May 15, 2026 • 27 mins
Freedom from anger begins with the filling of the Holy Spirit. Anger destroys peace, poisons relationships, and grieves the Holy Spirit. In this episode, Rick Hughes explains where anger originates and how believers can overcome it—not through self-control, but through the filling of the Holy Spirit. Learn the biblical principles that replace anger with patience, forgiveness, and divine viewpoint thinking, and discover how to live free from emotional control and filled with God’s power.
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(00:08):
Welcome to the Flat Line 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 Flat Line.
I'm your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes stay
(00:29):
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,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
(00:51):
free to Orient and adjust to theplan if you'd like to do so.
It's your life. You got one shot at it can't get
to 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
(01:14):
rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org.
You can contact us there, write us there, order our different
books there, all free of charge.Our new book, The Understanding
Your Soul, is coming out soon. It's at the printer now.
It'll be available if you'd liketo have a copy of it.
(01:35):
But as I look around, so 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.
(01:57):
And you see it at the supermarket, you see it at the
car wash, at the gas station, onthe 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 withmarriage or whatever, finances.
(02:17):
I've told people many times I'm not a trained counselor.
I'm not a counselor, rather, I'man 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 Iread.
There it is. I'm angry all the time.
(02:41):
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 thingsAmericans get angry about.
Many times it's angry at family members.
You talk about anger, you let somebody pass away and go
(03:01):
dividing up the will and we'll look 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 2 drivers want to get out of their car and go after each
other 'cause somebody made somebody mad.
(03:21):
I've had that happen to me in mytravels over the 50 years that I
traveled across the country speaking.
People get mad at me 'cause I turned in front of somebody or I
didn't move over quick enough and they row it beside you,
blowing the horn and flashing the finger at you.
Sometimes Pope would get angry over nothing, but it's
interesting. But sometimes, you know, people
sometimes get angry at God. Sometimes you may even get angry
(03:45):
with yourself over something youdid 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. OK, the first question we have
(04:06):
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 the in Ephesians 430
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,
(04:28):
whereby you're sealed into the day of redemption.
Now here it comes. Listen carefully, Ephesians 431.
Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamour and evil
speaking be put away from you along with all malice, and be
kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another,
(04:50):
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
(05:11):
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 518 be filled with theSpirit.
We can also see that anger leadsto clamour.
Clamour. That's an interesting word,
(05:33):
isn't it? Clamour, CLAMOUR, which is you
maligning the person you're angry with.
That's an onomatopoeia in the, in the English language, an
onomatopoeia. And I didn't know what that was
for a long time, but it means that it, it's what it sounds
like. It's like the crow that keeps
crawling every morning and barking, barking, barking.
(05:55):
You how crows make that noise inthe morning.
If you're angry with somebody, you, 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 long malice, which is actually the desire to
hurt somebody. So it's clear that bitterness
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leads to wrath. And the Greek word wrath is
thumos, THUMOS, 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 or gay and which is the word anger which can mean
(06:42):
emotional outbursts and revenge motivation.
So if you have no self-control over your very own emotions and
this mental attitude, sin of anger can actually destroy you
because it could cause you to commit an act that's crime such
as personal injury, even murder.Did you know that in Ephesians 6
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one through 4, a father is instructed to provoke not his
children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and
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.
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May is is a negative word and provoke parogito 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 haveto discipline children in some
(07:52):
instances. We can never figure out who did
it, The 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 and somebody gets disciplined unfairly.
But an angry parent, a parent that has no patience with their
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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 football, a basketball coach, basketball
coach for many years and a toughbasketball coach.
And so Mama was getting tough with this child and I heard a
(08:36):
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 thedoor.
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 the
picture of Jesus on her chest and and she said, I said, do you
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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.
(09:20):
Ephesians 6, one 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 nucia and we get from the root
(09:41):
word noose, meaning mind. And the word nurture is the word
Padilla 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 1324, he that spareth the rod hateth his
son. He that loveth him chases him be
(10:04):
me time many times. So you know, we started this
thing years ago in this country where you don't want to
discipline children for anythingthey did wrong.
But when arrogance comes up in achild's life, you have to deal
with it. See, children can disobey you in
two ways. You can tell the child don't do
that and they may do it anyhow. Sometimes that's their arrogance
(10:27):
and make a bad decision. And if they keep on doing it
even though you told them don't do it and you got to break the
arrogance of their 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
(10:50):
their mind, OK, go to your room,you're going to be punished for
a while. Can't watch TV tonight?
You're going to be punished. Are they?
Sometimes you have to use the paddle to break that arrogance.
There are a lot of Old Testamentverses that speak about God's
wrath. Did you know that these are not
referring to God committing somesort of sin, But they are what
(11:11):
we call anthropopathisms. I know, it's a big word.
Anthropopathisms Ant HR0P 0PA THISMS anthropopathisms.
What is that? Well, it's when you ascribe to
God a human feeling in order that we can understand His
(11:34):
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
(11:56):
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 to closely to this Isaiah525.
Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against His people,
(12:18):
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,
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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 the misunderstanding of
what God is. So patience by means of the
feeling of the Holy Spirit is the solution to your anger
problem. Assuming that you have 1.
(13:02):
Patience by means of the feelingof the Holy Spirit is solution
to your anger problem, assuming you have one.
In Proverbs 1429, 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,
(13:25):
slow to get angry, or you can jump, get hasty at your
temperate, let your temper get away from you.
I used to fish with a guy like that that I knew he'd get mad on
a 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 119. The Bible says wherefore my
(13:48):
beloved brother, and 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 andlisten speak little slow to
wrath. That's good, good advice.
(14:08):
I'm trying to think of a word that when a person doesn't speak
very much and that's 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
(14:31):
confess that thought and reboundthat thought.
Problem solving device #1 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 is waiting for
you to turn him loose so he can blast somebody.
That means, you know when you get your anger out, let me get
my anger out and blow him up. You know what Proverbs 2911
(14:56):
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't, do you mind? Here we go.
Let me give you a few principlesabout this one.
As a mental attitude, sin, angerexpresses antagonism, hatred,
(15:18):
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 going to do about it.
I used to have a friend that said him when he'd get mad at
(15:40):
you, he'd write your name in thebook.
And he said, I might not get youtoday, 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 him,
you slam the brakes on and you almost hit him and you get angry
for a minute and yell at him, What are you doing?
Don't do that. The Greek language is specific
(16:01):
about these sort of things with the word orgee and mental anger
and thumas to emotional anger. Orgay is the word from mental
anger and thumas. The thunderstorm is the is the
word for the emotional anger andboth types are related to
bitterness. In Ephesians 431.
(16:23):
Two anger motivates jealousy andcruelty.
Proverbs 27.4 A person cannot beangry without being cruel and
that without being unfair. It's impossible.
Anytime you get angry, you get to be cruel and unfair. 3A
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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 knowwhat I'm talking about because
(17:04):
you've probably done it before. 4 Anger is a violation of the
royal family on her code. Anger is a violation of the
royal family on her code. In Colossians, Colossians 3
verse 8 again Paul wrote. But now you also put them aside.
(17:26):
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.
(17:49):
All that comes from the outburstof your anger, from your thumos,
your emotional anger. So anger hinders affected prayer
life .5. Did you know that if you're
angry, your prayers are not going to be answered in First
Timothy 28? Therefore, I desire that men in
every place pray, lifting up their holy hands without anger
(18:14):
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 of 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, can't be angry, You want to pray for some
(18:34):
political party, don't get mad at them, just pray for them.
Losing 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. 6
Christians with arrogant subjectivity look down at other
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people and often hide their anger until one day when they
explode 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 youjustify why you're right and the
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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 an outburst of anger. 7 You cannot
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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, andyou'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.
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You will never become happy by retaliating or trying to get
revenge on someone. 8 There is such a thing as righteous
indignation in the Bible, but itis not anger.
It's an emotion. It's a clear understanding of a
bad situation. Righteous indignation is
(20:32):
response to unfair treatment. By concentrating on your
relationship with God, you don'tget angry, but you disagree with
you. Turn it over to the Supreme
Court of Heaven, which is open 24 hours a day, and let the Lord
handle your your your complaint.9 Here's a good point.
Our Lord Jesus Christ expressed what might be called righteous
(20:54):
indignation in Matthew 2313 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.
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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
(21:36):
spiritually to overcome the temptation.
But remember that rebound or first John 19 always, always
works. You don't ever ask God for
forgiveness and then promise Godyou 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
(21:57):
complex and you'll wind up thinking you're a failure
spiritually and you'll go sit inthe 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
(22:17):
failures because he failed just like you and I do in Romans 715,
going through verse 20. 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
(22:40):
the law, confessing that the lawis 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 inme, but the doing of the good is
not. For the good that I want to do I
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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.
(23:27):
But I see a different law in themembers 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
(23:50):
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.
And I know you've done that before.
You get mad at yourself, you, you told yourself you would
never do that again. It was embarrassing.
He left a guilt complex in you, and then you went right back and
(24:12):
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
(24:33):
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.
You're not perfect, but don't let Satan get control by giving
you a good 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.
(24:53):
It's just a matter of growing spiritually.
Self esteem is a key to life. If you don't have self esteem,
whether human or spiritual, thenyou're disoriented to life.
Self esteem means you don't haveconfidence in your worth or
confidence in your abilities. Lack of self esteem is almost
everything in life. If you have don't have it, it's
disastrous. But the greatest disaster is
(25:17):
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
(25:39):
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 1 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 Habakka one verse2 says.
How long, O Lord, will I call for help?
(26:01):
And you will not hear me. I cry out to you violence, and
yet you don't save me. In Numbers 1111, 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,
(26:24):
but they had questions as to whyGod 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 offaith, and recognize, as you
should recognize, that God does not make mistakes.
(26:46):
So don't ever get angry with God.
That's a terrible, terrible thing to be in.
But did that help you, that helpyou 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.
(27:08):
Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes saying thank you so
much for listening to The Flood Lion.
Thank you for listening to The Flood Lion with your host, Rick
Hughes. If you'd like to contact Rick,
please write to him at PO Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama 35O54 or
(27:29):
online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
Welcome to the Flat Line 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 Flat Line.
I'm your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes stay
(00:29):
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,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
(00:51):
free to Orient and adjust to theplan if you'd like to do so.
It's your life. You got one shot at it can't get
to 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
(01:14):
rickhughesministries.org, rickhughesministries.org.
You can contact us there, write us there, order our different
books there, all free of charge.Our new book, The Understanding
Your Soul, is coming out soon. It's at the printer now.
It'll be available if you'd liketo have a copy of it.
(01:35):
But as I look around, so 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.
(01:57):
And you see it at the supermarket, you see it at the
car wash, at the gas station, onthe 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 withmarriage or whatever, finances.
(02:17):
I've told people many times I'm not a trained counselor.
I'm not a counselor, rather, I'man 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 Iread.
There it is. I'm angry all the time.
(02:41):
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 thingsAmericans get angry about.
Many times it's angry at family members.
You talk about anger, you let somebody pass away and go
(03:01):
dividing up the will and we'll look 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 2 drivers want to get out of their car and go after each
other 'cause somebody made somebody mad.
(03:21):
I've had that happen to me in mytravels over the 50 years that I
traveled across the country speaking.
People get mad at me 'cause I turned in front of somebody or I
didn't move over quick enough and they row it beside you,
blowing the horn and flashing the finger at you.
Sometimes Pope would get angry over nothing, but it's
interesting. But sometimes, you know, people
sometimes get angry at God. Sometimes you may even get angry
(03:45):
with yourself over something youdid 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. OK, the first question we have
(04:06):
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 the in Ephesians 430
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,
(04:28):
whereby you're sealed into the day of redemption.
Now here it comes. Listen carefully, Ephesians 431.
Let all bitterness, all wrath, all anger, all clamour and evil
speaking be put away from you along with all malice, and be
kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another,
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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
(05:11):
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 518 be filled with theSpirit.
We can also see that anger leadsto clamour.
Clamour. That's an interesting word,
(05:33):
isn't it? Clamour, CLAMOUR, which is you
maligning the person you're angry with.
That's an onomatopoeia in the, in the English language, an
onomatopoeia. And I didn't know what that was
for a long time, but it means that it, it's what it sounds
like. It's like the crow that keeps
crawling every morning and barking, barking, barking.
(05:55):
You how crows make that noise inthe morning.
If you're angry with somebody, you, 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 long malice, which is actually the desire to
hurt somebody. So it's clear that bitterness
(06:17):
leads to wrath. And the Greek word wrath is
thumos, THUMOS, 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 or gay and which is the word anger which can mean
(06:42):
emotional outbursts and revenge motivation.
So if you have no self-control over your very own emotions and
this mental attitude, sin of anger can actually destroy you
because it could cause you to commit an act that's crime such
as personal injury, even murder.Did you know that in Ephesians 6
(07:05):
one through 4, a father is instructed to provoke not his
children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and
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.
(07:29):
May is is a negative word and provoke parogito 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 haveto discipline children in some
(07:52):
instances. We can never figure out who did
it, The 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 and somebody gets disciplined unfairly.
But an angry parent, a parent that has no patience with their
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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 football, a basketball coach, basketball
coach for many years and a toughbasketball coach.
And so Mama was getting tough with this child and I heard a
(08:36):
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 thedoor.
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 the
picture of Jesus on her chest and and she said, I said, do you
(08:59):
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.
(09:20):
Ephesians 6, one 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 nucia and we get from the root
(09:41):
word noose, meaning mind. And the word nurture is the word
Padilla 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 1324, he that spareth the rod hateth his
son. He that loveth him chases him be
(10:04):
me time many times. So you know, we started this
thing years ago in this country where you don't want to
discipline children for anythingthey did wrong.
But when arrogance comes up in achild's life, you have to deal
with it. See, children can disobey you in
two ways. You can tell the child don't do
that and they may do it anyhow. Sometimes that's their arrogance
(10:27):
and make a bad decision. And if they keep on doing it
even though you told them don't do it and you got to break the
arrogance of their 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
(10:50):
their mind, OK, go to your room,you're going to be punished for
a while. Can't watch TV tonight?
You're going to be punished. Are they?
Sometimes you have to use the paddle to break that arrogance.
There are a lot of Old Testamentverses that speak about God's
wrath. Did you know that these are not
referring to God committing somesort of sin, But they are what
(11:11):
we call anthropopathisms. I know, it's a big word.
Anthropopathisms Ant HR0P 0PA THISMS anthropopathisms.
What is that? Well, it's when you ascribe to
God a human feeling in order that we can understand His
(11:34):
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
(11:56):
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 to closely to this Isaiah525.
Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against His people,
(12:18):
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,
(12:41):
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 the misunderstanding of
what God is. So patience by means of the
feeling of the Holy Spirit is the solution to your anger
problem. Assuming that you have 1.
(13:02):
Patience by means of the feelingof the Holy Spirit is solution
to your anger problem, assuming you have one.
In Proverbs 1429, 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,
(13:25):
slow to get angry, or you can jump, get hasty at your
temperate, let your temper get away from you.
I used to fish with a guy like that that I knew he'd get mad on
a 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 119. The Bible says wherefore my
(13:48):
beloved brother, and 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 andlisten speak little slow to
wrath. That's good, good advice.
(14:08):
I'm trying to think of a word that when a person doesn't speak
very much and that's 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
(14:31):
confess that thought and reboundthat thought.
Problem solving device #1 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 is waiting for
you to turn him loose so he can blast somebody.
That means, you know when you get your anger out, let me get
my anger out and blow him up. You know what Proverbs 2911
(14:56):
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't, do you mind? Here we go.
Let me give you a few principlesabout this one.
As a mental attitude, sin, angerexpresses antagonism, hatred,
(15:18):
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 going to do about it.
I used to have a friend that said him when he'd get mad at
(15:40):
you, he'd write your name in thebook.
And he said, I might not get youtoday, 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 him,
you slam the brakes on and you almost hit him and you get angry
for a minute and yell at him, What are you doing?
Don't do that. The Greek language is specific
(16:01):
about these sort of things with the word orgee and mental anger
and thumas to emotional anger. Orgay is the word from mental
anger and thumas. The thunderstorm is the is the
word for the emotional anger andboth types are related to
bitterness. In Ephesians 431.
(16:23):
Two anger motivates jealousy andcruelty.
Proverbs 27.4 A person cannot beangry without being cruel and
that without being unfair. It's impossible.
Anytime you get angry, you get to be cruel and unfair. 3A
(16:43):
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 knowwhat I'm talking about because
(17:04):
you've probably done it before. 4 Anger is a violation of the
royal family on her code. Anger is a violation of the
royal family on her code. In Colossians, Colossians 3
verse 8 again Paul wrote. But now you also put them aside.
(17:26):
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.
(17:49):
All that comes from the outburstof your anger, from your thumos,
your emotional anger. So anger hinders affected prayer
life .5. Did you know that if you're
angry, your prayers are not going to be answered in First
Timothy 28? Therefore, I desire that men in
every place pray, lifting up their holy hands without anger
(18:14):
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 of 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, can't be angry, You want to pray for some
(18:34):
political party, don't get mad at them, just pray for them.
Losing 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. 6
Christians with arrogant subjectivity look down at other
(18:57):
people and often hide their anger until one day when they
explode 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 youjustify why you're right and the
(19:19):
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 an outburst of anger. 7 You cannot
(19:44):
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, andyou'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.
(20:10):
You will never become happy by retaliating or trying to get
revenge on someone. 8 There is such a thing as righteous
indignation in the Bible, but itis not anger.
It's an emotion. It's a clear understanding of a
bad situation. Righteous indignation is
(20:32):
response to unfair treatment. By concentrating on your
relationship with God, you don'tget angry, but you disagree with
you. Turn it over to the Supreme
Court of Heaven, which is open 24 hours a day, and let the Lord
handle your your your complaint.9 Here's a good point.
Our Lord Jesus Christ expressed what might be called righteous
(20:54):
indignation in Matthew 2313 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.
(21:14):
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
(21:36):
spiritually to overcome the temptation.
But remember that rebound or first John 19 always, always
works. You don't ever ask God for
forgiveness and then promise Godyou 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
(21:57):
complex and you'll wind up thinking you're a failure
spiritually and you'll go sit inthe 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
(22:17):
failures because he failed just like you and I do in Romans 715,
going through verse 20. 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
(22:40):
the law, confessing that the lawis 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 inme, but the doing of the good is
not. For the good that I want to do I
(23:03):
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.
(23:27):
But I see a different law in themembers 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
(23:50):
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.
And I know you've done that before.
You get mad at yourself, you, you told yourself you would
never do that again. It was embarrassing.
He left a guilt complex in you, and then you went right back and
(24:12):
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
(24:33):
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.
You're not perfect, but don't let Satan get control by giving
you a good 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.
(24:53):
It's just a matter of growing spiritually.
Self esteem is a key to life. If you don't have self esteem,
whether human or spiritual, thenyou're disoriented to life.
Self esteem means you don't haveconfidence in your worth or
confidence in your abilities. Lack of self esteem is almost
everything in life. If you have don't have it, it's
disastrous. But the greatest disaster is
(25:17):
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
(25:39):
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 1 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 Habakka one verse2 says.
How long, O Lord, will I call for help?
(26:01):
And you will not hear me. I cry out to you violence, and
yet you don't save me. In Numbers 1111, 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,
(26:24):
but they had questions as to whyGod 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 offaith, and recognize, as you
should recognize, that God does not make mistakes.
(26:46):
So don't ever get angry with God.
That's a terrible, terrible thing to be in.
But did that help you, that helpyou 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.
(27:08):
Until then, this is your host, Rick Hughes saying thank you so
much for listening to The Flood Lion.
Thank you for listening to The Flood Lion with your host, Rick
Hughes. If you'd like to contact Rick,
please write to him at PO Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama 35O54 or
(27:29):
online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
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