TurningPoint Community Church

• Anger in the heart is the moral equivalent of murder with the hands!

"All you gotta do is add a 'D' to ANGER and you get DANGER!"

-- Anonymous

• It’s not just our actions that must be dealt with, it’s the attitude behind them.

• God measures our hearts before our actions.

• The purpose of the Great Sermon was to make us all recognize that we're guilty! We’re sinners. We need a Savior.

• The primary aspect of righteousness is not outward, but inward. Not action, but attitude; not movement, but motive.

Proverbs 29:22, ESV
An angry [person] stirs up strife, and a hot-tempered [person] abounds in transgression.

“Do not say, ‘I cannot help having a bad temper.’ Friend, you must help it. Pray to God to help you overcome it at once, for either you must kill it, or it will kill you. You cannot carry a bad temper into heaven.”

-- Charles Spurgeon

• Especially among Christian brothers and sisters, anger is to be eliminated.

• Deal with anger before it deals with us before God!

• There are occasions for anger, but we must never let it capture us, or own us!

• Anger must be short-lived, or it will turn into harmful and sinful bitterness and danger.

• Get to God quickly with your anger!

• Don’t be deceived that you can handle it; sometimes we can’t even see it!

• Present your hearts continually to God, so that He can examine you and show you what is accurate and what is inaccurate in your perspectives.

• We must deal with our anger immediately, or we will fall into the hands of the Devil!

“No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianize society than evil temper.”

-- Henry Drummond

LifeGroup Questions:

1. Discuss some of the daily issues that cause you to be angry.

2. How can we tell the difference between righteous anger and unrighteous anger?

3. From Matthew 5:21-26, how are we to deal with our anger?

4. Review the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10). How do these "kingdom values" keep us from unrighteous anger?

Next Step:

• This week, I will pray the prayer of David in Psalm 139:23 so that God has access to my heart.