Sheryl Brady - Turning Your Anger Into an Asset

I want to talk about turning your anger into an asset. Father, today I thank you for every person who is watching. I thank you for every single individual, every married person. I thank you for every son, for every daughter. I thank you for the people who have accidentally stumbled upon our social media platform today. I thank you, God, that there is a word that is in season that is going to make us better. God, have your way and speak through me; speak through your word. Prepare our hearts to receive what you have to say, and we will give you the glory for it. In Jesus' name, amen and amen. If you are standing for the reading of God’s word, you may be seated.

Today I want to talk to you about turning anger into an asset. If you watched and tuned in last week, I discussed our hope being on high alert, and I used James 5:8. I really want to return to that same book for this first message in our relationship series. The particular book of James was written to encourage people who were under extreme amounts of stress and pressure due to the crisis they were living through. Whoever you are and wherever you might be watching me from today, if you are a human being and you are under stress, then I can pretty much guarantee that your relationships are probably under a little stress as well.

Though James is a very short book, consisting of five chapters and a total of 108 verses, it is packed with tons of insights that we can gather and glean from. I believe it will help us right here, right now, in the situations we are facing today as a result of the pandemic we are living through. There are many people dealing with anger; Americans, in general, are experiencing a lot of anger, and they are angry for various reasons. I experienced a bit of that firsthand this week when I was trying to text Rose. Her number came up, and her face appeared, so I texted her. When I hit send, all of a sudden, I received a crazy message in return. I just sent back a little emoji with wide eyes because it was not a pleasant message. I know Rose, and she is always nice.

As I sent that little emoji back to her, all of a sudden, it felt like someone unleashed the worst cursing you could ever imagine, and I was on the receiving end of that. So, at that point, I picked up the phone and thought, «We aren’t texting anymore; I need to find out what’s wrong with you.» I knew it wasn’t her fault, but I didn’t know how the wires got crossed. I realized that the person I had texted about bringing home some macaroni and cheese to go with the pork chops was angry. They were either angry, hungry, or perhaps something else, but there was a lot of anger going on, and it was directed towards me.

People are angry today for many reasons. In fact, in an article I read this past week from The Washington Post, the writer made a statement that I found worth noting. He said that Americans are living in a big anger incubator. For many reasons, we are dealing with a pandemic, and we have civil unrest like we have not seen in America in decades. People are facing financial fallout; they are losing jobs, homes, and all kinds of things. They are losing loved ones, hope, and there is a whole lot going on. There are events happening in our nation that we have not experienced in a long time. People are frustrated, dissatisfied, and disgruntled. The bottom line is that people are angry, and you don’t have to do anything to get them that way; they are already there.

They are angry at public officials, at those we have elected to office, at our nation’s COVID response team, because they feel like we shouldn’t have had to go through this or that we could have done better. It’s easy to voice these opinions when we are not the ones actually doing the job. All of this has made people angry; some are upset about the shutdown, while others feel that it was politically motivated to open up too soon. There’s all kinds of stuff; people feel like their rights are being threatened and that the government is invading their space by telling them they should wear a mask. Meanwhile, other people are…