In this episode of The Flatline, host Rick Hughes brings you a powerful discourse on understanding and managing anger from a biblical perspective. Listeners are walked through essential scriptures and spiritual guidelines that aim to help you overcome emotional turmoil and regain inner peace. From personal anecdotes to wise biblical teachings, Hughes provides practical steps to ensure anger doesn’t jeopardize your spiritual and personal journey.
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 good morning and welcome to the flatline i am your host rick hughes and for the next few minutes please stick around it won’t be long only about 30 minutes of motivation some inspiration
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A whole lot of education with absolutely no manipulation because we’re not trying to con you. We’re not trying to hustle any money out of you. We’re certainly not trying to sell you anything. We’re just offering to give you some information. Information that I think will help you verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if you want to orient and adjust to that plan, that’s up to you. My prayer is that you will do so. But the Flatline has been on the air for 1,035 Sundays across America. And I think we’ve got some new stations that are coming online. I made an announcement last week. I’m going to make the same announcement today so you’ll understand this. This is in reference to all the new shows that are coming up in July and the ones that just came online in June. We welcome a lot of new listeners who may be tuning in for the first time this morning. Recently, we got a letter from someone in Maui that heard it for the first time. As soon as they heard it, they wrote to us. But we added new stations to our flatline broadcasts like Sarasota, Florida, Albany, Georgia, Maui, Hawaii, Marion, Illinois, Greenville, Mississippi, and Beckley, West Virginia, just to name a few of them. So if you like the information you’re hearing and you’d like to hear more, you don’t necessarily have to wait till next Sunday to hear it. We post all of our past shows on our website. And you can simply go on the internet to rickhughesministries.org. rickhughesministries.org. If you go to that site, you will see what’s called the Flatline. If you click on that, just put your mouse up there and click, You’ll find a link to all of our past shows, and you can also check out our podcast. It’s found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, other podcast venues. So we podcast the radio show. We have the radio show available on the website and, of course, over the radio ways that you’re listening this morning. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for listening. You may notice we don’t sell anything. We don’t request money. I simply believe that God’s in it. He’ll pay for it. So our financial needs are his responsibility. My objective is to find those of you that are hungry for spiritual information and hopefully assist you in your Christian life or perhaps help you to become members of God’s royal family by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you don’t attend church, feel free to write to us via our website. We’ll try to answer your questions, okay? But a lot of these cities that we’re picking up, there’s some great pastors in those cities, and we can refer you to those pastors if you’d like. Today’s radio show is going to be about anger. Anger. Many individuals have an issue with their temper. I’ve had an issue with mine in the past as a young man. I played football and had a temper and got in fights a lot of times. Once I got saved, it didn’t mean my temper went away, but I had to learn how to control it. Anger is often seen in road rage on the highways where one individual got highly agitated at another driver. They want to fight, get out, stop, try to beat him up. It sometimes occurs at work, even sporting events. Even at family events, sometimes those things can turn to anger too when your least favorite nephew gets around you. So when you get angry, what you’re doing is surrendering control of your life to the object of your anger. If you’re a Christian, anger is a source of emotional chain sinning, or going from one sin to another sin. So let’s see what the Bible has to say about this subject on anger. We’ll start with Ephesians chapter four, verse 30 and 31. The Bible says clearly, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, listen now, let all bitterness, verse 31, Ephesians four, all wrath all anger all clamor and all evil speaking be put away from you along with all malice and then for the old testament we’ll go to ecclesiastes 7 verse 9 do not hasten in your spirit to be angry for anger rests in the bosom of a fool so let’s start with that ephesian passage and here we have a command from the apostle paul do not grieve the holy spirit of god The original Greek word for grieve is lupio, and this verb in the present tense means not now, not ever. You never are to grieve the Spirit of God if you’re a Christian. The active voice of that verb, a present active imperative is what it is in the morphology of the verb, but the active voice says you are the one that’s doing this, you do it yourself. And the imperative mood is what we call the mood of command. And this verb means to feel sorry. Obviously, the Holy Spirit is saddened by our sin and our failure. And we know from Ephesians 5, 18, we’re commanded to be filled with the Holy Spirit, not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. Thus, when we allow our sin nature to take over our thoughts, when we get angry, when our emotions take over, it’s disappointing for the Holy Spirit. As a matter of fact, let me ask you a simple question right now before we go one step further. Is it possible that you are not in fellowship this morning? Is it possible that you are harboring anger towards someone and bitterness and implacability? If it is, then you are not filled with the Spirit, you’re out of fellowship, you’re grieving the Holy Spirit, and you need to confess that sin to God immediately. In this case, in Ephesians, emotions are the culprit. So the question to be asked this morning is, can you control your emotions? Always remember this, that emotions, make sure we get this clear here, always remember that emotions are are the culprit, and the emotions don’t think, they just react. That’s why we’re told to have the mind of Christ in Philippians 2.5, let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. So emotions, again, don’t think, they react. But if you learn to think, you can respond, so you have a choice. When you get angry, you can react with your emotions, or you can respond by thinking clearly. That’s why we’re told again to have the mind of Christ, and that’s the key to controlling your emotions. It’s a mindset of humility, and this is exactly what the passage says in Philippians 2, 5. He humbled himself and made himself of no reputation. When you have the same thinking or the same mindset of the Lord Jesus Christ, then you’ll be able to do what he did, and that’s use impersonal love with the individual who has made you angry. Maybe you’ve never heard the term impersonal love if you’re a new listener. It’s what we call problem-solving device number seven on the flatline of your soul. Again, the flatline is made up of 10 problem-solving devices taught clearly in the scripture. It’s not something new I developed. My pastor taught me this a long time ago. If you don’t understand these, you need to get in touch with us. Write us through the website. We’ll send you the book, Christian Problem Solving. It’ll list all 10 of those slot line principles. So if this is the first time you’ve heard it, order the book, Christian Problem Solving. It’s free. It won’t cost you a dime. But people and circumstances can make you angry. But it’s what you do when you’re angry that glorifies God, whether you react or whether you respond. In Romans 12, 19, the Bible says, Beloved, Do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. So you don’t have to worry about getting even with whoever makes you angry. You can let the Lord handle that, and that’s a wonderful monkey off your back. Let God handle it. The longer you get bitter and the longer you stay angry, the more you try to handle it, try to get even, try to get revenge, the deeper you go into your sin. In Hebrews 10, 30, the Bible says, for we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord, and again, the Lord will judge his people. Now let’s go back to Ephesians 4.31. We find these words after we are warned not to grieve the Holy Spirit, then we find a pattern here of mental attitude sins that lead all the way to terrible destruction. It says, let all bitterness, let all wrath, let all anger, let all clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you along with all malice. This verse demonstrates what typically happens when a person gets angry. Once your emotions take control, you find yourself getting bitter. The word bitter is a Greek word called pikria, P-I-K-R-I-A. That’s the Greek word, pikria. And it means something that is accurate or sharp and unpleasant, irritating, referring to some person or some action that’s totally repugnant to you. I would often think of drinking spoiled milk. You want to spit it out. In this passage, we’re instructed to concentrate, not to concentrate on the bitter taste left in our soul, from the unjust treatment we’ve experienced. So don’t do that. Let all bitterness be gone, it’s going to tell us. You’re not allowed to be bitter. That’s a terrible sin to get bitter. In this totally, in this passage, we have instructions not to concentrate on the bitter taste left in our soul. And then it goes to the next word. Let all bitterness and all wrath, W-R-A-T-H. That’s a Greek word called thumos, T-H-U-M-O-S in the Greek. That means boiling up passion or boiling up anger. Emotional control taking over. And so from wrath, then we come to anger. Let all, what does the passage say? Let all wrath. Let all anger, let all clamor and evil speaking be put away from you along with all malice. So we have wrath. That’s kind of like the thunderstorm, the thumos, thunderstorm boiling up. And then we move to wrath, anger, wrath. Anger is the word orge, O-R-G-E. And that’s the impulse to harm someone, a violent emotion. The next step, once you let the anger take over from the source of wrath because you’re bitter about something, see how it follows a pattern. The next step is you start complaining to people. You gotta run your mouth about it. You gotta find somebody to tell what happened to you. You gotta find somebody to tell them how you’ve been treated unjustly and tell somebody what a jerk that other person is. That word that we’re talking about is evil speaking, clamor, clamor. Clamor comes before evil speaking, so let’s look at it. Let all bitterness, peccaria, let all wrath, thumos, let all anger, orge, and now clamor. What in the world is clamor? Clamor is the Greek word krauge, K-R-A-U-G-E, and it’s a loud outcry. It’s what is called in the English an onomatopoeia. An onomatopoeia, my English teacher will be proud of me that I know what that is. An onomatopoeia. That means the word is formed after the sound or what it sounds like. The sound here is the barking of a crow. And that’s like you going from constant complaining for all that’s happened to you, for everybody to hear. So you just start barking like a crow. You know how a crow does early in the morning. He crawl, crawl, crawl, crawl all morning. If you’ve ever turkey hunted, you know what it is. Turkeys will gobble to get those crows. So we’re to stay away from sounding like a crow, barking, complaining, going to find people that we can bark to, tell them what a raw deal we got. And then we go from that to evil speaking, where Paul said, let what? Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamor, and all evil speaking. What is evil speaking? Well, that’s the word blasphemia, blasphemia. And that means to slander, to malign an individual, to run them down, criticize them, backbiting. So what I’ve just read to you is a progressive mental attitude of sins of an individual who is angry. But then it goes on into malice along with all malice. And malice is a desire to harm someone. That’s you wanting to get even, to hurt them, beat them up, run them down, put them in jail, whatever you want to do to get even with them. But actually in verse 32, Paul tells us how to deal with those people that we’re mad at. What does he say? He says, be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you. You can only do that by using the filling of the Holy Spirit and using impersonal love, which is problem-solving device number six on the flight line of your soul. You might not know what impersonal love is if you’re a new listener. That’s why I encourage you to get the book, Christian Problem-Solving, But it’s you being able to love an individual that’s not worth loving. It’s the same thing God did for you when it says God so loved the world. You were not worth loving. You were a sinner. You were nasty. You were filthy. You were vile. And yet he loved you. But he didn’t love you based on what you are. He loved you based on what he is. And personal love, it gives you the ability to love another person based on who you are, not based on who they are. So be you kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you. That’s an amazing concept there. To be tenderhearted towards a person you don’t like, to forgive a person that did you wrong, just like God forgave you is what it’s saying. So in closing, let’s get some principles on anger. One, here’s a clear principle. Anger is a sin which motivates honor code violations like gossip, judging, maligning, criticizing, backbiting. Most of these sins result in chain sinning one right after another. If you’re angry at someone this morning, you probably have done this. You might have done it today already. Just got up mad about something. Got on the phone, called somebody and complained about something. Number two, anger motivates jealousy and cruelty. Anger motivates jealousy and cruelty. Proverbs 27, four, wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy? So a person can’t be angry without being cruel and unfair to the person they’re angry at and to other people that get in your periphery. Number three, anger is related to stupidity. So it’s a good question to ask you, are you being stupid this morning? Ecclesiastes 7 verse 9, do not be hasty to be angry in your mind for anger resides in the bosom of a fool. Anger resides in the bosom of a fool and thinking of a fool. So if you’re angry, you’re thinking like a fool this morning. And fools usually destroy themselves by a series of bad decisions. So the person you’re angry at, you’re just angry at, and then you’re going to wind up destroying your own self through discipline from God because you won’t confess that sin of anger. Four, a person is never smart when he’s angry. And that’s why many stupid and embarrassing things are said in anger. Like, I hate you. I don’t ever want to see you. You know, you probably have said some of that yourself. That’s stupid. That’s dumb. That’s a fool who says that sort of thing. Embarrassing things. Said in anger. Wishing you hadn’t said them. And then trying to go back and apologize and say, well, I wish I hadn’t said that. I’m sorry. That’s what your anger is. I used to have a fishing friend. He had a hot temper and that thing would go off. Man, when that thing went off, he’d explode. But strangely enough, an hour later, he’d be normal again. He couldn’t control his anger. Number five, anger is a violation of the royal family honor code, Colossians 3.8. But now you also put them all aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Put them aside. Put them away. Don’t do that. They all are sins, and they all quench and grieve the Holy Spirit in your life, and they all will bring discipline to your life if you don’t confess them as sins. Six, when you’re maltreated, never let reaction become sin because if you retaliate, then your reaction becomes anger. When you’re maltreated, never let reaction to maltreatment become sin. If you retaliate, then your reaction becomes anger. I know a story that I heard years ago from a headmaster that I knew in a school I was speaking in because he whipped a kid for something the kid did not do wrong. The kid had every right to get mad, to sue him, to fight him, to hit him, but he kept his mouth shut. He took it. And he said, the kid told him, said, I can take it, I can handle it. He didn’t go home and complain to his father. He just forgave the headmaster for whipping him for something that he didn’t do wrong. Actually, it was because the teacher wanted him to read in class and the kid never learned how to read at another school before he came to this school. So he got a whipping for something that wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know how to read. So you can’t retaliate when you get treated unfairly. Seven, you cannot build your happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. And that’s exactly what you’re doing when you try to retaliate. You try to make them unhappy and try to build your happiness on their unhappiness. You can never, ever, ever be happy by getting revenge. Here’s point eight, and it’s a pretty good point. Anger will destroy a marriage. Maybe that’s happened to you. Maybe you and your spouse have fought and been bitter and angry at each other and don’t speak to each other. It’ll hinder your prayer life, the Bible says, too. I pray that’s not the case. You have no right to get angry with your wife or your husband. You have to learn how to use impersonal love, learn how to use the floodlight in your soul, how to use God’s problem-solving devices, and you don’t have to get angry at each other. Nine, arrogance motivates emotional sins like jealousy, bitterness, vindictiveness, hatred, implacability, revenge, self-pity. Anger is the other side of the coin with jealousy on the front side. And criminal activity of the criminal is the function of an arrogant, angry person. Anger always adds wrong to wrong or sin to sin. Anger doesn’t make anything right, it just makes it worse. So if you have a hot temper and you’re a Christian, you have to learn to overcome that arrogant temptation to react rather than respond. React means to let your emotions take over, get bitter, get angry, get full of wrath, get full of malice, get full of hatred, or respond with forgiveness, tenderness, mercy. Same thing God did for you. In 2 Peter 1-2, the Bible says, Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord. Notice the two things you need to defeat your anger are grace and peace. God graced you out and graced me out by sending his Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to pay for our sins. We did not deserve it, nor did we earn his forgiveness, and we were given grace. Ephesians 2, 8, 9, For by grace are you saved through faith. It’s a gift of God and not of works, lest anyone should brag about it. So the two things we need to overcome anger, what are they? Grace and peace. Peace is a wonderful mental attitude provided from the filling of the Holy Spirit. Did you know that? Galatians 5, 22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, mercy, faith. So peace comes from the filling of the Holy Spirit. That means your mind doesn’t have a storm. Think about an old washing machine like an agitator. And you had a top-loaded washing machine that had an agitator in there and you put your clothes in there and put your soap in there and that thing starts agitating. swishing around. Your mind can get like that sometimes when you get angry. And you can’t focus your thoughts. You’re just agitated. That’s exactly what happens. No peace in your life. You may be without peace this morning because you’re angry and bitter and mad about the way someone’s church treated you last week or the way one of your family members is treating you this week or the way some politician is acting that you don’t like. So you’re angry and bitter, vindictive about it. In 2 Thessalonians 3.16, now the Lord of peace, there it is, the Lord of peace himself give you peace always by all means. Thus the Lord be with you all. What a wonderful thought. The Lord of peace give you peace, give you joy. My prayer for you this morning is that you will conquer that temper of yours and enjoy the wonderful peace, what we call a relaxed mental attitude that God can provide for you by learning and applying his word and all the scriptures into your soul. We have a term for it called LAG, L-A-G. LAG simply means learn, apply, and glorify. Learn, apply, and glorify, L-A-G. This formula helps you to grow spiritually by learning and storing scripture in the mentality of your soul. So you can use it later and you can recall it when necessary. But again, your volition still has to decide what you want to do. You want to react or you want to respond. Those scriptures in your soul, if you’ve learned them, will echo out to you, don’t do that, don’t do that, don’t do that. And your sin nature will tell you, oh, go ahead, oh, go ahead, oh, go ahead. Listen to what the word of God says in Exodus 23, 22. But if you indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. There’s the Lord taking up for you. There’s the Lord handling your problems. In Luke 6, 27 through 29, but I say to you who hear this, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you and pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. You don’t repay evil with evil. You repay evil with good. In Proverbs 24, 17, do not rejoice when your enemy falls and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles. These verses clearly teach us that we are not to delight at our enemy’s difficulties or disasters. that we are to stay out of God’s business. Stay out of God’s business. I’m going to say it again. Stay out of God’s business. If the person you’re angry with has mistreated you or wronged you, then they will be disciplined by God. If they’re believers, he doesn’t need our help to straighten them out. Stay out of God’s way. That’s all you have to do. Let the Lord handle it. So that’s my message on anger this morning. Are you listening? You want to get in touch with me, it’s easy to do. Just go to the website rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org, and we can be glad to send you any of these books we’re talking about, especially Christian Problem Solving, identifying all of those 10 problem-solving devices. and encouraging you to go to the website under Flatline and listen to previous shows. I also remind you of the podcasts that we do, various podcast venues like Apple iPod and Spotify. You can always go there and type in The Flatline and find it. But the main thing I want to encourage you to do this morning I want you to know for sure that if you die today, you’ll go to heaven. You don’t have a guarantee you’re going to be around this afternoon or tomorrow. Maybe you think you will be. Maybe you feel fine. Maybe you feel great. Say, oh, man, I’m okay. I feel just fine. Well, good. I’m glad you feel fine. But if, just if something were to happen, and tonight was the night God called you home, would you go to heaven? Do you have eternal life? Do you know for a fact that you’re going to heaven? The Bible says these things are written so that you might know that you have eternal life. He that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son of God has not life. So you can receive Christ as your Savior if you’d like to do that. If you’ve never done it, I encourage you to do that. I encourage you to pray to God right now and tell him that you believe Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior. You believe he died on the cross for you and you’re willing to accept him as your Savior. Because the Bible says, whosoever should call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that means you and it means me and anyone else that’s ever done it. So I hope you enjoyed the show this morning. I hope you learned something. If you need a transcript of it, let us know. You can always call us at 800-831-0718. 800-831-0718. Until next week, this is your host, Rick Hughes, host of The Flatline, saying thank you for listening to The Flatline today.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline 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.
