How to Express Anger

We know that there are ways for us to prevent anger...especially by being quick to listen and slow to speak.  But, there will always be times when we get angry.  AND there are appropriate ways for us to express that anger that can be healthy rather than destructive.

We took a look at Ephesians 4:25-28, Matthew 5:23-26 and Matthew 21:12-13.  In these passages we discovered three characteristics of healthy anger:  Healthy anger is rooted in truth, not falsehood.  Healthy anger seeks resolution, not dominance.  Healthy anger focuses on giving, not taking.  We took a little quiz to evaluate our own anger and found that some of us are stuffers who are afraid to hurt other's feelings and therefore end up hurting ourselves by keeping in all our emotions and need to work on expressing our feelings appropriately.  Some of us are exploders who handle anger spontaneously and aggressively and need to work on finding more constructive ways to handle our anger.  And some of us are manipulators who want to get revenge but do so passively and need to work on face to face problem solving skills.  When you evaluate your anger, what category do you fall in?  Take time this week to really look at how you deal with anger and work on ways to do so more constructively!

After our discussion, we spent time in mission tracing and cutting out teddy bear patterns for Operation Christmas Child!

Encounter: Meeting God face-to-face

We began a new series Sunday night!  For a few weeks we will be looking at anger and conflict and how God calls us to respond.  Sunday we took a look at how we can work to prevent anger.  We started with talking about things that make us angry and completed dovetail puzzles where two words are hidden inside each other.  One word in the puzzle is something that may cause anger and the other word is a way that anger may be expressed...for example: SYPELOLIRNTSG would be Sports and Yelling!  After talking about the individual words and why they make us angry we took a look at several passages in James.  After reading James 1:19-21, 3:3-12 and 4:1-4, 7-10, we see that God calls us to be QUICK to listen, SLOW to speak and SLOW to anger.  When we take the time to listen to God and listen to one another, we often are able to understand the situation we are in better and prevent ourselves from getting angry.  How do you deal with anger?  Comment on this post with your response.

After our discussion, we were able to go outside and play "kick the can" since the weather has been so nice!  I hope to see you next Sunday as we look at how we can express our anger.