Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions (20 page)

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Authors: June Hunt

BOOK: Keeping Your Cool…When Your Anger Is Hot!: Practical Steps to Temper Fiery Emotions
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Repentance and Resentment
That must have been some powerful preaching! The irony sent Jonah’s blood pressure soaring, figuratively speaking. He had secretly hoped the wicked sinners would prove him right by refusing God’s offer and inviting destruction. Instead, an entire city answered a call that Jonah never wanted to give.
The Bible says this “displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.”
4
“O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live”
(JONAH 4:2-3).

 

Now here’s a man with control issues. When things didn’t turn out the way he wanted, Jonah left Nineveh and sat down in a shady shelter outside the city and waited, probably hoping that God would change His mind.
It is tempting to laugh at Jonah’s foolishness and dismiss him as someone who should enroll in an anger-management program. But the truth hits much closer to home than we comfortably care to admit. The fact is there is a lot of Jonah in
us.
Many of us are just as bent on control, and react with irrational anger when we don’t get our way.
The Freedom of Relinquishing Control
Anger can run high in a significant relationship in which you know what
could be
, or
should be
, yet
won’t be
. I know the frustration of being unable to change any of the painful dynamics in my family life when I was growing up. Neither the “fire” of my white-hot anger nor the “ice” of seething resignation ever once helped me resolve a conflict. Thankfully, my relationship with the Lord enabled me to release my family, my father, and my future to Him.
Then years later as an adult, I came face-to-face with another situation I wanted desperately to change but couldn’t. It seemed the Lord wanted to give me a refresher course in trusting Him in all circumstances, but on an entirely different level and in another situation.
How well I remember my hurt and disappointment at having one failed attempt after another to persuade an estranged friend to reconcile with me and re-establish our relationship.
I did everything I knew to do and absolutely nothing worked. I sought forgiveness for my mistakes and failures, I supported my case with biblical injunctions, I made requested changes. I did all I could to prevent the demise of our friendship, but to no avail.
The hurt was deep and, to this day, I sometimes miss the camaraderie we once shared. But God has long since healed my heart regarding that relationship, and He has blessed me far beyond what I deserve or expected with a handful of forever friendships.
God has faithfully met my needs and taught me to trust His control over my life, my relationships, and my circumstances. True freedom involves no longer fighting God for control but completely relinquishing it to Him!
The Truth About Control
If we really want to find freedom from destructive anger, a good place to start is relinquishing control of anything and everything around us. Here are a few points to remember about control:
Control is impossible
. It is an inescapable truth that everything in God’s creation is in a state of constant motion. Nothing remains the same. Even in the depth of frozen winter, spring is already present in seeds beneath the ground. As the tide flows out to sea, it’s already gathering itself to return.
The tallest mountains experience erosion, and all that remains of many great civilizations of the past are a few stones stacked together. Indeed, life is a flowing river that sometimes thunders in flashfloods and other times meanders lazily through broad meadows—but it never stops changing the landscape as it moves.
Some people are called “control freaks.” They try to control everything and everyone. However, attempting to control events and circumstances and people—to step into that current and command it to turn right or turn left or be still—is futile. It simply cannot be done. When we approach life as the absolute sole masters of fate and controllers of destiny, we are doomed already to failure, frustration, and anger.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We can admit we’ve been mistaken and have invested ourselves in an impossible task.
It’s time to let God heal us of this need to be overcontrolling and the anger that comes with it when we don’t get our way. We must surrender our wishes and wants, our desires and demands to the sovereignty of our loving and compassionate God.
Control is a heavy and unnecessary burden.
In the Bible, we see an example of one sister’s attempt to exert control over her siblings. Martha was angry with her sister, Mary. Jesus had come to stay at their house, so there was work to do and food to prepare.
The Bible says Martha was “distracted with much serving,” and she perceived Mary as no help at all. She felt abandoned to do the heavy lifting while Mary sat listening to Jesus speak.
Finally, Martha had had enough. It was time to force Mary into the kitchen. She approached Jesus and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
5
Oh, how my heart goes out to Martha. How many times have I tried to enlist God in my efforts to control something I didn’t like? I can feel the familiar weight of responsibility on her shoulders, can’t you? Her face was probably flush from frustration as her voice rang with indignation.
Jesus responded to her put-upon attitude this way: “Martha, Martha… you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
6
Some might hear stinging censure in Jesus’ words, but I interpret them as a compassionate invitation for Martha to lay down her needless burden of worry and control. I can imagine Him saying, “There is a better way. Mary has chosen it, and so can you.” That way is called trust, putting God first and allowing Him to guide your life. Martha needed to empty her personal anger bowl, place it at the back of a cabinet, and leave it there for good.
Control is God’s business, and not having this heavy responsibility is His gift to us.
As Jonah discovered, our God is sovereign. The earth is His and everything in it.
Assuming the right to control our lives according to our own will is dangerous arrogance—and sinful pride. Job learned the same lesson. When he assumed too much, God replied,
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you
understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?”
(JOB 38:2-5).
It was a well-deserved rebuke. But like an earthly father who refuses to give a little child the keys to the family car, God’s authority and sovereignty are intended for our protection and well-being.
No, it is not possible for us to control every facet of life. But the good news is that the Creator of the whole universe has promised to do it for us.
God wants you to seek His answer for anger quickly before it singes your heart and burns the bridges of your relationships.
Jesus said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”
7
You can’t control it anyway, so trust your Father to provide.
Jesus also said, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”
8
Let go, and release the stress and tension that accompanies the need to control.
Furthermore, Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
9
There is nothing light about the burden of control. Give it to God, and end your angry turmoil.
What Is the Quick Answer to Anger?
Few people know the importance of a quick answer more than the members of a First Response T.E.A.M. (Tactical Emergency Asset Management). When disaster strikes, they rapidly deploy communications technologies to the scene, ensuring that voice, video, and data capabilities are fully functional among the attending agencies.
When you sense a surge of anger, it’s just as vital that you too learn to respond quickly. If not, your anger can blaze out of control.
The possibility of anger remains ever present. A spark of irritation can be ignited intentionally by hurtful people or even unintentionally by those who love you. God wants you to seek His answer for anger quickly before it singes your heart and burns the bridges of your relationships. “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
10
Many people try to make the solution for anger more complex than it should be. Of course, there will always be multiple approaches and steps to managing anger (and I will detail many later in this book). However, at the risk of sounding too simplistic, I will present here what for decades I have called…

 

The Quick An swer to Anger
If I boiled down managing anger to the most basic steps, I believe you could reduce the solution to two points: one question and one action step.
Step 1: Ask—Can I change this situation?
Step 2: Action—If you
can
,
change
it. If you
can’t
,
release
it.
Let’s start with the first step: Can you change what angers you? Answer yes or no—that’s it.
Now consider the second step: If you answered yes, you are angry about something you
can
change—so change it.
• If the door squeaks, oil it.
• If the faucet leaks, fix it.
If you answered no, you are angry about something you
cannot
change—so release it.
• If your house burns down, release it.
• If your loved one dies, release that person.
If your house does burn down, only by emotionally releasing the pain of your loss can you rebuild your life, and possibly your home. Being angry with a burned house or a buried body—or anyone who caused either—will not change the situation—it will only make matters worse.
But How Do I Surrender?
Here’s the point: God has provided an antidote to poisonous anger that comes from trying to be in control all of the time. All it costs us is
surrender to His will
.
More than 300 years ago, a French priest named Jean-Pierre de Caussade put it this way:
“[True surrender to God is] a state in which one discovers how to belong wholly to God through the complete and total assignment of all rights over oneself—over one’s speech, actions, thoughts and bearing; the employment of one’s time and everything related to it. There remains one single duty. It is to keep one’s gaze fixed on the master one has chosen and to be constantly listening so as to understand and hear and immediately obey his will.”
11
Yes, we are conditioned by culture and coaxed by human nature to believe we can achieve control over our lives. And yes, it makes us angry when our efforts to keep things and people in line don’t work as we intended.
The more energy we pour into the impossible task of control, the more we place ourselves at the mercy of runaway rage. Let go. Release control. Allow God to reign over every aspect of your life, and you’ll soon see the dam of damaging rage give way to streams of calm.
Lightning: Fire in the Sky
True or false: Lightning is the hottest thing in our solar system.
True! The temperature of an average bolt of lightning reaches well over 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit—nearly five times the temperature on the surface of the sun—and can contain 100 million electrical volts. That’s a lot of juice—enough to instantly fuse ordinary silica sand into solid glass. There are approximately 1,800 thunderstorms in the earth’s atmosphere at any given time. In the United States alone it is estimated there are 25 million lightning strikes every year, many causing significant damage from resulting fires and power outages.

 

Lightning forms when an electrical imbalance develops within thunderclouds or between clouds and the ground. When the difference between positive and negative charges becomes great enough, the natural resistance of the air is overcome—and electricity flows suddenly and without warning.

 

Anger is like that too. It can build unnoticed in the atmosphere of your life until one day it strikes with full destructive force. With God’s help, you can learn to pay attention to the gathering clouds—in yourself and in others—and take shelter in His loving arms before the damage is done.

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