In this enlightening episode of The Flatline, host Rick Hughes delves into the pervasive issue of anger in our society. Through a Christian lens, Rick offers insights from scripture on how to manage anger and avoid letting it control our lives. With over 50 years of experience, Rick shares personal anecdotes and biblical references that highlight the destructive power of anger and how it conflicts with a fulfilling spiritual life.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, stay with me. It won’t be long, just about 30 minutes of motivation, inspiration, education, and no manipulation. No con jobs here. We’re not trying to raise money. We’re not trying to sell you something. We’re offering to give you something, and that’s divine viewpoint. What I’m trying to do is verify and identify God’s plan for your life. If I can do that, then you are free to orient and adjust to the plan if you’d like to do so. It’s your life. You got one shot at it. You can’t get two. You only one shot. So I pray that you’ll listen and listen closely, and this will have a tremendous impact in your life. You know, I get a lot of letters, and a lot of people write to me. It’s always interesting to hear from people. But you can go to the website, rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org. You can contact us there, write us there, order our different books there, all free of charge. Our new book, Understanding Your Soul, is coming out soon. It’s at the printer now. It’ll be available if you’d like to have a copy of it. But as I look around, one thing that I see in our country today is very interesting to watch, and I know you’ve seen it too. There’s so much anger, so much bitterness, so much hatred. And it’s not just racial, it’s other things as well. People generally are into such a bad mood, they’re mad, angry all the time. And you see it at the supermarket, you see it at the car wash, at the gas station, on the interstate. And I get many letters from listeners across the country about this. Some of the letters, when people write to me, they talk about their personal problems and things they’re dealing with, with marriage or whatever, finances. I’ve told people many times, I’m not a trained counselor. I’m not a counselor. Rather, I’m an evangelist. However, one’s mental attitude keeps coming up. People keep mentioning this to me, that they have problems with anger. In these various letters I read, there it is. I’m angry all the time. I don’t know about you, but many, many, many people are angry, mad about something, mad about politics, mad about finances, mad about family. Lord knows there are many things Americans get angry about. Many times it’s angry at family members. You talk about anger, you let somebody pass away and go dividing up the wheel and watch what happens. People would steal, even from their dead parents. Other times, it’s anger about political beliefs, something like road rage. You’ve seen that one, road rage, where two drivers want to get out of their car and go after each other because somebody made somebody mad. I’ve had that happen to me in my travels over the 50 years that I’ve traveled across the country speaking. People get mad at me because I turned in front of somebody or I didn’t move over quick enough, and they roll up beside you, blowing the horn and flashing the finger at you. Sometimes people get angry over nothing, but it’s interesting. But sometimes, you know, people sometimes get angry at God. Sometimes you may even get angry with yourself over something you did that’s affecting your own happiness. One thing is for sure. Write this down and remember this. Angry people are not happy people. Let’s take a look at anger this morning. Let’s see what God says about it in the scripture, okay? The first question we have to answer is where does anger come from? And the answer is it comes from your sin nature. The Apostle Paul talks about anger in Ephesians 4, 30 through 32. This is what he wrote, and I’ll read it to you. Grieve not, that’s a mandate by the way, grieve not the Holy Spirit, whereby you’re sealed into the day of redemption. Now here it comes. Listen carefully. Ephesians 4, 31. Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, along with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you. Here we can see that the mental attitude set of anger actually grieves the Holy Spirit. And that’s the result of quenching the spirit. So that means you break fellowship with God and you’re still walking around a Christian, but you’re not in fellowship because you’ve let your sin nature take control. As a Christian, you’re not to live under the control of your sin nature, but you are rather to live under control of the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 5.18. Be filled with the Spirit. We can also say that anger leads to clamor. Clamor. That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Clamor, C-L-A-M-O-U-R, which is you maligning the person you’re angry with. That’s an onomatopoeia in the English language, an onomatopoeia. I didn’t know what that was for a long time, but it means that it’s what it sounds like. It’s like the crow that keeps crowing every morning and barking, barking, barking. You know how crows make that noise in the morning. If you’re angry with somebody, you just bark, bark, bark, bark, bark all the time about that. And you spread lies and rumors and gossip about somebody. And then comes law malice, which is actually the desire to hurt somebody. So it’s clear that bitterness leads to wrath. And the Greek word wrath is thumos, T-H-U-M-O-S, thumos. I always think about that like a thunderstorm. But it’s a rage, like a thunderstorm blowing up strong rage. Along with that rage comes the word orge, which is the word anger, which can mean emotional outburst and revenge, motivation. So if you have no self-control over your very own emotions, then this mental attitude sin of anger can actually destroy you. Because it could cause you to commit an act that’s a crime, such as personal injury, even murder. Did you know that in Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, a father is instructed to provoke not anger, his children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. Provoke not is an imperative mood verb. It’s a command from God through the Apostle Paul. No father is ever allowed to provoke their children to wrath. The negative may, provoke not, may is a negative word, and provoke, parogizo, means to arouse resentment or to arouse irritation. So this is done when you discipline your children unfairly. My wife and I raised four children, three daughters and a son, so we know what it means to have to discipline children. In some instances, we can never figure out who did it. Who did it? Did you do it? Not me. Did you do it? Not me. Not me. Not me. And so how do you handle that when you got all four of them claiming they didn’t do it but somebody did it? Somebody gets disciplined unfairly. But an angry parent, a parent that has no patience with their children, can actually destroy that relationship by creating bitterness in that child. I remember one time one of my children got in trouble with Mama. Mama was a basketball coach, basketball coach for many years, and a tough basketball coach. And so Mama was getting tough with this child. And I heard a door slam. I was downstairs in my study, and I heard a door slam. And I went up to my daughter’s room, and there was a sign on the door. It said, stay out. Inside is one stupid and sad person. She had gotten chewed out by Mama over something that she did. I went in, and the sad thing about it was she was holding a picture of Jesus on her chest, and I said, do you think anybody loves you in this house? No. Do you think God loves you? Yes. And that day I was able to pray with my daughter and watch her ask God to save her soul from her sin. So the correct way to raise a child is to use nurture and admonition, that verse says. Underline it in your Bible, Ephesians 6, 1 through 4. Use nurture and admonition. You cannot provoke them to wrath. You cannot afford to do that. Those words literally mean to put something in their head or to put something on their bottom. Nurture and admonition. Admonition is the Greek word nousia, and we get from the root word nous, meaning mind. And the word nurture is the word paideia in the Greek language, which means discipline or correction that regulates character. That word sounds like get a paddle into me. And the Bible does say in Proverbs 13, 24, he that spareth a rod, hateth his son. He that loveth him, chastens him, be time, many times. So, you know, we started this thing years ago in this country where you don’t want to discipline children for anything they did wrong. But when arrogance comes up in a child’s life, you have to deal with it. See, children can disobey you in two ways. You can tell a child, don’t do that, and they may do it anyhow. Sometimes that’s their arrogance. They make a bad decision. And if they keep on doing it, even though you’ve told them don’t do it, then you’ve got to break the arrogance or they will. That’s one of the jobs that parents have is to get rid of that arrogance in the child because the child is born with that coming from the sin nature. And you do it by putting the nurture and the admonition of God in their soul. Sometimes you put something in their mind, okay, go to your room, you’re gonna be punished for a while. Can’t watch TV tonight, you’re gonna be punished. Or sometimes you have to use the paddle to break that arrogance. There are a lot of Old Testament verses that speak about God’s wrath, did you know that? These are not referring to God committing some sort of sin, but they are what we call anthropopathisms. I know, it’s a big word. Anthropopathisms. A-N-T-H-R-O-P-O-P-A-T-H-I-S-M-S. Anthropopathisms. What is that? Well, it’s when you ascribe to God a human feeling in order that we can understand his displeasure. Anthropopathism. And this is interesting how you have to understand this. In Numbers 12, 9, the anger of the Lord was kindled against them. God doesn’t get the sin of anger. God does never sin. He’s perfect righteousness. And so we’re using an anthropopathism to help understand the displeasure of God. The anger of the Lord was kindled against them and he departed. And this is in regards to national discipline. Listen closely to this. Isaiah 5, 25. Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he has stretched forth his hand against them and has smitten them. And the hills did tremble, and their carcass were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still. Simply put, God does discipline his children, just like a parent disciplines a son or a daughter, but never, never in a sinful, emotional way. God doesn’t get angry like you get angry. He doesn’t lose his temper. That’s a misunderstanding of what God is. So patience by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit is the solution to your anger problem, assuming that you have one. Patience by means of the filling of the Holy Spirit is a solution to your anger problem, assuming you have one. In Proverbs 14, 29, he that is slow to wrath, there’s patience, he that is slow to wrath is of great understanding, but he that is hasty of temper shows folly. So you can be slow to wrath, slow to get angry, or you can jump, get hasty, let your temper get away from you. I used to fish with a guy like that that I knew. He’d get mad just on a dime. Boom, he’d be mad. But an hour later, he’d forget about it. He wasn’t mad anymore. Then I’ve been around people that get mad and stay mad for a month. In James 1.19, the Bible says, Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak. Here it comes. Listen now. Slow to wrath. So as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are to hear and listen, speak little, slow to wrath. That’s good advice. I’m trying to think of a word that when a person doesn’t speak very much, and that’s the key to life, learning to listen more than you speak. Sometimes people want, you want them to just quit talking and listen for a minute. So when you feel yourself getting mad about something, or someone get mad at somebody, then stop immediately and confess that thought, rebound that thought. Problem-solving device number one. Rebound the thought that’s causing the frustration in your life. Your sin nature just wants to take over. What it’s waiting to do, the sin nature’s waiting for you to turn him loose so he can blast somebody. That means when you get your anger out, let me get my anger out and blow him up. You know what Proverbs 29, 11 says? The fool always loses his temper, but a wise man holds it back. Let’s take a look at some principles of anger if we can. Here we go, let me give you a few principles about this. One, as a mental attitude sin, anger expresses antagonism, hatred, exasperation, resentment, irrationality, and it can be mental, which means premeditated, or it can be emotional, which means spontaneous, or it could be both. Sometimes people do premeditate getting angry and think what they’re gonna do about it. I used to have a friend that said, when he’d get mad at you, he’d write your name in the book, and he said, I might not get you today, but I’ll get you tomorrow. I’m gonna put your name in my book. premeditated anger or emotional, spontaneous anger. Like when someone cuts in front of you and you slam the brakes on and you almost hit them and you get angry for a minute and yell at them, what are you doing? Don’t do that. The Greek language is specific about these sort of things with the word orge and mental anger and thumos to emotional anger. orge is the word for mental anger, and thumos, the thunderstorm, is the word for the emotional anger. And both types are related to bitterness in Ephesians 4.31. Two, anger motivates jealousy and cruelty, Proverbs 27.4. A person cannot be angry without being cruel and that without being unfair, it’s impossible. Anytime you get angry, you get to be cruel and unfair. Three, a person is never smart when he’s angry. That’s why you say so many stupid and embarrassing things when you’re mad at somebody. You say I’m in anger because you’re not thinking. If you have to deal with some problem, you must have your senses about you, so don’t lose your temper. Or you’ll say something stupid or do something stupid, and you know what I’m talking about because you’ve probably done it before. four anger is a violation of the royal family honor code anger is a violation of the royal family honor code in collisions colossians 3 verse 8 again paul wrote but now you also put them aside anger wrath malice slander and abusive speech from your mouth This is the lifestyle of the mature believer. He has to learn not to let anger take over. Because when anger takes over, then wrath comes and malice, which is the desire to hurt somebody, and slander and abusive speech. All that comes from the outburst of your anger, from your thumos, your emotional anger. So anger hinders effective prayer life, point five. Did you know that? If you’re angry, your prayers are not gonna be answered. In 1 Timothy 2.8, therefore, I desire that men in every place pray, lifting up their holy hands without anger and without dissension. So a mad person, an angry person, is quenching the Holy Spirit, grieving the Holy Spirit, And we know that the prayer won’t be answered because the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. So if you want to have an effective prayer life, you can’t be angry. You want to pray for some political party, don’t get mad at them, just pray for them. Loosing your temper, saying things you shouldn’t say, maligning, criticizing, running down another individual because of what they believe is not the way you live as a believer. If you want to pray for them, don’t be mad, just pray. Six, Christians with arrogant subjectivity look down at other people and often hide their anger until one day when they explode at their friends or their loved ones. That’s a flawed character. It’s a hidden anger instead of an outburst of anger. It’s the premeditated type anger. So if you have that arrogant subjectivity, arrogant means you justify why you’re right and the person you’re mad at is wrong. Subjectivity means you take everything personally. You have no objectivity. Looking down on other people and you hide your anger until it explodes at one of your friends. I’ve been waiting to tell you this for a long time. I’m sick of you and boom, boom, boom, boom. That’s a flawed character. This hidden anger instead of the outburst of anger. Seven, you cannot build your happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. Did you know that? You cannot build your happiness on someone else’s unhappy. When you’re angry with someone and mad at someone and lash out at them, you are obviously trying to make them unhappy. And you’re obviously making yourself happy because I’ve been waiting to do that a long time, you said. That’s exactly what retaliation tries to do. You will never become happy by retaliating or trying to get revenge on someone. Eight, there is such a thing as righteous indignation in the Bible, but it is not anger It’s an emotion. It’s a clear understanding of a bad situation. Righteous indignation is response to unfair treatment by concentrating on your relationship with God. You don’t get angry, but you disagree with Turn it over to the Supreme Court of Heaven, which is open 24 hours a day, and let the Lord handle your complaint. Nine, here’s a good point. Our Lord Jesus Christ expressed what might be called righteous indignation in Matthew 23, 13 through 36. He expressed it to the scribes and the Pharisees. He wasn’t angry when he chewed them out, but he expressed righteous indignation over what they were doing. Now here’s something you might want to think about. On occasion you might get angry with yourself for doing something you said you weren’t going to do anymore. This is a type of self-pity and that will lead to discouragement. Personal frustration is a real thing and you have to learn to conquer that. Yep, you’re going to fail and sure you’re going to commit the same sin over and over and over until you grow up enough spiritually to overcome the temptation But remember that rebound, or 1 John 1, 9, always, always works. You don’t ever ask God for forgiveness and then promise God you won’t do that again. Because as soon as you recommit the sin you promised God you weren’t going to do again, then Satan will nail you with a guilt complex. And you’ll wind up thinking you’re a failure spiritually. And you’ll go sit in the corner and suck your thumb and feel bad about yourself. Get up. Get back in the game. Don’t be discouraged by discipline. Listen to how God, how Paul dealt with his own personal failures. Because he failed just like you and I do. In Romans 7.15, going through verse 20 says, For what I am doing, I do not understand. For I’m not practicing what I would like to do, but I’m doing the very things that I hate. But if I do the very things I don’t want to do, I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good. So now no longer am I the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. That’s recognition of his sin nature. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh, For the be willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want to do, I don’t do. But I practice the very evil that I don’t want to do. But if I am doing the very things I don’t want to do, and I’m no longer the one doing it, but it’s the sin that dwells in me, I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God and the inner man. But I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my body. Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? And then here’s the answer. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then on one hand, I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other with my flesh the law of sin. So even Paul would get angry. Even Paul would do something he didn’t want to do. I know you’ve done that before. You get mad at yourself. You told yourself you would never do that again. It was embarrassing. He left a guilt complex in you, and you went right back and you did it again. And now you think God doesn’t love you because you’ve done what you told him you wasn’t going to do again. And that’s silly. God knows you’re not perfect. So get up, confess your sin, get back in the game. When you’re playing football, you’re going to get blocked and you don’t lay there and feel sorry for yourself. You get up and get back in this line of scrimmage and go after the guy again. You’ll fail. You’re going to fail. God knows that. He loves you. You’re not perfect. But don’t let Satan get control by giving you a gut complex over your consistent failure. You’re going to grow. You’ll eventually get to the place where you can overcome these things in your life. It’s just a matter of growing spiritually. Self-esteem is the key to life. If you don’t have self-esteem, whether human or spiritual, then you’re disoriented to life. Self-esteem means you don’t have confidence in your worth or confidence in your abilities. Lack of self-esteem is almost everything in life. If you don’t have it, it’s disastrous. But the greatest disaster is failure to learn, understand, and think in terms of royal family honor code. That’s the greatest system of integrity ever known to man. Spiritual self-esteem is far greater than human self-esteem. Human self-esteem can sometimes be frustrating, but spiritual self-esteem is never frustrating. And finally, have you ever been angry with God? I’ve spoken with people who refuse to go to church because they’re angry with God. Maybe they’re angry about the death of a loved one or some sudden illness or financial loss. And they said God didn’t answer their prayers and he didn’t step up and do a miracle like they wanted. Listen to what Habakkuk 1 verse 2 says. How long, O Lord, will I call for help and you will not hear me? I cry out to you, violence, yet you don’t save me. In Numbers 11, 11, Moses prayed this. He said, why have you been so hard on your servant? Why have I not found favor in your sight that you’ve laid the burden of all these people on me? These men of God were not immune to suffering and injustice. They were not being rebellious, but they had questions as to why God allowed certain things to happen. How about you? Have you ever been angry with God over something? If so, I advise you to confess your sin immediately. Your sin of unbelief, your sin of lack of faith, And recognize, as you should recognize, that God does not make mistakes. So don’t ever get angry with God. That’s a terrible, terrible thing to be in. Well, did that help you? Did that help you understand anger? Did that help you to understand where anger comes from? I hope so. I thank you for giving me a few minutes of your time this morning. I pray you’ll come back same time, same channel next week. Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes, saying thank you so much for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
