In my earlier post regarding anger I have tried my best to draw your attention to the consequences of anger. In this post you will discover the prime facets of your character hidden in your anger which you can turn around to build the strategies benefiting you.
Anger as an emotion can be both constructive and destructive. When it is constructive it can spur us into motion and lead us to prove the other person wrong the right way without
hurting his or her self-esteem.
Because your wrong anger has to do with your relationship with God, you can’t just deal with it by learning a few strategies or techniques. Wrong anger creates a big problem between you and God and that is very important for you. He doesn’t like upstarts who try to take undue advantage of the merciful laws of His universe.
Your anger is not just about you and all the frustrating things that happen to you. It’s not just about you and your cranky, oppositional personality. And it’s not just about you and all the unreasonable people in your life. It’s about the real you, those frustrating circumstances, all those unreasonable people … and the living God. It’s about you acting like you are in charge of God’s world and other people. But we ought to remember always that God is in charge and this should be the pivot upon which you ought to re-act with your emotions.
Acting as if you are God with pride: Pride is the beating heart of what it means to be a sinner. This insight into anger is hugely freeing, and very sobering. Anger going wrong, testifies to everyone’s pride and that includes ours too. When you see yourself as a sinner—instead of focusing on how everyone around you is wrong—then God’s grace and mercy is available to you. God’s mercy is for those who honestly confess their sins to Him and ask for the grace to change. That’s how James 4 continues: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; see 4:7-10 for more details of what’s involved in turning to God).
Anger is merciless: Anger sees, punishes, and gets rid of all offenders giving you no reward in the truest sense. But God has chosen to be merciful to wrongdoers, including someone like you, who struggles with taking God’s place in the world (Ephesians 2:1-5).
God’s mercy brings life to you. If you struggle with bitterness, if you grumble, if you yell and argue, then you need God’s mercy. You will receive mercy and help when you confess to God your struggle while trying to control everything and wanting to be with God, when judging those around you. But if you believe in your Divine - Self, the merciful and benevolent spirit within you will give you the power to express your anger, not your way, but in God’s way.
Your anger can also result in redemption: It will be possible for you also to respond redemptively when you are angry. You can learn to say, “That’s wrong,” without ranting or exaggerating what happened or calling someone names or cursing or hating the person.
When I say that being filled with the merciful and benevolent Spirit, it means that in everything about you will start to resemble God. Instead of responding with sinful anger to unimportant things, you will start to see your life from God’s perspective. You will begin to care about things that truly matter, instead of reacting to relatively unimportant things.
Jesus was driven by faith and love, not by pettiness, hostility, and aggression. We find his anger only mentioned once in the Bible, when he drove the devious money-making people from the temple yard and that was just because the Holiness and Sanctity was defiled where it was not personal, but to uphold the God’s love. Becoming like God means that you will care about the things Jesus cares about—the things that truly matter in God’s world. This is what it should matter to you.
Becoming like God also means that when you see a true wrong, you will learn to respond the way God does. When God sees a true wrong He responds constructively. He has done this towards us, by naming our wrongs clearly, and then offering us what we do not deserve.
Here are some strategies that you can well respond constructively to a true wrong through God's ways:
1. Practicing patience: Patience literally means slow to anger. God is described in the Old Testament as “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). Learning to be “slow to anger” means living in a world that has things wrong in it—an unloving spouse, an unfair boss, a disrespectful teenager—and being willing to stay in difficult situations and relationships for the long haul so that you have all the opportunities in the world to turn the tide that is facing you.
Why? Because you realize that you live in God’s world, the Universe He created, not your own, and though this wrong needs to be addressed, your call from God is to persevere in addressing it constructively, patiently, and kindly.
2. Arming yourself with mercy: True, mercy is a way of looking at something that is wrong and saying, “I’m going to tackle that to make it better.” The mercy of God is a constructive displeasure. God could respond with wrath, but instead He sets about making right what is wrong. This way too, you can bring about the change you so desire. Try being merciful and when you do that with love you are bound to allow the other person to change. A little bit of ‘giving in’ is necessary to receive untold admirations from the other party who has wronged you. This will go a long way in developing peace of mind and getting the needed love and affection with honour.
By learning to experience God’s mercy in all its myriad ways, you will learn to be merciful. Instead of angrily judging others, you will roll up your sleeves and help to right the wrongs you see.
3. Learning to forgive with love: The other aspect is that God’s forgiveness doesn’t make what was wrong okay. He names what is wrong (including our wrongful anger), and deals with the wrong by paying the price accordingly. Forgiveness is a way to be displeased in a constructive way. Instead of insisting on justice right now, forgiveness acknowledges the wrong and lets it go. When you love your enemy by treating him or her kindly, you are overcoming evil with good. Loving someone who’s done wrong is the way to overcome that wrong.
4. Reprimanding gently with love: There is a place for a right kind of anger, an anger whose purpose is love. Because God lovingly confronts, so can you. For example, abusers and those who do evil to others should be brought to justice. It is both constructive and loving for wrongdoers to face the consequences of their wrongs. If your child is disrespectful, you should be upset, and there should be consequences.
But what do you do with that upset? Do you rant and rave? Become physically abusive? No, your anger can be constructively expressed as a clear reprimand and fair consequences. You are forceful, but your forcefulness is motivated by love for your child.
5. Using constructive and honest means: Godly anger constructively engages what is wrong in a way that is patient, merciful, forgiving, and honest in tackling what needs tackling. Our sinful anger causes hurt, destruction, and alienation. Godly anger becomes an instrument in God’s hands to make this bad world better.
There are some people who are more feisty and irritable than others. Each of us has one or two areas where we are most likely to struggle. For you it is in the area of anger. Others might struggle with fear, or comfort, or lust, or worries about money.
6. Willingness to to correct the wrong: The good part in your struggle with wrongful anger is that you probably have been given a strong sense of justice and fairness. As you grow in wisdom and self control, your desire for justice will be expressed not in irritation at the people around you, but in a willingness to work with them to right the wrongs that you see. Your goal should not be to find the answer to your struggle, as if you could solve an anger problem once and for all. Instead your struggle with anger can prove to be the door through which you learn.
Let me honest in declaring that no one can write the script for you on how to deal with your anger. But every time you notice that you are angry, go through those questions that I have mentioned in my earlier post. Then remind yourself of God’s message of love, forgiveness and mercy to you. As you keep doing these parts sincerely with everything in your heart, you will notice that, step by step in small ways, real change will start to happen.
Perhaps without fully noticing it, you will become part of a constructive force instead of a destructive force that makes things worse. Remember to grow in self-knowledge and Godly wisdom and have faith in your ability to be peaceable and to tackle the problems of life constructively rather than destructively.
hurting his or her self-esteem.
Because your wrong anger has to do with your relationship with God, you can’t just deal with it by learning a few strategies or techniques. Wrong anger creates a big problem between you and God and that is very important for you. He doesn’t like upstarts who try to take undue advantage of the merciful laws of His universe.
Your anger is not just about you and all the frustrating things that happen to you. It’s not just about you and your cranky, oppositional personality. And it’s not just about you and all the unreasonable people in your life. It’s about the real you, those frustrating circumstances, all those unreasonable people … and the living God. It’s about you acting like you are in charge of God’s world and other people. But we ought to remember always that God is in charge and this should be the pivot upon which you ought to re-act with your emotions.
Acting as if you are God with pride: Pride is the beating heart of what it means to be a sinner. This insight into anger is hugely freeing, and very sobering. Anger going wrong, testifies to everyone’s pride and that includes ours too. When you see yourself as a sinner—instead of focusing on how everyone around you is wrong—then God’s grace and mercy is available to you. God’s mercy is for those who honestly confess their sins to Him and ask for the grace to change. That’s how James 4 continues: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; see 4:7-10 for more details of what’s involved in turning to God).
Anger is merciless: Anger sees, punishes, and gets rid of all offenders giving you no reward in the truest sense. But God has chosen to be merciful to wrongdoers, including someone like you, who struggles with taking God’s place in the world (Ephesians 2:1-5).
God’s mercy brings life to you. If you struggle with bitterness, if you grumble, if you yell and argue, then you need God’s mercy. You will receive mercy and help when you confess to God your struggle while trying to control everything and wanting to be with God, when judging those around you. But if you believe in your Divine - Self, the merciful and benevolent spirit within you will give you the power to express your anger, not your way, but in God’s way.
Your anger can also result in redemption: It will be possible for you also to respond redemptively when you are angry. You can learn to say, “That’s wrong,” without ranting or exaggerating what happened or calling someone names or cursing or hating the person.
When I say that being filled with the merciful and benevolent Spirit, it means that in everything about you will start to resemble God. Instead of responding with sinful anger to unimportant things, you will start to see your life from God’s perspective. You will begin to care about things that truly matter, instead of reacting to relatively unimportant things.
Jesus was driven by faith and love, not by pettiness, hostility, and aggression. We find his anger only mentioned once in the Bible, when he drove the devious money-making people from the temple yard and that was just because the Holiness and Sanctity was defiled where it was not personal, but to uphold the God’s love. Becoming like God means that you will care about the things Jesus cares about—the things that truly matter in God’s world. This is what it should matter to you.
Becoming like God also means that when you see a true wrong, you will learn to respond the way God does. When God sees a true wrong He responds constructively. He has done this towards us, by naming our wrongs clearly, and then offering us what we do not deserve.
Here are some strategies that you can well respond constructively to a true wrong through God's ways:
1. Practicing patience: Patience literally means slow to anger. God is described in the Old Testament as “slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). Learning to be “slow to anger” means living in a world that has things wrong in it—an unloving spouse, an unfair boss, a disrespectful teenager—and being willing to stay in difficult situations and relationships for the long haul so that you have all the opportunities in the world to turn the tide that is facing you.
Why? Because you realize that you live in God’s world, the Universe He created, not your own, and though this wrong needs to be addressed, your call from God is to persevere in addressing it constructively, patiently, and kindly.
2. Arming yourself with mercy: True, mercy is a way of looking at something that is wrong and saying, “I’m going to tackle that to make it better.” The mercy of God is a constructive displeasure. God could respond with wrath, but instead He sets about making right what is wrong. This way too, you can bring about the change you so desire. Try being merciful and when you do that with love you are bound to allow the other person to change. A little bit of ‘giving in’ is necessary to receive untold admirations from the other party who has wronged you. This will go a long way in developing peace of mind and getting the needed love and affection with honour.
By learning to experience God’s mercy in all its myriad ways, you will learn to be merciful. Instead of angrily judging others, you will roll up your sleeves and help to right the wrongs you see.
3. Learning to forgive with love: The other aspect is that God’s forgiveness doesn’t make what was wrong okay. He names what is wrong (including our wrongful anger), and deals with the wrong by paying the price accordingly. Forgiveness is a way to be displeased in a constructive way. Instead of insisting on justice right now, forgiveness acknowledges the wrong and lets it go. When you love your enemy by treating him or her kindly, you are overcoming evil with good. Loving someone who’s done wrong is the way to overcome that wrong.
4. Reprimanding gently with love: There is a place for a right kind of anger, an anger whose purpose is love. Because God lovingly confronts, so can you. For example, abusers and those who do evil to others should be brought to justice. It is both constructive and loving for wrongdoers to face the consequences of their wrongs. If your child is disrespectful, you should be upset, and there should be consequences.
But what do you do with that upset? Do you rant and rave? Become physically abusive? No, your anger can be constructively expressed as a clear reprimand and fair consequences. You are forceful, but your forcefulness is motivated by love for your child.
5. Using constructive and honest means: Godly anger constructively engages what is wrong in a way that is patient, merciful, forgiving, and honest in tackling what needs tackling. Our sinful anger causes hurt, destruction, and alienation. Godly anger becomes an instrument in God’s hands to make this bad world better.
There are some people who are more feisty and irritable than others. Each of us has one or two areas where we are most likely to struggle. For you it is in the area of anger. Others might struggle with fear, or comfort, or lust, or worries about money.
6. Willingness to to correct the wrong: The good part in your struggle with wrongful anger is that you probably have been given a strong sense of justice and fairness. As you grow in wisdom and self control, your desire for justice will be expressed not in irritation at the people around you, but in a willingness to work with them to right the wrongs that you see. Your goal should not be to find the answer to your struggle, as if you could solve an anger problem once and for all. Instead your struggle with anger can prove to be the door through which you learn.
Let me honest in declaring that no one can write the script for you on how to deal with your anger. But every time you notice that you are angry, go through those questions that I have mentioned in my earlier post. Then remind yourself of God’s message of love, forgiveness and mercy to you. As you keep doing these parts sincerely with everything in your heart, you will notice that, step by step in small ways, real change will start to happen.
Perhaps without fully noticing it, you will become part of a constructive force instead of a destructive force that makes things worse. Remember to grow in self-knowledge and Godly wisdom and have faith in your ability to be peaceable and to tackle the problems of life constructively rather than destructively.
Sending abundant love, lights, peace and warm hugs to you, my dear friend!
Anthony Sunny Kunneth.
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