The Proverbs have more to say about managing your anger, controlling your anger, dealing with your anger in a way that honors the Lord AND protects you from sabotaging your own life than it does about almost any other issue.
And the reason is unbelievably simple: It’s because if we don’t get this, we risk losing everything that matters to us. Don’t we?
We spent last week talking about the way that uncontrolled anger will take over our lives if we let it.
If you missed last week, you can find the that sermon on our YouTube channel or our social media accounts.
But through the Proverbs, our loving Father is warning us that uncontrolled anger will take over our lives if we let it.
God’s word says that rage is like a houseguest that you let in who then locks themselves inside their room and refuses to leave until they’ve been there long enough that they’ve got squatters’ rights and you can’t evict them.
And then they start bringing over all of their friends.
And their friends lock themselves in the other guest room and won’t leave until they’ve got squatters’ rights and you can’t evict them.
So they start inviting over all of their friends while you’re out, and they take over your kid’s room and lock the door and stay until they’ve got squatters’ rights so you can’t evict them.
And they invite over all their friends while you’re out, and they take over your room and lock themselves inside until they’ve been there long enough to have squatters’ rights so you can’t evict them.
Until eventually, they’ve taken over your whole house.
They’re using your plates and your cups and your fridge and your oven.
And they’re wearing your clothes.
And they’re driving your car.
And they’re sleeping in your bed.
And they’re watching your TV.
And eventually, a day comes when you come back home from work and you don’t live there anymore because they’ve evicted you.
Your house is theirs now.
God’s Word tells us that if we let it, our anger will fester, and it’ll ferment, and it’ll spread, and it’ll grow until we don’t have control of the steering wheel anymore.
Until we’re in the passenger seat.
And rage is in the driver’s seat.
That’s how it goes with anger.
Your life belongs to your anger now, and it will eat everything you love.
If you are anything like me, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You know exactly what this looks like.
You know exactly how this works because you’ve lived this process.
Some of you are still living this process, and you don’t even know you’re living this process.
But you’re so deep in the process that it’s gotten its hooks into your brain and it controls you like a parasite—to the point that you don’t even realize there’s a problem anymore.
You’ve just begun to see your uncontrollable anger as an unchangeable part of your identity.
So you say really stupid things like, “I’m just an angry person.”
You say, “This anger is just who I am.”
Somewhere along the way, you just decided not to fight it anymore. You decided to just give the anger a home.
You just put its name down on the lease.
And as a result it has colonized every part of your life to the point that it continually robs you of your jobs.
Robs you of your friends.
Robs you of your families.
Robs you of your marriage.
Your relationships.
And even if by some miracle it doesn’t eat all of those things, inevitably it rob you of your peace.
Am I touching any nerves this morning?
You Can Take Back Control from Your Anger
But the gloriously good news that we hinted at last week and are diving deep into this morning is that it does not have to be that way anymore for you.
God’s word says that you don’t have to be a slave to your anger anymore—you can be free.
You don’t have to be swept back and forth by the waves of your emotions anymore—you can center yourself in a way you never thought was possible.
You don’t have to be a puppet micromanaged by an uncontrollable beast bent on sabotaging everything you hold dead anymore—you can take back control of your life.
That’s the core image that God lays down for us in the Proverbs: By surrendering to the Spirit, you can take back control from your anger.
But to understand what I mean when I say that, we have to break down a few of the Proverbs we didn’t get to last week.
Bear with me for a minute and try not to get whiplash.
I love Proverbs 16:32. It says:
“One who is slow to anger is better than the mighty;
one who rules his spirit, than he who takes a city.”—Proverbs 16:32, WEB
I love Proverbs 14:29. It says:
“He who is slow to anger has great understanding,
but he who has a quick temper displays folly.”—Proverbs 14:29, WEB
I love Proverbs 19:11. It says:
“The discretion of a man makes him slow to anger.
It is his glory to overlook an offense.”—Proverbs 19:11, WEB
Now, what do any of these verses have to do with how to take control of our anger again?
Everything.
But to understand how, we have to remember something that I said at the very beginning of this Proverbs series—back in the winter of 2024—a million years ago.
You have to remember one of the core principles for how to interpret the Proverbs.
Here’s what you have to understand: When the Proverbs describe something good or admirable, they’re not just telling you to DO THAT THING.
They’re also making a promise.
Remember this?
They’re saying, “This is what God wants to do in YOUR life—if you’ll let Him.”
This is not just a prescription.
This is a promise.
When the Proverbs say, “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a WISE person is slow to anger,” it’s NOT a heavy weight that God is laying on you.
It’s a promise He is making TO you.
This is NOT God saying, why aren’t you slower to anger?
Why can’t you rule your spirit?
Why can’t you just be better?
No. This is actually an invitation to hope.
It’s saying, “God wants to make you slow to anger. God wants to teach you to rule your spirit. God wants to give you a patience that overcomes your rage.”
These Proverbs are a promise from the Lord that IF you reach out and take His hand, IF you pursue His will and His ways and His wisdom by throwing yourself into learning patience, gentleness, understanding, peacefulness by the power of the Spirit—THEN He will transform you from the inside out to grow all of those fruit within you.
It’s a promise that the Lord will renew your heart.
He will reshape your mind.
He will empower you to change.
And so, when you read these things, here’s what you should be hearing: You should be hearing that no matter what your life has looked like up to this point, the Lord is working in you to form you into the kind of person who rules your spirit.
Your loving, patient, caring Father in Heaven has sat you down on His couch, in front of His fireplace, put His arm around you, and said: Today, you are hyper-reactive. You just react emotionally to everything. You get swept up in your emotions every time you face an inconvenience. But I am going to grow you in wisdom. I am going to cultivate discernment within you. I’m going to give you insight. I’m going to pour out my understanding within you, and it’s going to make you slow to anger.”
He says, “Today, you are so obsessed with punishing people for all the ways that you feel they’ve wronged you. You feel compelled to set people right every time you think they’ve done something wrong. But I’m going to pour out my patience on you. I’m going to teach you how to let go of offenses. I’m going to teach you how to stop taking things personally.”
He says, “Today, you just knee-jerk react by pouring out your anger on everyone around you every time you feel upset or dysregulated. But I’m going to teach you how to process your emotions in a calm, reasonable way. I’m going to teach you how to feel your feelings without being dominated by your feelings.”
He says, “Right now, you feel like you have to turn absolutely everything into a fight. You feel like you have to tell off absolutely everybody who gets on your bad side. You feel like there has to be a confrontation over every single thing. You have no idea how to distinguish between things that are a big deal and things that are not a big deal. You treat absolutely everything like it’s a five-alarm fire. Like it’s a total emergency. But I am going to teach you how to let go of 99% of things. How to just accept that some people need different things than you. Want different things than you. Value different things than you. See things differently than you. And there’s really no reason to fight about almost any of it.”
He says, “Today, you are the kind of person that nobody listens to anymore because you turn absolutely everything into a problem. You can’t stand people disagreeing with you. You make a big, public scene every time you don’t get your way. So everyone you know has just tuned you out. They stop listening when you start talking. But I’m going to teach you how to be someone who manages conflict so peacefully and reasonably that in those 1% of times when you DO have to take a stand, people actually take it seriously. People actually care what you have to say. People actually listen to you—because you’re not just some troublemaker who raises a pointless ruckus over every freaking thing because you don’t have control over your emotions, but instead you’re a principled person who lets go of most disagreements, so that the one you take a stand about is actually worth taking seriously.”
God’s word says that if you surrender to the Spirit, the Lord will form you into a person LIKE THAT.
The Spirit’s role is to transform you from the inside out.
YOUR role is to turn off the security system so He can get in and do His transforming work.
How Do We Surrender Our Anger to the Spirit?
So: How do we do that?
How do we actually “surrender our anger to the Spirit”?
I have a very hard time with vague instructions.
I need you to tell me EXACTLY what you want me to do, EXACTLY the way you want it done—or it’s useless to me.
Know what I’m talking about?
So, I don’t wanna be vague here.
What does the literal step-by-step process of surrendering your anger to the Spirit look like?
It can look like a lot of different things. There’s not just one way to do this.
But here’s what works well for me.
There’s basically three steps to surrendering you anger to the Spirit.
1. Calm Down
I love James 1:19.
He says:
“So, then, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”
—James 1:19, WEB
He says you’ll be slow to anger if you’re slow to speak.
And you’ll be slow to speak if you’re quick to hear.
Now the point here is not literally about how quickly you talk.
What do you think the point is?
The point is, our natural tendency is just to react to everything.
Remember several weeks back we talked about something called “fight or flight mode”?
We’re gonna talk about it again, but this time from the other side.
One of the reasons we so easily get into this kind of spiral of rage or panic or anxiety or whatever is because our brains go into fight-or-flight mode when there is nothing to fight and nothing to run from.
Our fight-or-flight response exists because once upon a time in the olden days, there could be a leopard behind the bushes out to attack you.
Today there is not a leopard in the bushes who is going to attack you.
So instead, our fight-or-flight response lights up when we’re having an argument with our wife.
Or we have a difficult situation at work.
Or somebody from the church comes and tells you they have a problem with the carpet.
And listen—when you go into fight-or-flight mode, you lose the ability to think rationally.
Listen very carefully to me.
You cannot think reasonably in fight-or-flight mode.
And that means that in so many situations, you have to take back control of your brain.
How do you do that?
There’s a whole lot of different ways.
Here’s the one that is the easiest for me.
Multiple branches of the military use this because if you are holding a gun in a combat situation, you need to be able to think rationally.
So in some branches of the military, the moment a combat situation is about to begin, they have you do something called tactical breathing.
Ever heard of this one?
Tactical breathing is what they call it when you breathe in very deeply through your nose for four seconds.
Then you hold your breath for four seconds.
Then you breathe out very deeply through your mouth for four seconds.
And then you hold that with your lungs empty for four seconds.
And then you do that four times in a row.
And what they’ve found—they’ve literally proven this—is that for whatever reason, after four go-rounds of tactical breathing, it puts what’s called your prefrontal cortex—that is the part of your brain responsible for thinking rationally and clearly and logically—back in charge.
It takes you out of fight-or-flight mode.
And so what I do a lot of times when I get carried away, fly into a rage, and I catch myself in the act, is I will stop.
Step to the side.
And I’ll do at least four go-rounds of tactical breathing.
Sometimes five.
Sometimes eight.
Sometimes twelve.
However long it takes until my temperature’s back down.
And listen—this actually works.
I know I just told you that you can make a serious dent in a major spiritual problem by breathing a little differently.
But that’s actually true.
I am dead serious.
I am not kidding.
I’m actually so serious about this, I want to practice tactical breathing for a second.
This is not a magic cure to your anger problems.
But this is a genuine tool that can actually help you to stop for a second and take back control.
I am going to lead us in a tactical breathing exercise.
Did not expect to be doing this at church, did you?
I’m gonna have you breathe in for four seconds.
Hold your breath for four seconds.
Breathe out for four seconds.
And then hold that for four seconds.
And then we’re going to repeat the process a second time.
Then a third time.
Then a fourth time.
You can roll your eyes all you want, so long as you actually do it.
Breathe in.
Hold it.
Breathe out.
Hold it.
Now, why do we start there?
Because it make step two possible.
2. Let Go
I love the way Paul puts this in Ephesians 4:31.
He says:
“Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander be put away from you, with all malice.”
—Ephesians 4:31, WEB
Once you’ve regained your ability to think by CALMING DOWN, you need to actually DO some thinking.
And when we actually do that, what we will almost always find is that most of our anger is irrational.
Hear it from me, a fellow very angry person—most of your anger is irrational.
I know—now you’re angry with me, but hear me out for a second.
Once you’ve calmed yourself down by stepping away, doing SOME kind of calming practice—whether it’s tactical breathing or something else—take a good, close, hard look at yourself.
And ask yourself, “Where does my anger spring from pride?”
Where does my anger spring from a desire to control?
Where does my anger spring from a desire for vengeance?
Where does my anger spring from fear?
And then say, “Lord, I’m giving this irrational anger to you.”
That’s step two.
3. Open Up
And once you’ve calmed yourself down, and you’ve taken some steps to let go of the irrational anger that has swept you up in its current, it makes step three possible.
Because step three is OPEN UP.
What does OPEN UP mean?
Here’s what it means. I love the way Paul puts it in Colossians 3:8–10.
He says:
“But now you also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth. Don’t lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, who is being renewed in knowledge after the image of his Creator.”
—Colossians 3:8–10, WEB
That same passage from Romans we quoted earlier—Romans 12:2—says:
“Don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
—Romans 12:2, WEB
What you’re doing is saying, “Lord, have your way with my mind.”
You say, Lord, so much of my anger comes from false beliefs that I’ve been holding on to for years.
Take those beliefs away.
Trade my false assumptions for the truth.
Say, Lord, so much of my anger comes from the fact that I believe I have to be in control, or else I can’t be happy.
That’s not true.
I’m not the one in control.
You’re the one in control.
So much of my anger comes from my assumption that other people have to respect me, otherwise I can’t be content.
But that’s not true.
My value comes from Christ, not from other people’s approval.
And so I’ve actually started doing this thing where, when I catch myself in the act of getting really uncontrollably angry, I stop.
And I ask myself, why am I so angry right now?
And I start digging.
I get out my pickaxe, and I just start digging in my mind.
What am I so angry about?
I’m angry because they’re not treating me the way that they’re supposed to.
And then I say, wait a minute.
Is that true?
Is that really why I’m angry?
The answer is usually no.
I’m not angry because they’re not treating me the way they’re supposed to.
I’m angry because I’ve convinced myself that if they don’t treat me a certain way, I can’t be happy.
I’m not angry because I lost out on this opportunity.
I’m angry because I’ve convinced myself that if I don’t get that opportunity, I can’t be satisfied.
I’m not angry because this thing didn’t go my way.
I’m angry because I’ve convinced myself that if this thing doesn’t go my way, I can’t be content.
But I can absolutely be content.
I can be happy.
I can be satisfied regardless of any of these things.
I say, Lord, replace my false assumptions with true assumptions.
That’s step three.
Start the Journey Today
And if you actually do that—and make a habit of doing that, make a practice of doing that, build a pattern of doing that every time you catch yourself getting swept up by your uncontrollable anger—what you’ll find is that very slowly, but very steadily, your entire outlook will start to change.
The way that you see almost every situation will slowly change.
The way you feel about almost everything and almost everyone will start to change.
The exhausting, uncontrollable, formless, irrational anger that has ruled so much of your life up to this point will slowly start to transform into a righteous anger that reflects God’s own righteous anger towards the forces of sin and darkness.
And you’ll find—more and more—that your anger is dwindling from a blazing and untamable force that carries you where you do not want to go into a kindling that can help to warm and illuminate your campsite without burning it down in the process.
SO: If you are like me, if you are someone who has spent your whole life consumed by rage, I dare you to start the journey today.
Practice surrendering your anger to the Spirit, day in and day out—starting on your drive home around noon—and then watch the way the Lord transforms your life, and then this church, and then our whole surrounding community through it.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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