Sunday, June 24, 2012

Living the Good Life—How To Deal With Selfish Anger


This is a follow up to my sermon from my series “What’s In Your Well? … 7 Life Affirming Virtues”. This particular virtue was on “Meekness.” Practically speaking, here are some…

Recommendations for defeating selfish anger:

1. Repeat a centering prayer such as this: “(Inhale deeply) Jesus Christ Son of God… (exhale deeply) have mercy on me a sinner.”
2. Decide now to be a forgiver.
3. Decide now to trust God to take care of those who sin against you.
4. Eliminate caffeine. (I did this for several years and found this to be the most helpful thing I’ve ever done in addressing selfish anger.) 
Here’s what others have said:
1. (Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung) Journal. Rate your feelings of anger on a scale of one to five, with five being the most extreme anger. Put the journal down for some time. Later, come back to it. Read your entries. Ask yourself, do you still feel the anger?

2. (Andy Stanley) Tell your story of anger.

2 comments:

Samantha Winn said...

Another practice that I have found really beneficial is to pray for the person(s) who is the target of your selfish anger.

The best formula for me is to write down a list of attributes or scriptures that I would pray over myself or my loved ones. Then, I take this list and pray over that person every day (or as near as I can get) for two weeks.

I try to start each prayer by asking God to change my heart to love that person the way He does, and I ask Him to root out any lasting unforgiveness that I may be holding on to.

Also, love the caffeine comment!

Dr. William Mark Edge said...

Good advice. Thanks, Sam!
ME