Now, if you're one of those who has anger, and all of us do sometimes (some of us tend to have a lot, and if you're an adolescent, you probably struggle with it twice as much as most adults) I want to suggest 3 things to you. When we look in psychology, sociology, they'll always give us some hints of how to deal with your anger. But I'm not so interested in those, although, to some degree, what Scripture teaches is exactly what a lot of psychologists and sociologists recommend for us. Because when we look in Scripture, we find that what Jesus taught and what we find in Scripture is very much a secret to how to deal with your temper. So you've got 3 things.
1. TAKE A DEEP BREATH
How many times does Jesus tell us to stop and take a moment in order not to respond in a negative way? So we see in Matthew that Jesus told them that you are to forgive 70 times 7.
Matthew 18:22
“I tell you, not as many as seven,” Jesus said to him, “but 70 times seven.
So think about that. Instead of being angry at somebody, what if you just forgave them? You took a deep breath and you count to 70. Now, that's a pretty good amount, right? Even if you do 1,001... 1,002... that's going to be more than a minute pause, right? So instead of honking, instead of getting mad, instead of responding, which may be typical, instead of hurting or saying the wrong thing, if you can just take a deep breath , count to 70, and remember that Jesus said forgive 70 times 7. That's almost 500 times. Can you imagine? I mean, that'd be like every day for a year and a half. That's pretty amazing, especially if you realize what Jesus is saying is 7 is the number of perfection, 10 is the number of completion, so perfection times completion times perfection again.
In other words, God loves forgiveness. So in your family, can you forgive? Kids, can you forgive your parents?Parents, can you forgive your kids? Can you forgive someone else in the church, someone else in your life, someone else that does something to you? I'm always amazed when I hear the stories of incredibly vicious attacks upon somebody, and yet because of Jesus, somebody is able to actually forgive somebody for horrible things they've done. That's because God forgave you. So take a deep breath and ask for forgiveness.
2. CAST YOUR CARES ON JESUS
One of my favorite verses has really come after 40 years of ministry,
1 Peter 5:6-7
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your care on Him, because He cares about you.
Cast all of your cares, your concerns, the things that weigh you down, that make you angry, cast those on [Jesus] because [He] cares for you. So here's what you do. You take that breath, you count to 70, and then you picture yourself sitting across the table from Jesus, and you say, "God, I'm so angry about this. I'm so frustrated about this. Family, finances, people at work, people at school, people in my life. I can't handle that, God, so I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna give it to you, Jesus, because nothing is impossible with you." And you just hand it across the table to Jesus.
And I have a feeling what Jesus will do is He will say, "I'll take that, and now I'm going to give you some peace, and I'm going to give you some love, and I'm going to give you some joy, and I'm going to pour the fruit of the Spirit into you because instead of being focused on that problem, you are now focused on Me. And by being focused on me,
I can not only transform you, I can transform everything around you."
3. DO SOMETHING TO SERVE
Now, when you talk to psychologists, they'll tell you that deep breathing is great. They'll talk to you about how it's important to transfer that or to come to some resolution. But they'll also tell you that physical activity is important because anger is a physical thing. It just boils inside of you and you can spend all night just simmering. But what's great is, as a Christian, what are we supposed to do? Not just go to the gym, not just go to the punching bag and hit something. We are to turn around and involve the law of displacement, take the anger that they had when they wanted to call down fire on the Samaritans, and take that and put it into energy to serve somebody else. So that same passion is now focused on loving somebody, serving somebody, helping somebody.
In fact, Jesus told us that we not only were to forgive our enemies, we were supposed to bless those who curse us, bless those who hurt us. What if we actually did something for Jesus for the person we were angry at? In the Bible, it's actually called heaping coals on them, because you're using that passion and anger to actually do the opposite of what you want to do. Instead of hurting them, you love them. We have seen this with missionaries who went to the mission field and lost their lives, but whole tribes and communities and villages were saved because they were willing to serve and sacrifice. What an amazing thing can happen when we turn it around and we take a deep breath, we give it to Jesus, and then we serve the very people that may be harming us. God can make a difference.
