Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group Leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource youth to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Welcome, Life Group leaders to the Life Group leader podcast. We're happy to have you join us again this week as we look at week two of our series, Losing It Overcoming the Grip of Anger.
I'm here, say with my good friend and our marriage pastor Linda Vaido. I'm here, here we go, let's do this. Thanks for jumping in, Linda. And podcast listeners, if you hear sudden banging out of nowhere, it's because we are the middle of our incredible, multiple I can't believe.
Amazing. Right outside my office, I've looked it out to Outdoor Vineu, which is being worked on substantially. Again, it's some great stuff going on and not only in our outdoor venue, but the studio space, the kids space, the first four of the ministry center here, which is just exciting implications for Life Group leaders and things that we're gonna make available for you, for your groups here on campus. So great things, great things are happening.
We're modeling right now. Yeah, if you're noise, it's good noise. It's good. Good knowing.
Linda, before we jump in, this is a fun season, right? Cough all of our different ministries, but we've got lots of great things happening with the marriage ministry. You may be listening to this after the fact, but we have our first marriage matters coming up this Saturday night on the 16th. That may have already happened.
Yep. Great stuff happening in marriage ministry. Just give us some snapshots of what you're excited about. Yeah, we try to each season, have something offered to four Mary couples.
So we do have something coming up next year as we've already started our third option in the pre-marriage course. And then marriage matters is once a month, it's a great opportunity to bring your Life Group and hang out together, go to the service at 5.30 and then walk on down to the worship center for marriage matters of the dug fields. So yeah, if you missed this weekend, our next one is October 21st. So go ahead and get that on your calendar and talk to your Life Group about it.
We have a lot of Life Group stuff come all together. We love seeing it. It's a great outing for Life Groups. Hey, just before we jump in the passage to one thing that we're gonna have to occasionally, all this podcast is we love hearing from your questions.
So we had our equipment night, we had a breakout with our Life Group leaders and one of the best parts was just hearing your stories but also hearing your questions live in the room. And so we thought we'd like to use this format here. So you hear from questions that you have, whether it's how do you create momentum in your groove? What about group dynamics?
What do you do when you have a challenging situation? How do we... We're gonna have to do it. How do we motivate our group to serve?
What accommodations do you have to give the most up? It could be a most only conversation. And so what we wanna ask you to do over these next couple of weeks is we have an email account that we'll be checking at MirinersChurch.org, LifeGroups at MirinersChurch.org. We'll be sending that yet.
So send in your questions, we'd love to hear from you. And then when we host this week, we'll podcast on Friday, we'll interact with those a bit. So send in your questions to LifeGroups at MirinersChurch.org. All right, ready to get it?
I'm ready. We'll talk about anger. All right, I'll leave in here. What are some examples of positive ways to deal with or express anger?
Where have you seen it in your life or the life of others? You know, I heard an interesting story on the Interweb. I guess I would have to be reading a story, the Interwebs. I guess there was a guy in line getting coffee and the person behind him did not appreciate that he was taking a long time to order and began tapping on their horn.
And what this gentleman did was pulled up to the window and paid for the girl's drink order. So instead of outraging and putting on his breaks, flashing his breaks, pulling over, flashing his fist, whatever, he decided to pull forward and pay for her drinks or whatever she ordered at the window. And then I guess she followed him just to thank him and was pretty repentant in her anger. So that whole kill people with kindness, which I thought was so great.
That's great. I love that Eric, because we could each tell the story about driving from Orlando to Miami, where basically the other way around, and get cut off by somebody with a truck that had stacked all the equipment and ladders and everything else. He tells about how he called the house by driving phone number that was on the truck and it connected to the actual guy who was driving from him. And they had a pretty good representation there, which could have gone either way.
So yeah, it's so funny. I think there's so many opportunities that Eric talks about in his message to, I mean, road rage is the thing, right? You don't see a lot of examples of people dealing with that positively on the roads. Oh, definitely.
It's a lot of the contrary. We lived for almost five years at the West Side in LA. Let me tell you, like it was a breath of fish, or come back to Orange County, because the etiquette, just a few miles up the road. We're a bit more attentionous than you.
A bit LA. So positive ways to deal with anger versus negative ways to deal with anger. But I love again, we're open up the conversation about the reality of anger and what it does to us and how to respond to it. And so last week was beautiful.
Eric walked us through the reality of how God's anger has been absorbed and ultimately satisfied in who Jesus is and what he did for us. The gospel message, I love that. This is also a gospel message that invites us into responding now to the emotion of anger and how do we think about that well? How do we think about God's righteous anger and our righteous anger?
So that's a great thing here. I'm gonna read the passage for us. It is James 1, 19 through 20. I think we maybe impact maybe through 21 or 22 on the startup, we're gonna read 19 through 20.
And then you've got lots of questions here in your look down. You really could summarize these questions in one question. You could say something like, what do you learn about navigating anger from the passage? Or you could say, what do you learn about the power of anger from the passage?
Or you could say, just what do you learn about anger from the passage? And those are broad and open ended. It's encouraging you to engage directly in the scripture. So I'll read these verses here and then I'll ask you to interact with them a little bit here.
So what do you learn about navigating anger from the passage? My dear brothers and sisters, understand this. That everyone should be, sorry, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. For human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.
Yes. What do you learn? What's in this? Well, I love that how he says, understand this, it's, hey, hey, hey, look, look, listen to what I'm gonna say.
It's that moment of clarity. I'm gonna say something that's really important. And then the first thing he says is be quick to listen, which so many of us are so opposite of that, that we are quick to respond to what makes us angry or our circumstances. So that is a really good message from the passage.
That's a great reminder. Yeah, I love also what it says that everyone should be, you know, and there's something into that phrasing where it's something we're all invited into. But it's also, there's this, everyone should be acknowledging that we don't always, we don't always get this right. We often will mess this up.
But if we are gonna navigate, navigate anger well, yeah, he gives us these three, three, three punches, which I love. And it's so easy to memorize. This is one of the first verses I memorized, which is not, I don't recommend that to anybody because it's a very, it's easy to memorize and talk to the universe you can't. Oh yeah, it was when I was raising little kids, you know, quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.
And it's just a great reminder. It's just such a great reminder and it's an easy pause. It's an easy way to hit the pause button and go, okay, let me think through this. Yeah, I love that it's a call back even to the nature of God who is, you know, is rich.
He's unfailing and abouting love. He's slowed anger. I love that there's some similarities here of who God is and what we're being invited into. And then in verse 20, it says, human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness.
So it's really drawing, but the distinction that there is a difference between God's righteous anger in man's unrighteous anger. What stands out to you if you were to think about the two kinds of anger, what's different about our anger versus God who displays righteous anger, you know, in the message, Eric, I think he even showed a chart that shows the difference between God's righteous anger and man's unrighteous anger. Why don't we walk through that and see what stands out? See what stands out.
Yeah, it's all self-reflective. It's all about self. It's all about me and how it makes me feel or about an issue that's frustrating for me. And I just think about a book I'm reading right now, how it's creation worship as opposed to create tour or show.
So that's the biggest difference I see in God's righteous anger. It's restoration. It's satisfied by Jesus. It's against those things that anger God, not those things that hurt me personally or that I take personally.
It's confront and admonish. You know, the Bible teaches so much about us, confronting in love and man's unrighteous anger is none of that. It's destructive. It's quick.
It's condemning. It's accusatory. It's against what frustrates us. Again, reflection of us as far as what is making us comfortable Yeah, that's great.
I love that in the chart. You might want to even highlight that within your groups. There's two types of anger. And we looked at the flow of the anger.
What's the cause, the speed, the goal, the expression in the end, and all the things that you just walk us through. There is a difference, a different way in which God responds and which we respond. It's a slow. Or is it usually quick?
All the things you just talked about. His brings restoration. Or is often motivated by destruction or revenge. And so it's important for us to know, like, anger is a God given emotion.
And it's a God given emotion because there's a God given opportunity to respond as he would respond. And so as our response, one that is seeking our own satisfaction, our own revenge, the destruction of others. That's good. Yeah, or in love.
Right. Or is it about restoration? And it's about bringing redemption into the relationship. What's the frustration?
Are we annoyed at the person? Or is it, man, we're actually angered at the things that God is angry about? Well, and that goes right back to the passage. Slow to speak.
Quick to listen and slow to speak. When we are quick to listen and slow to speak, it gives us the opportunity to process our anger and where that's coming from. And whether that's a reflective of self, it's because I have pride or I'm hungry or I'm frustrated or if it's reflective of redemption and Christ and centered on him. Let's get it.
Then you've got a couple of questions here in the lookout. And I'm just going to summarize and even combine the questions of how I might even lead them in my group. But again, looking out is OK. Now we're looking out of how this works in the world around us.
And you could ask something to the effect of when you look at circumstances around the world, what are the things that we can align with God's righteous anger for? What are things that would be appropriate for us to have righteous anger about? Yeah. And it's a great question because it gets your group thinking outwardly.
And it also gives your group thinking creatively how we might even respond to that. So I don't forget if anything stands out. When you look at the world around us where you would say, man, yeah, I have an anger and a frustration about this. And I actually think that this might be aligned with God's righteous anger.
Well, I think any abuse in any way towards children or the human trafficking things that we've have come to light so much lately, there's an anger towards what people do to other people, right? Right. Yeah, totally. Abuse, those that are marginalized, disenfranchised, take and take advantage of that if we're not actually angry by that, we might be not plugged, we might be disassociated.
We might actually be paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. But there is such a thing too where we can get so overwhelmed and numbed to all the brokenness of the world that it becomes a callous on us to because that's a part of our brokenness of, yeah, I should be angry about this.
I can't fix it. And so, well, I kind of just keep on going on. And I'm so glad again that there's a difference between how we respond to things and how God responds to things. We might get overwhelmed and retreat.
God doesn't get underwhelmed. He gets involved and he actually brings restoration to it. But man, it's a good prayer for us, right? 100% I want to see the things that you see.
Yes. But the things that you are is not just for the sake of the emotion, but so the sake that you can motivate us into action too. Well, I think just recognizing that we are all image bearers. And how are we leaving that out?
It's good. And then we bring it to the look in. We start thinking about our own relationship and interaction with anger and good question here of how the passage instructs us to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger. The question is, why do you think James listed that way?
And then of those three, which ones are more difficult for you to practice? What about for you, Linda? Why do you think you listed that way? And is there one there where it's more of a challenge even for you to live out?
Yeah, I love listening to people's stories and hearing from people, but sometimes I'm not slow to speak. I have a tendency to interrupt or speak what I think or get defensive. And I think that's one for me is just to not only be quick to listen, but also slow to respond and allowing somebody to really get everything out that they're intending to get out. And slow to get angry, whether that's biting your tongue or walking away or taking a deep breath.
Or again, because we so much of the way we react and respond is based on something that's happening within us. Yeah, that's really good. How we respond is often something that's happening within us. And if we move too quickly, we miss that opportunity for our own growth and formation.
If we move just right into blast and I want to fix the problem or I want to go at the person, then we actually miss. OK, the frustration might be a very good one. It might be a God-place frustration. So what is he saying behind that?
Is it something in my own perspective, my own brokenness that I actually need to bring before again? Yeah. Is this something that he wants me to move towards with grace and compassion and as he moves towards me? But yeah, I love that thinking in those three different facets causes us to be to think inwardly, to have pause, and to be aligned with what God wants to say and do.
I think we also don't go as quickly to prayer in those moments. I have really tried to implement asking the Holy Spirit to give me words if I'm stepping into a conversation that might be difficult, even in conversations that won't be difficult. But even as someone approaches you and they appear to maybe be having a stance of anger or that you may be attacked just stopping and praying right there. Even if someone's talking to you, Holy Spirit, give me words, give me peace.
What do you want me to say in this time? I mean, if we don't rely on that, then something is wrong with our faith. Because he calls us to come to him with everything. That's right.
That's really good. And anger, again, is a God-given emotion. And it can either be destructive, weaponizes it, denies it as a form of revenge and destruction, or it could actually be something that's really healing for ourselves and others. But it requires us to take pause, to take inventory, search me, know me, to think before we move into action, to ask what's the story saying about me and my story?
Anger can be a really, really good thing, but it can also be a very, very destructive thing. And the difference often is the pace of which we move at it, asking God to show us what this is about us and our own brokenness, and what do we want the result of it to be? If the result of our anger, we want to just be proven right. The most important person, if you've indicated, they were going to the wrong path.
If the result is, maybe what's best for every single person in this situation, for shalom, for healing, for restoration, then we're aligning them with what God wants. And so we should always be asking that question of, OK, here's this emotion. What is this saying about me? How are you calling me to respond to it?
How could this actually bring life and not harm to myself and to others? Easier said than done. Oh, yes. That's why it's a practice.
You don't get that. It just wants to practice that we're invited. All right, guys. Well, thanks for tuning in this week.
Please do. As you do every week in the sermon with Eric teaching, take notes, take your observations, bring your Bibles, bring your majors app, and bring your observations into your conversations this week. And then please do send in your questions for your group and yourself to lifegroups.vanderestridge.org. And we look forward to unpacking those in the weeks ahead.
All right, we'll see you guys back here next week.