“Let not the sun go down on your anger” – so about sundown, you should have addressed your anger. You should have addressed the issue that caused you to get so angry and upset.
Now I want to just talk briefly on that, and just give you some ways to approach it that will be helpful, because remember: this is what grieves the Holy Spirit.
If you don't deal with anger, it leads to all the other things: quarrelling, bitterness, resentments, judgements, all kinds of stuff comes out of just not dealing with anger properly.
We tend to get angry, when we don't get what we want.
I always want to get to church time. Today I didn't get to church on time; but I laughed, because I saw exactly what God was up to. It was a choice how to handle anger; very simply, just deal with it; before you get to church. Especially if you want to keep the Holy Ghost on you, keep the joy.
I could have gone all the way to church: mutter-mutter, you know - I could have done that; then you arrive and its all (smiles): hello, praise the Lord you know?
It's what a lot of people do. They're furious all the way to church, then: “hello brother”. “Bless you brother”, and “praise the Lord”. That's very religious. It looks good, but no Holy Ghost there, because the moment they get out down the driveway - they're going again!
Anger comes when you: don't get what you want; or what you feel you're entitled to.
When we feel: our rights have been overlooked; or what should come to us, don't come - that's when anger arises. So it's an issue of rights and entitlements.
It's an issue of: something we expected to happen, didn't happen; or something we didn't expect to happen, happened.
So generally, anger means that something, one of your rights, or something of your expectations, was not met; and so the consequence is, you feel someone's robbed you. Someone has robbed you of something that you wanted, and that's why we get angry.
We get angry because we believe something was taken from us. It may well be something was - so you can understand a child, when parents break up - of course they feel angry. They have every right to feel angry. Something's taken away from them, so they feel angry.
You can go through the list of life, all the things that were taken away from you, or you thought were taken away from you, or you felt entitled to and it didn't come, so you get angry.
You think: “you owe me”! That's what happens, when people are angry: you owe me! Well, what do you owe me? You owe me an apology; or you owe me some money - I'm owed.
So you've got to understand that when people feel something that they wanted - a right, a demand, or an entitlement - when that seems to have been taken away, the person gets angry; and inside, they put the person that they're angry at, under a debt: you owe me; I'm owed.
If people don't deal with it, it becomes bitter, and then after a while: everyone owes me! You get with someone who's angry - man oh man, everybody owes them. They're angry, no matter where they go. You cannot reason with them, they're just angry.
In Proverbs, it says: if you hang around with an angry person, it'll do you no good. It says: “don't make friends with an angry person, because you'll learn their ways, and it will snare your soul”.
So anger is a contagious disease of the heart, every bit like bitterness is. Anger is a contagious disease. Why? Because you will hold over people that: you owe me. You'll have demands everywhere, so it starts small and grows, and in the end it becomes a real issue.