Well, we hope this week won’t push you to the limit, but it might happen. If you continue on, you be exposed to more than you might expect, and that might result in an emotional response that might not be pleasant. As we continue in Enemies of the Heart by Andy Stanley, we come to chapter 13 and realistically, might want to just skip this week. It is a human tendency to avoid difficult things. We respond in a variety of ways. We either fight it, we flee or we freeze. In hopes of this material, we hope that you face it. Not just freeze and shutdown, but grasp the reality, learn and grow in your maturity.
This week we are going to Face the Fury or as the chapter is titled, Confronting Anger. Of the four enemies of our heart, this one is the most obvious and perhaps the most dangerous. When unleashed with unbridled intensity, anger leaves a trail of destruction.a
What are your experiences and exposure to anger? Did you experience much anger as a child? Were you angry as a child? Do you struggle with anger now? or from time to time?
What makes people angry?
Behind all the huffing and puffing, ranting and raving, brewing and stewing is the most basic of human experiences: We just aren’t getting our way.
It does not matter who you are, you have exhibited anger. Anger is an emotion given to us by God and it is not a bad thing, when it is righteous, in response to mistreatment, abuse, insult or malice of another. But it is a great chance that we have been angry for reasons far from these justifications.
Just as we learned over the past couple of weeks, the healthy response to guilt is confession, the response to anger is forgiveness. In our selfish, prideful way forgiveness is at the other end of our spectrum when we have been hurt and are angry. There are three thoughts to the concept of forgiveness:
- people believe they ought to forgive but can’t seem to muster the courage to do it.
- people feel lithe they would be letting the offender off the hook
- people think they have gone through the motions but the feelings don’t change
How do we forgive someone? How do we know if we have forgiven someone? What if the other person is a repeat offender? What if we don’t even know hiow to get in touch with the offender? What if we can’t stomach the idea of getting in touch with them in the first place? What if they are dead?
Facing the wrong way
Those questions are real, and they are to be answered, but the motive behind the questions is typically driven by justification to not forgive. (See the numbered list above). The approach is not motivated by what we need, but by an idea that we owe someone else forgiveness. And that is where our human nature spirals the most.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. – Ephesians 4:31 NLT
In that verse from Paul, it has nothing to do with others. It has to do with us, our character, our self. We are to remove and separate ourselves from those things. That means remove anger. Whatever negative emotion we are harboring, regardless of who we are harboring it against, get rid of it.
In many cases we can acknowledge our moments of anger and even analyze the situation and clarify that it is fueled by things out of our control. Then we respond with the common feeling of we are a victim and it really is not a problem.
Have you been around people that just seem angry all the time? What is their justification or motivation to not change? Or do you go through times where you just feel angry and you don’t know why?
Victims have no control over their lives. Victims are at the mercy of others. Victims can only react. Victims are held prisoner by circumstances beyond their control. These feeling of victimization are what fuel our justifications and excuses to be angry. A victim will always have an excuse. Pain and hurt create an unassailable wall of excuses and rationalizations.
There is no incentive to change, after all, it’s always easier to stay the same and make excuses than invest in the energy to change. We spend our energy telling our sad stories rathrer than taking responsibility for our behavior.
Our motivational challenge
It could have been a messy and frustrating situation of all Paul did was tell us to get rid of that junk in our lives and leave us to struggle. Many individuals get stuck right there. We need to be aware that Paul did not stop at verse 31. He follows it directly with the action to take, and should cause us to pause and reconsider our justification.
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. – Ephesians 4:31-32 ESV
What are your thoughts on how this combination is present itself. Have you or do you see these two verses as two different ideas or one?
The challenge. of course is in “as God in Christ forgave you”. We are to extend an attitude of forgiveness that mirrors the kind God extended towards us in Christ. This can still be challenging and Peter shows his confusion, even in the midst of learning with Jesus, when he asked how many times should we forgive?
Peter revealed his own misunderstanding of the nature of forgiveness. Like us, Peter assumed that forgiveness is for the benefit of the offender. Like, how many times to I have to be nice to the people that hurt me? Peter was like many of us, willing to stretch a bit, to be a nice guy. To take the higher road, to turn the other cheek. He began with what seemed like a great approach: how about seven times? See, Peter had that notion that forgiveness has its limits. That at some point we just stop forgiving.
What is your approach to forgiveness? Do you have a predetermined number of times you will be a good guy? What is generally the idea or mentality when you stop forgiving someone?
Jesus uses a parable to respond to Peter:
Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold—along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned—to pay the debt. But the man fell down before his master and begged him, ‘Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.’ Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt. – Matthew 18:23-2
Forgiveness is the decision to cancel a debt. When someone hurts us, there is a sense in which they have taken something from us. A debt has incurred. Whenever there is hurt, there’s a theft. Something is taken. It might not be materialistic, it might be emotional, like a dream is shattered, like thoughts of good outcome are smashed. Things just go the other way. Things don’t go as expected.
Codependency and Anger
These two topics were not combined in the book exactly, but it is a great situation to share a fact. A codependent person does things for a purpose, usually for a good response. They have expectations for the response to their own actions. When things do not end up the way they expect, they have a sense of victim. (After all I have done for you…) They can respond a couple of different ways. They can ignore the response or lack there of and continue on, but there will be a point when one of two behaviors surface. They either shutdown and pull away or they blow up and make a mess of things.
The trigger is that they had the wrong motivation for their behavior to begin with and when they did not get what they planned, they respond.
Gaining Perspective
If we hold out waiting to be paid back for the wrongs done to us, we will be the ones who pay. If, on the other hand, we cancel the debts owed to us, we will be set free. If we demand payment, we will pay.
Our pain is not a trophy to show off. It’s not a story to glorify. Our pain is actually poison to our soul. To refuse to forgive is to choose to self-destruct.
This coming week we will go into chapter 14, learning how to complete the cycle of forgiveness. It will be great for our soul, and lead to a greater life for us and those around us.