Beyond the Weekend: Taking Jesus Seriously
What if the most famous sermon ever preached wasn't meant to be admired—but lived? Jesus didn't give us the Sermon on the Mount to impress us. He gave it to transform us. This summer, we're diving into Matthew 5 to wrestle with the hard questions: How do I actually love my enemies? What does it mean to deal with anger at its root? How do I live authentically before God, not just before people? Jesus ended with a warning: hear these words and do nothing, and your life is built on sand. But hear them and act—that's building on rock. Are you ready to start building?
Defusing Anger
Read: James 1:19-20 Listen: James 1
My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. James 1:19-20
James, the brother of Jesus, writes a letter to the early church that echoes much of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. James’s letter is largely an unpacking of Jesus’s teaching. In these verses, James focuses on the heart of Jesus’s teaching on anger. The Jesus way is being “slow to anger.” Jesus’s and James’s teachings reveal that God is after our hearts. God wants us to be people who put off anger and grow into people of love.
Knowing how to identify the root emotion underneath anger is often an important step to breaking free from anger. Two questions can be helpful: 1) What was I wanting when I became angry? 2) Why did I want that so badly? For instance, after reflection, we might realize that the last time we got angry, we were wanting to be heard, recognized or to have a sense of control. Identifying the reasons we wanted these things so badly often reveals an idol of the heart. We want recognition or control so badly because we actually believe that such things will give us life.
TODAY: Think back to a recent situation when you were angry, even if it seems trivial. What did you want in that situation? Name it and write it down. Then, consider the second question: Why did I want that so badly? Or: Why did that matter so much to me? Confess your shortcomings to God and ask him for the spiritual strength to put off anger and have a heart that is fully alive to him.
