There
are several decisive steps to take to get rid of sinful anger. Part 4 described
the need to: Identify who you’re angry with and what they owe you. Part 5
said: Bring it to the Cross and confess. Here is the final step:
Cancel the Debt. Whether your list is one person and one wrong, or 100 people and
1,000 wrongs, cancel it. To get rid of anger you must decide they don’t owe you
anymore. Let me tell you how one man did
that. Warren was husband and father in his 30s, with an anger problem. It
spilled out against his wife and children, and sometimes at work. After some
discussion, we were able to identify that the real anger Warren felt was
against his father, who had died years before. As a Christian, Warren had tried
to put this behind him. He readily admitted that his outbursts were wrong, and
that he was holding on to bitterness. But clearly it was still impacting his
life. I urged Warren to write his father a letter. In it, he expressed how his
father had wounded him through neglect, affairs, and insulting words. Then he
sat facing an empty chair and read that letter as if his dad was sitting there.
Then he walked away, went out and burned the letter.
Does
that mean all bad memories are erased, and no negative feelings will return?
No. But when that crosses your mind again, know that the decision remains and
the debt is cancelled through Christ. Remember what Jesus says about asking God
to forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors? Canceling the debt we feel
others owe us is the path to resolving anger.
I meet with angry people every single week. Almost always I can
agree they have reason to be angry. But storing that anger will destroy them. Scripture
says be angry, but don’t sin. Be angry, but don’t let the sun keep going down
on that anger. Be angry, but don’t give Satan space in your life.
Resolve anger today.
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