Hasty Words (7 of 12)

Mike Connell

So God wants us to learn how to handle it, and we're going to touch on you how to handle it, what the root cause is in a moment, but I want you to get the message on it, okay? You getting the message? Have a look in Ephesians, Chapter 4 then. Unresolved anger opens the door to demons. Of course, we're all lovely church people. [Laughs] We would never open the door to demons. We just come and say Jesus, you're wonderful. We look beautiful with our hands up singing Jesus, I Love You. Isn't that wonderful? But the same people today singing Jesus, I Love You, later on in the week could be very, very angry and inviting demons into their home. Isn't that craziness? Isn't that sort of foolishness, isn't it really? We're wanting God to bless us, and then a couple of days later we're undoing it completely, and opening the door to something else.

Notice what it says in Ephesians 4, read these verses here - I like this verse, Verse 26. Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, nor give place to the devil. So the verses in the original are not there, it's just one flow, and it's talking about our relationships, and dealing with our life, and certain things we need to change. So it says - now get this - it says be angry. So it's okay to be angry. For those Christians who didn't think it was okay to be angry, and carried on in a fantasy world, where actually real people get angry about lots of things, see, it's okay to be angry. Anger is just an emotion. God feels anger. We're made in the image of God, we can feel anger when there's an injustice. So it's no problem to feel angry. Anger is just like an indicator on the dashboard of your car, it's just an emotion that signals a message. Now it's okay to be angry. It's okay to feel angry, okay to feel upset. It's what you do with it, is the issue, and so it says be angry, but do not sin. So it says, it's okay to feel anger, but don't let it just blow over so it becomes sin. It becomes sin when we don't resolve it. It becomes sin when we allow it to internalise, and we begin to brood over it, and we begin to think and smoulder on the injustice of what went wrong, it stirs us up, or it becomes sin when we let go and let rip at everyone around us.

Some people are the brooders. They sort of let it go in, and sit on it. Then there's another group, and they blow up. They just kaboom, and there's a bomb goes off, you know? They let everyone have it - then they feel better. It's great, but behind them, there's this ground of people bleeding all over the place. [Laughter] They've got over it. I feel good now. I feel just great. I've done my stuff. I feel better - now what's all wrong with you? Everyone's lying there bleeding from all the wounds that they've got, cut to the quick by the spirit of murder. But they feel better, I feel better now - until the next time, because when you get into family environments like that, they're unsafe, and they create insecurity in the family. There are problems in all relationships, and people do not grow to activate their potential, see. It says anger rests in the heart of fools. [Laughs] Don't sit on your anger. Get to sort it out quick, and the Bible tells us how quick it should be. Well that's quite handy isn't it? It says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. In other words you've just got today to get over it, see, today to get over it.

When you go to bed at night, don't go to bed angry. Just get over it. Tell someone, actually you need to get over it. I can see you getting angry already. Just get over it. You need to get over it, need to resolve the anger, get over the anger before you go to sleep see, because failing to resolve the anger is like opening the door to demons. So isn't that interesting, that people would every night time go to their doors and they lock the doors, and make sure all the thieves don't get in to steal their goods, all of which could be replaced and are probably insured anyway. But then they go and throw open the spiritual doors, and allow the demons to come in and destroy everything that's of real value. That's what it means when it says don't give place to the devil. Don't open the door for demons to come, its because they can smell anger a mile off. Even dogs can smell it, you noticed that? You get stirred up inside and dogs will know it. You can get them riled up if you get a little like that. When people get angry they stiffen. You get near a dog and you begin to stiffen and stare at it, it'll get really wound up. I found that out [Laughter] with many a dog. [Laughs] Okay then, so anger needs to be dealt with.