The Healing Of Anger

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We're in a series today called Wisdom, the Way of Wisdom. And I took kind of a cue, the metaphor. Well, I think Robert Frost actually took his cue from the Sermon on the Mount. And when Jesus said, you know, go the narrow way, don't go the broad way. Broad is the way that leads to destruction. So Robert Frost, who was poet laureate of the United States for a time, wrote a poem called The Road Not Taken about two paths diverged into the yellow wood. And he said, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. And we're looking at the difference that the way of wisdom, which is not the way that most people follow these days. There's a lot of foolishness going on, right? And I can't even, we don't even have to go there, you know. So Proverbs says 3,000 years ago that the way of wisdom is the way to go. We don't need to travel the path of outrage and tribalism that we see so often right now. It seems like anger is now the commodity that's being pushed and promoted and bought and sold all throughout our society. And today we're going to be looking at instead that anger can be healed in us so that we can walk the way of wisdom. Now, it's not to say that Christians or followers of Jesus are to be just kind of as the old saying goes, you know, milk toast. You know that if you take a piece of toast, you dump it in milk. It's just kind of like it just falls apart. We're not supposed to be pushovers. OK, but we can be peacemakers and we can be reconcilers. We can be as our own God is slow to anger. I mean, really slow. Our songs today are just so wonderful that we sang beforehand and kudos to the band as they did a great job with them. Because it is the fact that God's faithfulness is why we can talk about the way of healing anger today. And God's unconditional love that never stops and never lets us go. That's why these words can be spoken today. It's in that context that the book of Proverbs can be read. It's not just take these words of advice. It's not words of kind of a some type of a help. You know, like here's a few things that you can do to improve your life. That's not what this is about. This is really within God's grace, within the way that God has set up this entire world and how God has planned his way of redemption. That we can speak about the healing of our anger. So before we get into that, let's read some of the Proverbs today that we're taking our cue from. And these are various Proverbs from chapter 14 through chapter 25. Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot. A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. A hot tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. A man of great wrath will pay the penalty, for if you deliver him, you will only have to do it again. But be not a witness against your neighbor without cause, and do not deceive with your lips. Do not say, I will do to him as he has done to me. I will pay that man back for what he has done. If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat. And if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. For you will heat burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. So from these Proverbs today, we're going to be looking and exploring four different points. I know, four. We'll try to get through them pretty quickly, though. And it is, first of all, the dangerous power that anger has. It's potential goodness, but why it often goes wrong, and how it can be healed. Got it? Following with me? So first of all, it's dangerous power. You probably know that. Anger is kind of the dynamite of the soul, and it tends to destroy everything around it, if it can. It can be so volcanic, it can be atomic, it can be a problem. I mean, the first couple of Proverbs we looked at, whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. Okay? All kinds of research have shown that anger is probably more damaging to you than anxiety, believe it or not. In 2022, the New York Times did kind of a summary piece on all of this that said this, Lost your cool? Your heart, brain, and gut are taking notice. Public life and personal hardships provide ample fodder for flare-ups, which, in addition to costing your cool, can also take a more serious toll. According to scientists, prolonged and extreme anger can also exacerbate existing health problems, as well as affect the way we react to certain issues. Anger responses can cause a ripple effect throughout the body, from the cardiovascular system to the nervous system. It's all fair gam...