Lee Strobel: When You're Mad at Others

[Music] hey guys you're in for a real treat our teaching Pastor Lee Strobel is back to continue the series on anger management and I just wanted you guys to just thank God for Lee and what a great job that he's doing just praise God for him right now thank you thank you how about those Astros I'm a suffering Cubs fan for so many years you know my grandfather moved to Chicago in 1913 from Austria Austria and of course we went through all those years of a family cheering on the Cubs never did anything we move away and then they win but good news is I moved to Houston so now here we go right Astros world series it's gonna be great I remember when I was a kid I was seven years old and the White Sox in Chicago won the pennant which is a big deal because we never want anything so the whole city is celebrating and a funny thing happened in the midst of the celebration everybody so happy the fire commissioner to celebrate turn down the air-raid siren well this is in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union we all thought we were under nuclear attack so although everybody's diving under their beds afraid of this nuclear attack we thought was gonna happen so I was pretty wild but we're so glad to be here we're so glad to be at this great church and to be under Carrie and Chris's leadership here it's been a great joy and look forward to being able to open the Word of God today have kind of a serious message kind of a challenging message today but first let me thank God for the fun things he gives us like the Astro so let's pray father we thank you for these little pleasures of life that you provide the sports and hobbies and nature and all these wonderful things and food and that we can enjoy so we thank you for those blessings in our life and as we talk today about a very challenging topic we pray by your spirit you would help us not just years of the word but doers of the word as well pray this in Jesus name and all God's people said amen well there was a journalist for The Associated Press by the name of Terry Anderson and he was reporting from Beirut Lebanon when he was kidnapped by terrorists and he was held captive for seven long years and for most of those seven years he was chained to a wall by himself in a Cell the spider-infested dark dirty cell and he went through illnesses and mental and psychological and physical anguish because of the torment that he suffered under his captors and during this whole seven years that he was alone in this cell can you imagine 60,000 hours in the cell they gave him only one book and it was the Bible and so of course he consumed it and he read it cover-to-cover many times and studied it and learned so much from it but though there was one particular passage that blew his mind one particular passage that just set him back and took away his breath and it's the words of jesus in matthew chapter 5 verses 43 and 44 in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus said you have heard it you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy but I say to you love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you can you imagine how outrageous that command must seem to someone who spent 2,500 days locked in a Cell well eventually Terry Anderson was released and then the reporters all crowded around him firing questions Adam is a big news story when he was released but one question that one reporter shouted out absolutely stunned him and stopped him cold in his tracks the reporter said to him Terry can you forgive your captors and Terry Anderson stopped and he looked at him and he said well yes as a Christian I am required to forgive my captors no matter how hard it might be it was hard but he did it well as Kerry mentioned we're in the second week of our series called anger management and today we're going to talk about loving our enemies we're gonna talk about loving those that we find ourselves chronically angry at chronically mad at that adversary that opponent in our life and I'm gonna approach this like a journalist would cuz like Terry Anderson I used to be a journalist as well and at journalism school you're taught you got to answer six questions in any story you write who what where when why and how so I'm just gonna go through those as we talk about this outrageous command by Jesus to love those who have been chronically angry at and the first question I want to deal with is is the who question the who question who are our enemies in other words who are you chronically mad at who do you find yourself at loggerheads with who do you find yourself angry with who is your biggest adversary your biggest opponent now it's easy to hear a story like Terry Anderson and say well I don't have an opponent an enemy like Terry Anderson nobody's locked me in a cell for seven years I've never been brutalized that way so maybe this isn't relevant to me but think about it even in a civilized place like The Woodlands Texas we do have enemies to one degree or another we all have adversaries we all have opponents people we feel animosity toward isn't that true it may be the owner of a competing business and as he steals your customers away and threatens your livelihood you feel anger toward him you you you think of him as your enemy maybe the person who's locked in a position above you in the corporate structure where you work and and he's blocking your way to the top and you just saw angry of that person if you just get out of the way then I could advance in the corporation if your management maybe the enemy is the unions if your Union maybe it's the management it might be a person who holds an opposing view on a social issue like abortion or gay rights or whatever and you've gone beyond hating their politics to hating them personally if you're in school it may be a teacher who refuses to cut you slack could be a former spouse who's trying to get custody of the kids could be a girlfriend that broke your heart could be a father who trashed your self-esteem could be the neighbour that holds all those loud parties you know in the middle of the night could be the friend that broke your confidence and spilled your secrets to other people I remember when I was a journalist at the Chicago Tribune I had enemies in my life and I tell you who they were they were the other reporters I competed against from the Chicago sun-times the Chicago Daily News the television stations the news radio stations in order for them to succeed they had to cause me to fail and I hated them for it so we all in some ways have opponents adversaries enemies don't we the fact let me let me make the who question very personal and ask you who is it in your life that you're at loggerheads with who is it that you find yourself chronically angry toward can you bring a picture of that person into your mind can you attach a name can you think of them once you had that picture of that person in your mind then it's time to go on to the what question what is it that Jesus specifically is asking me to do with this person this person that I've had such a bitter relationship with what does he want me to do does Jesus mean that I got to treat him like a son or like a daughter I got to love them that way does he mean I have to stop competing against them does it mean we got to be best buddies and go golfing together well Jesus was very specific about the word he chose as he was talking about loving our enemies he could have used a word for love that meant a family kind of a love family relationships that kind of love but he didn't use that word he could have used a word for love that suggested a romantic he didn't use that word either he could have used another word for love that suggests a friendship but he didn't use that word either instead he used a word for love that doesn't suggest emotion as much as it suggests attitude and action attitude and action so what he's saying is what he's calling those of us who were followers of him to do is they have a humble self giving servant kind of attitude toward people who vent our adversaries an attitude that says I want the best for them to offer help to them when it's needed to have a sense of goodwill and benevolence toward them even though we don't get the same kind of goodwill in return to pray for them to pray for their welfare to pray for their family to pray God would bless them and to bless their family to compete with them yeah to do a fairly though and do it respectfully not in malice and not trying to injure or destroy somebody so technically it's interesting technically Jesus did not say you have to like your enemy why because liking someone is an emotion and we can't just conjure up an emotion like that but what Jesus did say in effect is we should treat our enemies as though we like them because that is a decision of our will he's saying we don't have to approve of what they do we don't have to approve of their behavior we don't have to approve of their attitudes but we need to love who they are which is a person who's made in the image of God and who matters to God just like you do and just like I do Romans five verse eight says this God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were sinners in other words while we were enemies of God Christ died for us in other words God's response to our rebellion against him was to return love for evil and so the path could be paved so we can be reconciled with God that's the humble love of a servant and that's the kind of love he's calling on us to have toward our enemies so now I'm my guess is if you if you really have done what I suggest and you've brought a picture in your mind of that adversary if that person you're chronically angry at then the next question you're starting to ask is the why question why should I reach out and try to love this person why should I have compassion on them why should I be forgiving toward them that's a legitimate question and though our motives should not be to get something in return here's the truth when we follow the commands of Jesus there are benefits that flow into our lives and into the lives of others I'm just gonna mention five quick benefits that we receive first there's a physical benefit we receive when we love our enemies a physical benefit you see when you have an attitude of animosity and bitterness toward an adversary that can be like a poison that corrodes your physical health did you know the scientists have found that having chronic anger having bitter hostility toward an enemy in your life is as damaging to your physical health as cigarette smoking obesity or a high-fat diet if you want to die young one way to do it is be a hateful vengeful person and it will corrode your health factor it's very interesting after World War two there was a woman who reached out to help people recover from the atrocities they had suffered at the hands of the Germans the Nazis and she noticed a phenomenon among her patients she noticed that those patients who developed a forgive attitude toward their enemies were able to rebuild their lives despite their injuries but those that chose to remain bitter they remained in valence so this has an impact on our physical health second there's a psychological benefit that we receive proverbs 23 verse 7 says for as a person thinks within his heart so he is what does that mean that means that a person who has bitter thoughts and angry attitudes often becomes a bitter and an angry person they become a hostage of their own hate I remember talking a few years ago with a woman in Tennessee and her and her husband lost their only son to a drunk driver a young man who got drunk killed their only child and this woman told me how she became all consumed by hatred for this young man who had killed their kid I just she was consumed with anger with hatred with revenge on her mind and she said what that did was turned me into a bitter and a vengeful and a hateful person and she said I was never able to get past that until I was able to come to the point of forgiving him for what he had done and once I began to forgive him then I was able to work through my own pain and rebuild my life in fact her husband was a part-time Baptist preacher and he ended up leading the guy that killed their son he led him to faith in Jesus Christ and he baptized him and that family sort of adopted that young man as their new son and they became the best of friends in fact David I'll tell you where they are right now today they're in church together in the front row worshiping the God who says love your enemy so there are great psychological benefits you get past the hurts begin to rebuild your life when you begin to love the person who's hurt you third there's a relational benefit that comes you know when you make the decision to return good for evil it's like you're in a game of tug-of-war and you just decide I'm gonna drop my end of the rope I'm just not gonna play anymore I'm not gonna tug on that rope anymore and we we dropped the end of the rope and it's short-circuits that back and forth hostility between you and the other person and it makes the potential anyway for reconciliation possible Martin Luther King jr. said the only power that can transform an enemy into a friend is love and sometimes that happens with people who we've written off as never being friendship material I think of Saul of Tarsus you know you think in the early church Saul of Tarsus was a persecutor of Christians he was a hater of Christians he he was killing murdering Christians and I'm sure a lot of people in the early church said there's a guy it'll never be our friend there's a net there's a guy we can never forgive there's a guy who can never be you know United with us and yet what happens he encounters the risen Christ he becomes the Apostle Paul and he becomes their dearest and closest ally and friend see hate writes people off but love holds out the hope that there might be a friendship there might be reconciliation somehow in the future fourth benefit is a spiritual benefit and Friends this is the biggest benefit of all because the Bible says that our very relationship with God can either be enhanced or hindered according to whether we're forgiving and loving toward other people jesus said in Matthew 6 verse 15 but if you do not forgive others their sins your father will not forgive your sins in other words you cannot be tightly connected with God you cannot expect the favours of God to freely into your life you can't expect to have an optimal relationship with the god of the universe while at the same time you have a stubborn in an unforgiving attitude toward other people that just trivializes the suffering that Jesus went through to extend his love to us in fact today right now if you're in a position in your life where you feel distant from God if you find yourself unable to rest easy in his forgiveness of your sins could it be because you've got this adamant attitude of refusing to let go of animosity toward another person maybe it's that very person whose picture you brought up into your mind v there's a kingdom benefit that accrues as well when we forgive our enemies jesus said in Matthew 5 verse 46 if you love those who love you what reward will you get in other words there's nothing particularly commendable about loving people who already love us that's pretty easy but when you offer love to those who've been enemies the world takes notice and they're pointed toward God as being the only one who can motivate us to bring forgiveness and love to an adversary I talked to a woman who was lives in Indianapolis and she was the victim of a vicious and horrific crime she was alone in her apartment this burglar broke in he assaulted her he shot her he hit her with his gun he shot her another time to kill her and the bullet went in her forearm that would have killed her but she blocked it and so the police ended up arresting this man and he was convicted and he was going to be sentenced and everybody I think expected that this woman was going to come into court and angrily denounced him this very brutal man this awful thing he did demand the harshest possible penalty but the victim was a Christian and even though she agreed that he deserved a considerable prison sentenced to protect others from this very brutal man she shocked everyone when she came into court and she said this to the judge she said look I'm not after vengeance and I'm not after retribution they won't change what's happened and their only poison me she said I want to help this man he's mildly he obviously needs help and I want to make sure he gets that help for his own sake but also so he can be a free man again some day she said I don't want him to suffer I've suffered enough for the both of us I want what's best for him and with God's help I want to forgive him and an amazing thing happened in that courtroom tears began to form in the eyes of the judge and then they began to run down his face and this judge began to weep on the bench now I was legal editor of the Chicago Tribune I've covered hundreds of criminal trials I've never seen a judge break down and cry on the bench but he did and when he finally composed himself the judge said look the reason I'm crying is because of the her forgiving attitude he said it's so unusual for a victim of such a vicious crime to have such a forgiving attitude and he said I think that reflects all that is the best there is in human nature and so that victim was able to point the judge and the defendants and all those in the courtroom is able to point everybody toward Jesus Christ as being the one who motivates her to forgive someone who had harmed her so much because when people return evil for evil that's expected and when people return good for good that's expected but when people return good for evil in other words they return forgiveness for harm the world is pointed toward Jesus Christ as being the only one who can motivate someone against the grain of our inclinations to offer forgiveness and reconciliation to an enemy and that friends is like a magnet that attracts people to the kingdom of God so they're tremendous physical and psychological relational spiritual Kingdom benefits that accrue when we take Jesus seriously and begin to forgive our enemies but now it's time to go on to the whole question you know that's the big question how in practical ways do we extend love to people who we've been chronically butting heads with who we would see as our adversaries or opponents how do we do that well Romans 12 verse 18 says this if it is possible as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone that's God's ultimate goal peace reconciliation community between people and between people and God and so I want to take that word peace and I want to eat use each letter in that word to spell out an action plan so that in very practical ways you can begin to follow Jesus in loving that opponent that enemy that adversary so the P in peace stands for the word pray to pray first to pray for yourself we talked last week about being honest in our prayers with God and to go to God and say look I don't feel like forgiving this person I don't feel like loving this enemy Lord I'm gonna need your help I'm gonna need the power the Holy Spirit in my life if I'm ever gonna come to the place where I can forgive and love this person I I can't do it right now Lord but my heart is to want to follow you help me help me to implement the peace process with this person so pray for yourself and then ii pray for your enemy jesus said in luke 6 verse 28 pray for those who mistreat you that's radical pray for those who mistreat you ask guard god to safeguard their health ask that god to bless their family ask god to draw them into his kingdom and as you make the decision of your will to pray for your adversary something amazing virtually always happens and that is your attitude toward them will begin to change because you can't pray for a person for very long and hate him at the same time I remember when I was a new Christian I was a newspaper editor in Chicago and one of the reporters who worked for me was just a problem employee and he would undercut my authority and he would challenge my leadership and it was so annoying and after a while I just I began to load this person he just I was so chronically angry at this guy and then I saw the words of Jesus I'm supposed to love people I began to see as my adversary and so I started to pray for him and I started pray that God would bless him and bless his family and over time as I did that God began to soften my heart toward him and I let down my animosity enough to reach out to him and we not only ended up with a very good professional relationship we became friends and to this day were friends because God as I was praying for him did something in me and softened my attitude toward this man and he'll do it for you he will do a few think of that adversary I pictured in your mind can you begin praying for his welfare can you begin praying that God would bless him or her I mean if you can't do that tell God you're not ready but you know you need to get to that point and as you take a step of obedience and you begin to pray I betcha he's gonna soften your heart the next letter in peace is the letter e and that stands for the word empathize empathize this means to see your enemy from a different perspective to kind of get into their shoes you see normally we evaluate the worth of another person base their relationship to us can they hurt us can they threaten us can they help us and that's how we kind of base the value of another person but when we choose instead to see that person from the perspective of God we begin to recognize that they have supreme worth because Genesis 1 verse 27 says God created human beings in his own image and so this enemy of ours is made in the image of God and maybe his sin or her attitude or behavior has corroded and corrupted that image in their life maybe it's distorted by their own sinful behavior but at the core they are made in God's image and therefore they matter to God and they ought to matter to us so can you imagine that person who's you've pictured in your mind that adversary can you bring them that picture up and think they matter to God they bear the image of God Almighty does that cause a new kind of empathy for them new kind of understanding a new kind of compassion I think it does one writer put it this way to love your enemy does not mean to love the mire in which the Pearl lies but to love the Pearl that lies in the mire we're not loving them because of their behavior which is often reprehensible we value them because they're made in God's image the next letter is the letter A in the word peace and that stands for the word to act to act in other words to take concrete steps to extend compassion to our enemies jesus said in Luke 6 verse 27 do good to those who hate you do good so in other words when a competitor of yours in business wins a contract that you lost out on to send him a note and say hey congratulations you won the contract good for you our former spouse needs some help with something that were there to help or an adversary needs to borrow something or needs help moving or has a flat tire whatever that we want to help we want to serve them in some way that we take a step of action to put that compassion into practice and this means calling a ceasefire in the war of words Luke 6 verse 28 says bless those who curse you wouldn't that be a great new motto for Twitter bless those who curse you that means that you make the decision when this other person is sending bitter words your way that you're not going to retaliate with bitter words going the other way and it means that we fight the temptation to traffic and gossip and rumors and unfair criticism and so can you picture that adversary in your mind can you commit to keeping alert for opportunities to serve them as a practical way of expressing the love of God in their life it goes a long way toward dismantling the barriers of animosity you'll find here's the deal you find when you step out in faith and you say I'm gonna take specific action to express love to this enemy God is gonna give you the power to do that along the way I saw this in the life of a guy I got to know in Colorado when he was 14 years old someone kidnapped his father and killed him and so this guy grew up with such anger and such hatred toward this man who was caught and he was capture and he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison but this guy's hatred for this guy who took his father away that hurt was so deep that anger was so pronounced that it consumed him and then he became a Christian and then he reads I need to forgive my enemies I can't do that I don't have the capacity to do that but he said Lee I knew I wasn't capable of it it was beyond me until I found the answer in the Bible in the fourth chapter of Philippians the thirteenth verse which is heard me that I could do all things through Jesus Christ who gave me strength and so what did he do he made the decision of his will that he was gonna forgive this man who killed his father he didn't feel like it he didn't want to do it but what did he do he got in his car and he started driving toward the penitentiary where this guy is serving a life sentence for killing his father and along the way along the highway the Holy Spirit gave him the strength gave him the power to sit down with this man to look him in the eyes and tell him I forgive you and that freed up this guy for the first time to experience healing in his own life having released that bitterness release that anger release that hostility friends God will give you the strength if you step out in faith and you take a step of action to extend love maybe you need to call somebody up and apologize for something go to the phone's start punching in their number and I bet you by the time that call is connected God will give you the power to say what you need to say so take a step God will be with you in it next letter in the word peace is the sea and it stands for the word confess confess now this isn't true all the time but many times when we are in a in a bitter angry relationship with someone else and there's there we see them as our enemy in our opponent the truth is we deserve at least a little bit of the blame for forcing them into that role in other words often it's our own jealousy our own stubbornness our own ambition our own bad attitude that has contributed at least in some way to the rift between us in that person well James 5:16 makes a connection between confession and healing the verse says therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed so God's making a connection between confession and healing and when we honestly assess the situation with our adversary and we candidly admit to ourselves and then we admit to them that we share at least in part some of the blame that can be a huge step toward overcoming the effects of hate this happened a few years ago in the state of Mississippi there have been a lot of animosity a lot of years of suspicion and bitterness and anger between the blacks and the whites in this one community in the state of Mississippi and so a lot of the leaders from the community african-americans Caucasians all Asians they all got together in a room to try to work this out and nothing much was happening at this meeting until at one point a young black pastor stood up and he said there have been nearly 700 lynchings in the state of Mississippi but I have never heard a white pastor preach against racism once and I need to know why and tension gripped the room and silence gripped the room and then this elderly white pastor stood up and he could have you know he could have tried to rationalize he could have tried to deny but he stood up and this is what he said he said I guess that question falls to me to tell you the truth it was fear I was just afraid we were afraid afraid of our people and of the consequences and so we just stood by and the truth is he said I don't know how to make it right since I'd like to go back but we can't it's all I can tell you is I'm sorry I'm sorry and those two adversaries walked across the room and embraced each other and there wasn't a dry eye in the place and God was pleased God was pleased friends few things accelerate the peace process more than humbly admitting our faults and our failures and our wrongdoing why because it tells our adversaries we are so serious about dealing honorably with the friction between us that we're willing to go beyond our pride beyond our self-interest to confess that yes we own some of the responsibility for this rift so what about that adversary that you brought into your mind I mean if you're really honest do you own some of the responsibility for the conflict between you are you willing to admit that part that you won't even if it's a small part confession brings healing and possible reconciliation finally the Ian piece stands for the word emulate emulate which means to imitate to imitate Christ Ephesians 5 verse 1 said follow God's example therefore as dearly loved children in other words when we're not sure how to love an enemy when we're not sure have I gone far enough in forgiving them we can look at the model of Jesus and emulate him follow his example the British pastor John Stott put it this way he said Jesus seems to have prayed for his tormentors actually while the iron spikes were being driven through his hands and through his feet indeed he kept praying he kept repeating his pleading Father forgive them for they know not what they do and then start said this if the cruel torture of crucifixion could not silence our Lord's Prayer for his enemies then what what pride or what prejudice could justify the silencing of ours friends who are our enemies I think we've established that we all have someone who were chronically angry at where there's a bitterness and angriness a hostility we've talked about the what question you know what does Christ want us to do and we realize he wants us to have a humble and a self giving and a forgiving and a benevolent added tool toward them as Christ has toward us and we looked at the why question and we saw that the benefits that we receive in others receive physical benefits psychological relational spiritual Kingdom benefits accrue to us as we take Jesus words seriously and put us put our love into action and then we looked at the how question the how question involves the peace process how praying and empathizing and acting and confessing and emulating can help us put practical action to our need to forgive our enemies and that leaves only two other questions of the who what where when why and how and those two questions are when and where I'm not going to answer those questions because those are for you bring that picture of that adversary into your mind and ask yourself when and where am I going to implement the peace process with this person for your own sake and for their sake and for the sake of God's kingdom and we'll just see what God does let's pray father you tell us in our words not to just hear your teachings even these tough ones but we're to act on them or to be doers of the word and that's where it really gets hard so father we pray that we will take this tough teaching to love our enemies take it to heart and that we will walk out of this place committed to walking through the peace process to your glory for our benefit for the benefit of those we consider our adversaries and we will give you all the credit thank you for loving us so much you don't want us to drown in our own bitterness but you want to drain it away so that we can heal and our relationships can heal and that our relationship with you might be the best it can be so we pray this in the name of the Prince of Peace Jesus Christ and all God's people said amen

Channel: Woodlands Church with Kerry Shook

Views: 21,019

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Keywords: woodlands, church, kerry, shook, chris, christian, god, faith, bible, tbn, daystar, joel, osteen, rick, warren, jesus, hope, ministries, pastor

Id: dnmNHJ8Aq1Q

Length: 41min 2sec (2462 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 23 2017