Living on the Edge

Dave Drewry: Today on Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram.

Chip Ingram: Do you or someone you know have a problem with anger? It is one of the most difficult emotions to ever get under control. Today I want to show you from God’s Word a solution you may have never known, that I believe will give you specific, strategic help to overcome your anger. See you in just a minute.

Dave Drewry: Anger isn’t the problem Scripture warns us about; unresolved anger is. There’s a real difference, and most of us have never been taught where the line falls. Paul draws it clearly in Ephesians chapter 4. Today on Living on the Edge, Chip Ingram shows us exactly how to stay on the right side of that important line. If you have your Bible with you, open to Ephesians chapter 4, verse 25, as we join Chip for today’s message titled "The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process."

Chip Ingram: We’re going to talk about five habits that cultivate holiness from the heart. First and foremost, here is training station number one. The bench press of spirituality is this: be honest. Speak the truth in love. Paul picks up where he had talked about in verse 15, where he says, "speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ."

Therefore, in verse 25, he’s going to make the application: "laying aside falsehood, speak the truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another." Spiritual training station number one is honesty and personal integrity. This isn’t just your speech, but all aspects—honesty, integrity, how you live, and what you say. Especially, you are going to put off falsehood. Your training command is to speak the truth in love.

God says go into training. You put on truthful speech and authenticity. How do you do that? How do you make the break where that really occurs? The training apparatus here is the practice of confession. The practice is every time you lie by thought, word, or deed, if it doesn’t hurt another person, own it. Where appropriate, confess it. When you do, trust develops, and the power of evil will be broken.

The second training station is not the bench press, but over here, if you go to the gym, they always say, "We’re going to work on your biceps and triceps, and we’re going to do some curls here." This is emotional control. If there’s any area in the world that destroys our relationship with ourselves, with God, and others, it’s anger. Deal with anger appropriately.

Verses 26 and 27 say, "Be angry"—that’s a command—"yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger." Why? "And do not give—or lest you give—the devil an opportunity," or literally, a foothold, a crack, or an opportunity in your spirit and in your life. Our spiritual training session number two has the goal of emotional control.

We all deal with anger. How do we learn to go into training to appropriately deal with our anger? Our training command is to be angry and yet do not sin. By the way, anger is a healthy, positive emotion to motivate for life change. Jesus was angry with those in the temple because of the evil, the injustice, and the graft. He was angry at the Pharisees because of their hypocrisy. He wasn’t "Jesus meek and mild" when he said, "You brood of vipers! You snakes! You whitewashed tombs!" His disciples turned and said, "Jesus, are you aware that you’re making them very upset?"

You’re to be angry. When we’re supposed to be angry, we’re often not; we’re passive. When we’re inappropriately angry, the second word for anger here means irritation, exasperation, bitterness, and resentment. This is the unhealthy anger. This is the kind of anger that you have when you don’t get your way, or people cut you off in traffic and you start this process in your mind. This is the kind of anger when you have a certain amount of dollars and the stock market does that, and you just start getting bent out of shape and you’re mad, angry, exasperated, and resentful. It begins to eat at your soul.

We all have anger issues, but most of us think only people that blow up have anger issues. Anger is expressed in three primary ways. Some people I call "spewers"—they explode. We’ve all been around people that have exploded. It creates distance; we’re afraid of them, we withdraw, and we don’t have trust.

A second way that people express anger, some of you learned, even from some of our churches unfortunately, that all anger is wrong and all anger is bad. Whenever you had angry feelings about something that was unjust or wrong, like, "How come my brother or sister is being treated like this and I’m being treated like this?"—that’s anger. What you learned is you don’t say that; you stuff it, you stuff it, you stuff it.

Then there’s other people called "leakers"—passive-aggressive. If you know this person wants everything done neatly and on time, even unconsciously, you do it in a sloppy way. There’s just something satisfying about watching them get all frustrated. Everyone in this room deals with anger.

In my case, Theresa and I had no idea how to do this. When I was angry, I wanted to verbalize; I was going to talk until we got it done. She came from a family where she withdrew. I would put my hands behind my head as we were ready to go to sleep, and I’d bounce on the bed like this. This meant, "Theresa, you still have time to apologize; the day's not over." What I would hear from her is heavy breathing, which was, "I completely withdraw and don’t like conflict," because she learned that early on.

Unfortunately, most Christians have conflict in your marriage, conflict with one of your kids, conflict at work, conflict in the church, or a problem in a small group. We don’t understand when unresolved anger isn’t addressed, you give demonic powers that specialize in lying a foothold in your heart and in your spirit, and it will destroy your relationships.

The great majority of divorces aren’t because some big thing happened. Here’s what happens: your heart gets hard because you were hurt. Most of us then, after what Theresa and I did, which was after two days, we pretended it didn’t happen and we just acted like everything was okay. But a scar occurred. It was sort of okay, and then another scar occurred. Finally, after about two years, you start looking through this lens and you look at your mate through every time they do this or that. You look at them through this unresolved anger and bitterness, and you begin to connect dots that really aren’t there. She doesn’t really care; she’s insensitive; she doesn’t respond. Or he’s like this. And then this is what happens.

Again, I’m in the midst of this and I’m in seminary, and I’m realizing, first of all, I’m a liar and I’m supposed to tell people about the truth—that’s not good. God brings this into my life. Now I’m supposed to help people. I’m in a pastoral counseling class of helping people, and I learn about anger and how it actually works. I realize we have no idea how to resolve it. It’s impacting every area of our relationship.

I went to the professor and I asked for help. The long story is, he said, "I have a brother who’s a retired—he had a heart attack—he’s a retired senior pastor, really knows the Bible. He’s one of our best counselors. You have very predictable problems from the kind of families you come from. You have no business saying anything to anyone until you get these resolved. We’ll give you a special student rate of eighty-five to ninety-five dollars, and you can see my brother for about twelve sessions. This is not rocket science; you can resolve this."

I was making a thousand dollars a month with three kids, going to school full-time, working full-time. I’m going to tell you that ninety dollars a week for twelve weeks was the best investment I ever made. We learned how to go into training to deal with our anger and how to express it appropriately. I want to give you that tool now.

Two tools: the training apparatus is "I feel" messages. When Theresa would shut down and I would talk or get very angry, what we learned is we couldn’t communicate. Then it shut down everything in our life. This feels a little unfair to me, but I’m going to try and deal appropriately with my anger, because at a time when I didn’t have any money at all, I paid ninety dollars a session to give it to you right now for free, which doesn't seem fair.

But what we learned, we put it on a three-by-five card, and instead of "you ought," "you should," "you always," "you never"—those are angry words when couples or roommates or friends are fighting. "You ought" and "you should" are how dads talk to their daughters or how mothers talk to their sons. Those words are disallowed in a marriage relationship. "You ought," "you should," or "you always," "you never"—no one always or never does anything. Those are labeling things. What you do is you attack each other.

You need a tool so that you can attack the issue. What I learned in my counseling was to make "I feel [blank] when you [blank]." We put it on a card; it was on the refrigerator. I put it in my Bible. I had to learn: "I feel hurt when you give more attention to the kids than me. I feel disappointed when I spend this time making supper and you’re always a half hour to forty minutes late. I feel like you don’t love me and you don’t care. I feel disappointed when... I feel angry when you..."

Do you get it? What it does is it takes those issues and they come from your heart, and you identify how you feel instead of attacking the other person.

Dave Drewry: We’ll continue in a moment. While you’re with us, if you’ve never checked out the Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram YouTube channel, you’re missing a whole other side of this ministry. It’s full of teaching series you won’t see anywhere else, things like "BIO: Three Essential Practices to Becoming Like Jesus" and the "I Choose Joy" series, just to name a few. It’s a great way to go deeper with Chip’s teaching or to send a friend something to watch. Just search "Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram" on YouTube and take a look around. Now here’s Chip.

Chip Ingram: We were learning how to do this. I perpetually felt like my life was overwhelmed, and it always seemed like if she made a special dinner, I would come home late. I learned over time we always argued about this. Part of it is the differences when you get married. When you’re dating, I was adventurous and spontaneous and exciting. When we got married, I became irresponsible. When I was dating her, she was consistent, godly, followed through, and structured. After we got married, she was rigid, unbending, with no flexibility.

You start focusing on those things. She really wanted dinner at a certain time, and I would just blow through it, lose track of time. I did it over and over and over. Eventually I learned, when I’m really late, come in and be angry, pick on her early, because a good offense is better than a good defense. I’d find something about her and attack her early on when I walked in. Some of you guys know this tactic. We would argue, and I’d feel justified. Here’s what’s happening in our relationship.

I come in and I’m ready to get mad at her because the counseling, obviously, after two or three sessions, isn’t helping too much because I’m not obeying it yet. I walk in and everyone’s already eaten an hour ago. There’s two candles lit, the food is on the plate, and she’s seated. I’m waiting for the attack. She was calm. She said, "Here’s your dinner." I was waiting for the attack. She lets me get a few bites, and then she looks at me very calmly and her eyes are watery. She said, "Chip, I feel like you don’t love me when I spend the better portion of a day preparing something for you to express my love and you disregard it and just come home an hour late. This was my gift for you. I feel like you don’t love me."

I’d never made the connection; to me it was a power issue. That statement began—I just thought, "Wait a second. I may fight with you, but I love you." If me being home on time says I don’t love you, I can change that. Very few times ever after that did I miss dinner. Can I encourage you to begin to use "I feel" messages? Write it on a card, put it on the refrigerator.

You have anger issues. Some of you stuff, some of you spew, and some of you—the reason you have an addiction is that’s how you deal with your anger. The reason you eat is because of your anger. The reason you watch so much TV and play video games is because of your anger. The reason you stay at work is because of your anger. You have a habit, and the cue is you feel unrest and difficulty and pain. You’ve developed some routine, some negative thing that gives you the reward of feeling better. "Oh, I feel better; I ate for a while; I watched this movie; I went on Netflix; I surfed on this." I went out and helped these other people because I didn’t deal with my own stuff. Those patterns are rampant in this room.

God says go into training. You go into training and say, "I’m going to be honest." Then when I’m angry, I’m going to identify that I’m angry. It’s going to be hard, and I’m going to give an "I feel" message. "I feel hurt when you... I feel disappointed... I feel used... I feel angry when we make a budget and you spend money that we don’t have... I feel hurt when the attention is given to the kids, and I realize we have not made love in three weeks and it doesn’t even seem to register."

The other tool in anger is to make direct requests. Part of our anger is always around expectation. Expectations are that we think our mates think the way we think, or our friends think the way we think, and they can read our mind. It’s like, "I’m going to be over here and I’ve asked you to meet me, and I’m doing A, B, C, and D. Of course you’re going to do at least A and B, right?" And they don’t. Then we’re angry. Did you ask them to do that? No, you just expected it to happen.

You make direct requests. So much of our anger is, even at work, you’re working with someone and you’re doing this part of the job and they’re doing that part of the job, and you just expect that if I’m doing this, surely you’re going to do that. But you don’t ask them to do that. And then they don’t do it. And then you’re ticked off. Then you’re ticked off and you don’t say it to them; you stuff it down or it comes out in a meeting three weeks later.

You would be shocked at what happens. Again, it takes courage and grace where you start making direct requests. Back to our marriage world, you make a direct request. If you’re a stay-at-home mom, you might say, "Honey, I’m glad and I understand you’ve had a hard day, and there’s been a lot going on. But when you walk in the door, I want you to give me the first five minutes of your day. Then rather than ESPN or the Wall Street Journal, I need you to play with the kids for a half hour to give me a break. Direct request. Would you do that?"

How long has that been making you angry? Or you’re a man and you say to yourself, "I’ve been on the road four days. We have soccer, softball, basketball, our weekends are a blur. We’re on this committee, we went to church, and we’ve not been together physically or had a romantic evening for sixteen days." And you say, direct request: "I’d like to set aside one evening a week where we put the kids to bed early and we have a romantic time of really talking and enjoying one another."

The guys are going, "That’s not very romantic or spontaneous like all the movies." Well, how’s your way working for you? Most women, knowing that’s the request, mentally think, "Okay, that really matters to him." But we don’t talk to each other that way. If you don’t give "I feel" messages and if you don’t make direct requests, you will stuff, you’ll explode, or you have these habits.

When you ought to be talking to God or talking to someone you love or doing something that’s profitable, you’re on Facebook, or you’re watching meaningless stuff, or eating food that you don’t need. In Christian circles, we kind of create all these different ways that they’re not really sinful. They’re not sinful in that they're overtly violating some Scripture, but they’re sinful in that you’re not being honest with yourself, you’re not being honest with God, you’re not being honest with others, and you’re not honest about being angry and yet dealing with it appropriately.

Can you see what would happen in your life if you said, "What’s the area that I’m really frustrated in?" What’s the area? You get real with God—you don’t have to tell anybody else right now—and you would say, "I’ve tried and tried, and I can’t change."

You say, "Okay, what’s the feeling I have? What’s the thing that I can’t change?" There’s a reward you’re getting out of what you’re doing. It’s usually temporary, short-term ease, long-term pain and consequence. If you said for the next ninety days, "I don’t know how it will impact, but I’m going to be honest—little things, big things, with myself, with God. Anytime I represent myself with another person in speech or action that is not true, I’m going to go to them as long as it doesn’t hurt them and I’m going to confess it." You do that two or three times this week, and you’ll be more honest than you’ve been in a long time because it’s painful and ugly.

It’s like when I had to go to marriage counseling. I still remember sitting in that room thinking, "I hope no one sees me." Why? Because I’m proud. The reason I don’t want to confess is my pride. The reason I don’t want to apologize is my pride. When you go into training on these things, God gets to the very core of the core so that the life of Christ can be formed in you. Specific area, in terms of anger against others, yourself, has been an issue in your life. Write it on a card and start using "I feel" messages.

Are you willing to go into training? We’ve been talking about transformation. This series is going to come, the series is going to go, and you can either begin to do some of these baby steps of training. You do this ninety days with me, I will tell you, things will happen in you that you never dreamed. Trying hard, no matter how sincere, certainly won’t break the power of certain ingrained, habitual, besetting sins. You have to go into training.

It’s like the person I knew, forty-two years old, had never run in their life. Had a friend and said, "I want to run a marathon." She couldn’t walk three miles. She changed when she went to bed, she changed her diet, she walked three or four miles. Three months later, she jogged ten. Six months later, twenty-six-point-two without stopping. Everything she needed was already in her. She went into training so that God could do in and through her what He’d already deposited physically.

Everything you need to become the Christ-like mother, father, student, brother, sister, worker, is already in you because the Spirit is in you. He’ll use His Word and His people as you go into training. Ninety days from now, you will see a significant difference. My question is, are you willing to be honest and ruthless enough to spot what’s the one area I want to do, and go into training?

Dave Drewry: You’re listening to Living on the Edge and a message titled "The Role of Spiritual Training in the Transformation Process." We’re in a series called "Free at Last." If you want to find more from this study, just go online to livingontheedge.org. Another great way to listen throughout the week, no matter what your schedule looks like, is by subscribing to the Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram podcast. For Chip’s complete sermons, unedited and in full, look for the Chip Ingram Sermon Podcast, available wherever you listen.

Right now, we have a resource we’d like to send you. Chip’s book, "Yes! You Really Can Change," is the practical companion to help you keep training right alongside Chip’s teaching. It’s a clear, biblically grounded look at what spiritual transformation actually requires, where the power to change really comes from, and what it looks like when it finally takes hold. Right now, we’re including a second copy with every order so you can work through it alongside someone in your life who’s ready for a breakthrough. Just look for Chip’s book, "Yes! You Really Can Change," online at livingontheedge.org/offers.

Somebody somewhere is going to hear a message like this one at exactly the moment they need it. That only happens because of listeners who step up and give. If you’ve been blessed by this ministry, would you help make sure it keeps reaching people? Give today at livingontheedge.org or call 888-333-6003. You can also mail your gift to Living on the Edge, P.O. Box 3007, Suwanee, Georgia, 30024. Now here’s Chip with a final word.

Chip Ingram: As we close today’s program, I want to stop for a moment because this is one that’s like taking a needle into our raw nerve when you start to tell people, "Be angry, but don’t sin." If you are struggling with anger or if you know someone who’s struggling with anger, what I talked about—the "I feel" message—is a powerful tool. But there’s a whole process you need to go through because this is one that, when you start talking about anger, it is the tip of the iceberg.

What’s underneath of it? What God wants to do in your heart and in your life when you begin to discover, "I’m bitter, I’m angry, I’m resentful." What I discovered when I was teaching through the Bible, James chapter 1 and this passage in Ephesians, I realized what a big issue this was. I eventually taught an entire series called "Overcoming Emotions That Destroy."

If anger is an issue that you’re thinking to yourself, "I have the shame that goes with that, I’ve got the guilt that goes with that, or my husband blows up, or I don’t know how to respond to my boss," this is a resource that people have told me over and over and over again literally turned their lives around. If we could be of help, let us know. We would love to get that into your hands to help you be angry, but not sin.

Dave Drewry: To follow up on Chip’s invite, just go to livingontheedge.org/series and look for the study called "Overcoming Emotions That Destroy." I’m Dave Drewry, and we’ll see you next time for more Bible teaching from Chip Ingram here on Living on the Edge. Today’s program is produced and sponsored by Living on the Edge.