Why Am I So Angry All the Time?

Why Am I So Angry All the Time?

Anger can eat you alive and ruin the relationships that are the most important to you. If you find yourself asking the question "why am I so angry all the time", then take a few minutes to listen to the video message that will help you learn how to deal with anger. Anger and fear go hand in hand, and you can find freedom from this vicious cycle that can steal your joy and happiness. There is hope and there is freedom.

Why Am I so Angry

In Ephesians 4:29-32, let’s read that together that last part of it. It says,

“Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth but only such a word is good for edification according to the need of the moment so that it will give grace to those who hear.”
“And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you.’

I think it's very important that we note this scripture, because when you are angry and you dealt with your stuff but you still need to deal with some of the other person’s stuff it's important how we communicate. It is not just that we communicate but how we communicate. 

How do I Tell Someone I am Angry with Them

What does the Bible say here? First of all it says in verse 25 that we are to speak the truth, in other words we are to be clear. You can't just have people read your mind, you have to be clear. If it's bad enough for you to be angry about, it's bad enough for you to talk with them about it. 

 So you find a private place. I always find that it's good to sit down and write out what I want to say so I'm careful to communicate clearly. It says second of all here in verse 29 that we are to put away clamor. We're to put away slander, in other words, we're to speak in a calm way. 

 Not only clear but calm. If you throw punches, guess what? Someone is going to either duck and deny or they're going to throw punches back. So it's best not to throw punches. Just say, hey, listen, I want to talk to you. Can we sit down here in a private place? And I want to let you know that I care a lot about you and that's why I'm having this very hard discussion and I want you to know I may be wrong about what I'm about to say but I believe it so I need to say it to you. 

 When you did this I know you didn't mean to do this, love always believes the best, but when you did this it affected me this way and I'd like to talk about how maybe we could do that differently. A calm as well as clear communication. The third thing it says there in verse 26 is he said, “Don't let the sun go down on your anger.” In other words it needs to be current. 

Angry and Defensive

Sometimes when we begin to express our anger we get historical and we talk about all the things that the person has ever done against us and we do that as a defense mechanism to think that if we pile up enough wrong doings of the other person, if we keep a list of those wrongs that somehow we can overpower them. 

Quotes About Anger

 But friends, the purpose in communicating about our anger is not to manipulate or to win, it's to clearly communicate and so we have to stay current, we have to talk about this situation, not all the history of other situations. It says in verse 29 that it also needs to be constructive, it says only say those words that are good for edification according to the need of the moment. 

 Now that's a huge, huge standard there. Don't let any words come out of your mouth that do not get us moving toward a solution. Not a complaint but a request, not past but future and what you're saying, does it get you closer to a resolution or does it just dig up and punish and seek to win – is it constructive?

 And then, finally, and this is something I just saw recently in verse 29. It says that it might give grace to those who hear it, needs to be caring. See, it doesn't matter if it's clear, calm and current or constructive, sorry for the alliteration but if it's not caring then nothing else matters. 

The Golden Rule

 If your purpose is not the golden rule to care for the other person, let me put it this way.

If you were wrong how would you want someone who is angry with you, how would you want them to them to communicate to you? Then you're to communicate to the other person who has wronged you in the way that you would want you to be communicated to if you were in that same situation. 

 Last time you got angry was, are those descriptors of the way you communicated, was it clear? Was it calm? Was it current? Was it constructive? Was it caring? And I said we were looking at the ABCs of anger but I'm going to go to D in fact we all have time here I think we are going to go all the way to Z today. 

How to Respond to Anger in a Healthy Way

Actually we are going to end with D. Decide what you want what you want to achieve. When you are processing your anger what is the real purpose here? What do you want to achieve? There is a matrix that I use that is helpful to me when I think about my choices and accomplishing what I need to accomplish. 

 And the matrix has two poles there is one pole that says I have a high love of self and the Bible says that we are to love others as we love ourselves so there is nothing wrong with having a high love for our self if it's a proper biblical love. On the bottom of it is a low love for self, on the left hand side it is a low regard, or low value of the relationship, don't really care about the relationship that much and then the other side is a high regard for the relationship. 

 Now if I chose to have a low regard for myself and a low regard for the relationship then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to - it's not there I'm just going to hope it goes away. And many times we find ourselves in that but what happens is we don't help ourselves and we certainly don't help the relationship. 

 On the other hand if I have a high regard for the relationship but I don't have a proper biblical self love, then what I'm going to do all the time is that I'm going to yield. I'm always going to just let the other person run over me. I'm going to let them have their way, and friends this is neither good really for the relationship or for self because the reality is that the people that we are in relationship with they should not win all the time. 

It's not healthy for them. It’s not really loving them to let them have their way all the time if they have crossed boundaries. In a proper response to anger, anger is a symptom. Anger tells you something else is wrong. Anger is like the dash board and it says check engine. And that's when we want to backtrack and sometimes when we backtrack we find out the other person has crossed a boundary. 

And we don't just need to let them walk over us. We don't need to just yield. There is the other quadrant here where we have a low regard for the relationship but we have a high regard for ourselves and what we do there is we just seek to win. And I'm going to put win in parenthesis because there really is no win. 

Relationships and Anger

 When you power up on people because the reality is, you might win that argument but guess what? You are going to lose the relationship. And, friends, there is nothing that we need more than relationships. It's the most valuable thing in our lives. We lose that at the cost of what issue? Our relationship with God is more important than anything else, our relationship with one another and if we are always powering up when we get angry and always winning, and always getting our way, we really lose even though we think we are trying to win. 

Here is where God wants us to dwell. Where we have a healthy self love but we also have a high regard for what God says is the most important thing in the world which is relationships. And we do what is necessary to resolve the issue. And we resolve it by first of all acknowledging that there is an issue, being assertive when we need to be assertive, accepting when we need to accept, we backtrack and determine by God's Holy Spirit guiding us, how much of the issue is our problem and how much it is for the other person's problem, and then enter into the tunnel of chaos, and communicate and stay in there. 

ABC's of Communicating Anger Effectively

• Clear
• Calm
• Current
• Constructive
• Carefully worded Communication

 With a clear and a calm, and a current, and a constructive, in a carefully worded caring communication. But sometimes, even when you do that, the other person doesn't respond the right way. But here's what I believe. I believe that God will bless us, if that is our desire. If that's where we want to end up. 

 See that's where God lives. God lives in this quadrant. Look at verse 32 again. In verse 32 of Ephesians 4 it says and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you. The Bible talks about the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and against people who hold the truth in unrighteous ways. 

Be Angry but Be Kind

God was once angry at us and he sent Jesus Christ to communicate in a clear way that there is a God who cares for us. To confront us with our sin but provide the necessary sacrifice so we could be reconciled with him. And God wants all of us to handle our anger in the same way. 

 He wants us to process it in an honest and a caring and a kind way. So if possible we can find ourselves in the place where God is, that's where we want to go. Let's thank God for that.

Prayer for Anger

Dear heavenly Father thank you so much for our emotions and sometimes they get a little scary and sometimes we don't really know what to do with them.But Father we thank you for that dashboard to tell us when something is wrong. Help us dear Father, give us humility to admit when what's wrong is us and the boldness that when there is something wrong outside of us to confront it but the gentleness to confront it in a way that would honor you and to provide resolution that would bring glory to your name. 
 We pray all this in the precious name of Jesus Christ, Amen.