellbeing? Well, you begin by recognizing the obvious. You must recognize that most of the anger we experience is destructive to our own emotional and spiritual health. Anger sabotages our ability to have meaningful relationships. And when you face this reality of the consequences of uncontrolled anger you can begin to take steps to learn how to control your anger, which leads us to the second step.

Discuss your anger with God and ask help. Since anger is really a spiritual issue, it takes God's help to change who we are. It may take years for you to totally overcome your anger issues, but God's involvement is the absolute key to your success. And this involves prayer for God's help and repentance, and daily Bible reading so you can receive from God, His help.

Then you must understand that when feeling angry, this is the third step. Take a step back, take a time out, analyze, why am I feeling this way? Count to 10, right? Why am I doing this? Remember what James wrote. "Be swift to hear." Right? Learn to listen to others. "Be slow to speak." Learn to think before you speak, and be slow to wrath. Learn to control the anger response. When you experience anger, take time to reason through the problem before acting.

Now, here's an example how you have to reason through things. Isn't it amazing how easy it is to experience road rage? A person cuts you off, or they're weaving recklessly in and out of traffic and you become angry. Have you ever seen someone in such road rage that they're driving bumper to bumper at high speed, right, with someone who made them angry? Or they drive by and as they drive by you because you made them mad they show you that you're number one, but that's not exactly what they mean. Feeling anger in this situation is normal because of the danger, it's a natural reaction. When faced with an aggressive driver or one who's almost causing an accident. We must, once the immediate danger is gone, reason through the anger. And sometimes it's difficult to let go of anger when the person speeds off into the horizon and you can't even stay mad. I mean, I'm mad at you, and there you go. You must reason through what happened. Tell yourself. You actually have to tell yourself, let this go, I refuse to be obsessed on the event. Be happy that you're safe and realize that that person with that road rage is very unhappy. I tell myself that all the time. That's a very unhappy person. It's hard to stay angry. Or you can ruin the next half hour of your life being controlled by a person who you don't know and is already sped out of your life.

A biblical proverb tells us, "A hot tempered man stirs up strife, but he is slow to anger quiets contention." Number four, take time to think about how to develop reasoned anger. Now this takes time that when you do this, it's when you're not angry. At calm times, you have to stop and think about why was I angry today? What caused me to do what I did? And then you think about how can I better handle that in the future? It may simply being step back and count to 10. But one of the most difficult steps in learning to control anger, is being able to forgive. Now, forgiveness doesn't mean that you ignore terrible behavior. It means that you must give up the type of anger that leads to bitterness and hatred.

Notice what is written in the book of Hebrews. "Pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord." Trying to make peace is a requirement for anyone who follows Jesus Christ. Now this doesn't mean, once again, accepting behaviors that God condemns, or allowing yourself to be a doormat. That's not what this is about. It means that we must seek peace whenever possible. And then, the statement continues. "Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness bringing up cause trouble by this many become defiled." And this statement takes a little bit of thought. We come to God only because of his grace to deny giving grace after receiving grace from God, by denying offering forgiveness to another person can lead to bitterness. And the bitterness that gets into the human spirit as a direct result of anger, and a lack of forgiveness will result in chronic unhappiness, and an inability to love and a overall negative view of life.

So let me ask this. What does healthy anger look like? How can we somehow turn this anger from a destructive force into a positive force? Well, we read where Paul wrote how not to let anger become destructive to ourselves or others, not the sin he said. He also gives in Ephesians some instructions on healthy anger.

Okay, so let's go back and look at what we already read, and then look at what he's really saying here. He says, "Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil." Paul says here that healthy anger is short-lived. It just doesn't go on and on and on. It's not an obsession, it's not a state of mind. To make progress in controlling anger, you have to become serious about looking at yourself in an honest way. Unfortunately, most of our anger is generated when we feel that our rights have been violated or through impatience or insensitivity with other people. Or through being offended, or sometimes just because we're not getting what we want. And anger is a deceptive emotion. We can feel our anger is good, because we're not getting what we deserve. And it leads to just bitterness all the time. It can even lead to hatred.

Another quality of healthy anger is that it involves a moral principle, not selfish motives. Let's look at a story here in Mark about Jesus where Jesus actually gets angry, okay? He actually gets angry. He entered into the synagogue and a man was there who had a withered hand, so he's a deformed man. And it says that they watched Him, these are religious leaders. They watched Him closely whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. See, the Pharisees wanted Jesus to heal a person on the Sabbath, so they could accuse Him of dishonoring this holy day. And here's what Jesus says to them. He looks at them and then He says to the man with the withered hand, He said, "Step forward." And then He says to them, the religious leaders, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or kill?" And it says, "But they kept silent." Well, the reason they were silent because it was proper to do good on the Sabbath, and God would be honored if this man was healed in His name. “And when He looked around,” it says, "at them with anger."

Now this is Jesus who is very angry, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts. Jesus is angry because of the Pharisees lack of love and their self-righteousness. His anger is rooted in a moral principle, the difference between good and evil. Now, what would you have done if you were in Jesus' place? I have to admit, I know what I would be tempted to do. I would've told the Pharisees to stretch out their hands and I'd have withered all of them right in front of everyone. There would've been withered hands all over the place, okay? But Jesus responded by saying to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched out his hand and He healed it. And then in that passage it says, "Then the Pharisees went out and immediately plotted with the Herodians against Him, at how they might destroy Him." Notice, Jesus didn't wither the hands of those with whom He was angry, He healed the man who was faithful. He used anger to energize positive action. The Pharisees were driven by their anger to bitterness, hate and violence. So we can summarize healthy anger as one short-lived, experienced when there is a moral principle involved.

Number two, and number three, energizes positive responses. And this means that a person who has righteous anger gets angry at situations. They're not angry all the time. There is one source of unhealthy anger that is often misunderstood. And dealing with this powerful emotion is more than just heredity, we've talked about that, or more than just external forces, you know, or learned experiences. The source is actually spiritual. Here's what the Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Ephesus. We're back in Ephesians where he is talking about anger. He says, "And you." He's talking to Christians there, "He made alive who are dead and trespasses and sins." Paul tells the Ephesians that since they have turned their lives to following God, they've become spiritually alive. He says, "In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience." You see, Satan is a real being, a fallen angel who embodies evil and he is filled with anger and hatred and malice and a desire to destroy humanity because we are made in the image of God. Paul says, "Among whom also we all,” includes himself, "once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath just as others."

Paul tells the Ephesians that their lifestyles, their conduct, their emotions and their thoughts were once influenced by the prince of the power of the air, and they were by nature the children of wrath. And this leads us to the often overlooked source of unreasoned anger. Satan is the ultimate cause of unhealthy anger, hatred, and violence. And he influences all humanity with his feelings. The result is that we, all of us, in our very nature have become a bit like him. Let's go back to the passage from Ephesians we've already quoted twice now. "Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger." And then he finishes this sentence with, "Nor give place to the devil, nor give place to the devil."

When we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with anger, we become more in tune with Satan's emotions as the prince of the power of the air. This is a terrible and uncomfortable truth. Human nature has become influenced by Satan. And the more we deny his influence, the more powerful he becomes in our lives. Uncontrolled, unhealthy anger is part of the Christian spiritual warfare and Paul wrote a lot about spiritual warfare in his letter to the Ephesians. Let's read what he wrote to Christians about dealing with these issues, at towards the end of the letter. He said, "Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor." Which just means shouting and yelling and evil speaking, spreading gossip. "Be put away from you with all malice."

In our spiritual warfare, you must become sensitive to recognize bitterness and constant conflict and spreading rumors, that's something that you must change about your life. And you must become acutely aware of holding grudges as not as, because that's a root cause of anger. And this takes a great willingness to be honest about our own feelings and motivations. It takes a willingness to prayerfully study biblical passages like the ones we've been talking about today. And once we become aware of these wrong emotions in ourselves we are to replace them with, according to Paul, “and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God in Christ forgave you.”

The more you concentrate your thoughts and emotions into responding to the grace of God, the more thankful you become for God's forgiveness and the easier it is to forgive others. Unreasoned, uncontrolled anger, is ultimately a spiritual problem. And to help you in your personal relationship with God, we're offering you a free copy of "Tools for Spiritual Growth."

You know, we all want a deeper relationship with God as our father and Jesus Christ as our Lord. But what can you do on a daily basis, every day, to experience a more meaningful spiritual life, to deal with issues like anger? "Tools for Spiritual Growth," begins with some very basic biblical instructions about prayer as a way to worship and to connect with God. Another section will help you understand the Bible, not just to read it, but as a way of life. I mean the Bible, this book, is the instruction book from the Creator on how to live. And when was the last time you thought about or even heard anyone talk about the concept of spiritual fasting? You know Jesus fasted and said His followers would fast.

Call the number on your screen to get a free copy of "Tools for Spiritual Growth" or go to Beyond Today TV and download a free copy and we'll send it to you absolutely free. And at Beyond Today TV, you can watch hundreds of beyond today programs on a wide variety of biblical topics.

Anger can be one of the most destructive forces in our lives, or it can energize us to positive actions like what we saw in Jesus. All of us experience anger. We can continue to allow this emotion to be uncontrolled, and you can let it ruin your life. Or we can learn with God's help, the patience, self-control, forgiveness, peace and love needed, to replace wrong anger as part of our very nature. And when we do that, you can begin to live your lives as God created you to live. You can begin to understand what it is to actually be His child.

[Narrator] Please call for the booklet offered on today's program, "Tools for Spiritual Growth." This free study aid will provide you with vital information on how to pray meaningful prayers to God, how to meditate effectively, how to use tools like fasting and fellowship, and your personal Bible study to actively discern God's will for you. Order now, call toll free +1 888-886-8632 or write to the address shown on your screen. When you order this free study aid, we'll also send you a complimentary one year subscription to our Beyond Today Magazine. Six times a year you'll read about current world events in light of Bible prophecy, as well as practical knowledge to improve your marriage and family. Call today to receive your free booklet, "Tools for Spiritual Growth" and your free one year subscription to Beyond Today Magazine. 1 888 886 8632, or go online to Beyond Today TV.

[Gary Petty] Hi, I'm Gary Petty, a pastor with United Church of God. If you are looking for a church that encourages living what the word of God really teaches, you found the right place. Visit ucg.org to find a church near you. We're looking forward to meeting you soon.