How anger opens the door to the devil

We already talked about how offenses are going to come, how you have to confront and crucify, and how those who love the Lord shall not be offended. Today I want to walk you through the door that offense almost always knocks on next. Anger. Because every time you give in to anger, you open a door, and the wrong thing walks through it.

Pull your toes back. You can say amen or you can say ouch. I love you either way.

Why so many buttons

A man went to his first football game. He kept watching the players come together in a huddle on the field. After a few of them, he turned to his friend and said, "Man, every couple of minutes, they huddle up and start talking about me." His friend looked at him sideways. "Brother, that is not about you. They are calling the play."

That is some of us. We are so sensitive that everywhere we go, we think the huddle is about us. They did not say hi to me today. They did not smile at me. They cut me off in the parking lot. We have become one big button, and everyone seems to know where to push it.

Raise your hand if you know somebody like that. A porcupine. Everything bothers them. The water is wrong. The ice is wrong. You take them out to eat and you are praying nothing comes out wrong because you already know what is coming. It is too hot. It is too cold. It is too quiet. It is too loud.

Why do you have so many buttons? And how does everybody seem to know exactly which one to press? Maybe it is them. Maybe it is also you. Maybe you have a pop-off spirit that needs to be dealt with.

When anger walks in, something else walks in with it

Look at what happens to King Saul in 1 Samuel 18. The women come out of the cities singing and dancing after David kills Goliath. They are basically the cheerleaders of the day, and the song they sing goes, "Saul has slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands."

Verse 8 says, "Then Saul became very angry."

There it is. That is the moment everything turned.

Every time you let anger in, you have opened a door. Watch the very next verse, 1 Samuel 18:10. The next day, a distressing spirit came on Saul, and he tried to pin David to the wall with a spear. Twice. David was just playing the harp like he always did. He was not doing a single thing to Saul. He was doing his job, which Saul actually asked him to do in the first place.

Put a D in front of anger and what do you get? Danger. Every time you get angry, you put yourself in a dangerous spot, because you make bad decisions when you are angry. That is when you cuss somebody out. That is when the other side of you comes out, the side you keep locked up in public.

Neighbor, I know you have another side. Keep them in the back today.

And here is the thing about Saul. The Bible says he lost his kingdom the moment he opened his mouth. Verse 8 ends with him saying, "Now what more can he have but the kingdom?" Death and life are in the power of the tongue. He spoke it, and from that day forward, the kingdom was leaving him. He gave it away with his mouth.

Stop being offended at people who work for you

Saul ended up being jealous of his own servant. He was the king. David was his employee. But because David was doing the work better than Saul could, Saul could not stand it.

This happens at workplaces every day. Somebody on your team is smarter than the boss. They know more than the title above them. And instead of celebrating it, the boss gets offended. Now they start blocking the very person who is making them look good. David did not do anything to Saul. He did his job too well, and it cost him.

That is why you have to be careful with people. They get offended easily. Some of you are walking out the same calling I did. When I first got ordained, somebody asked me for a word and God told me to give them one. I told them, in seven days, you are going to have a house. They came back and said it happened. And on that day, I died in that position, because the person over me could not receive that I was just being obedient.

Sometimes you just being obedient to God is going to attract haters. That is why you cannot get in your flesh about what people say. You will take yourself out of position worrying about somebody's opinion of you.

Let the people who work for you win. Because if they win, you win. Trying to keep them down when you are on top is a poverty mindset that will rot you from the inside out.

God's righteousness does not grow from your anger

Here is the verse I want you to post at every intersection of your life. James 1:19. Be quick to hear. Slow to speak. Slow to anger. The order matters. Most of us flip it. We lead with our mouth, we follow with our anger, and we listen last, by which point the other person is already on the floor.

Verse 20 says the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

The word righteous means rightly positioned. So every time you let anger take over, you knock yourself out of position. God had something for you, but you got out of line, and now He has to walk you back to the starting line so you can run that test again. You did not even realize it was a test. You thought it was just a bad day. It was actually a check to see if you had grown. And every time you fail, you get sent back to the back of the line.

Anger costs you position. It costs you respect too. Warren Buffett said it takes twenty years to build a great reputation and five minutes to lose it. You can pour two decades of work into who you are, and one angry email at 11pm can erase it.

The Bible puts it like this in James. Throw out the trash of wickedness and evil that has built up inside you, and let our gardener God landscape your heart with the word. I was looking at my wife's garden one day and saw weeds choking out the good plants in certain spots. She told me to weed it for her. There is more I could say about that, but I will keep it Bible. If you do not weed your heart, the weeds will choke out your harvest. God had something for you, but you let anger grow wild, and it strangled what was coming to you.

The four P's when anger shows up

When you feel anger rising, run this in your head before you respond.

Pause. Slow down. Slow all the way down.

Ponder. Do you actually need this job? Is this the day you want to lose it? Is the thing about to come out of your mouth worth the price you will pay for it?

Pray. Lord, help me. Help me, Jesus. Help me. Yes, Lord.

Proceed. Now you can move, because now you are not moving in flesh, you are moving in Spirit.

The David test

Now, you would think David would have left the building after the first spear flew at his head. He did not. And the story takes another turn that I do not want you to miss.

1 Samuel 19 says Saul kept trying. The same scene, almost word for word. David playing the harp, Saul throwing the spear. I wonder how many holes were in that wall by the end of it.

Eventually Saul sent men to David's house to kill him in the morning. Michal, David's wife and Saul's own daughter, let him down through a window so he could escape. So David is now on the run, hiding in caves, while Saul takes 3,000 soldiers out into the wilderness to hunt him down.

Here is where it gets interesting. In 1 Samuel 24, Saul walks into the very cave where David and his men are hiding. He went in there to relieve himself. We do not know if it was a one or a two, but he went in. And David's men are over in the dark watching it happen, whispering, "This is it. God just handed him to you."

David did not touch him. He cut off a piece of Saul's robe and that was it.

Then in 1 Samuel 26, another opportunity. Saul is asleep in his camp, the spear stuck in the ground beside his head. The same spear that has been thrown at David more times than we can count. David's nephew Abishai whispers, "God has handed him to you again. Let me, just this once. One stroke. I promise I will not have to do it twice."

Abishai is what every family needs. One. Just one. The cousin or brother who says, "Hey, do not even worry about it. I got it. We can talk about it after." You do not need a whole crew of them. Just one. But David said no. "Do not put your hand against the Lord's anointed. The Lord will deal with him in His own time, in His own way."

He took the spear and the water jug and walked off. Twice he could have ended it. Twice he chose restraint.

When your enemy is family of your enemy

Now look at 2 Samuel 16. David is finally king. He is on the run during the rebellion of his own son Absalom, and a man named Shimei, from the same family as Saul, comes out cursing him and throwing stones at him while he walks. Cursing the king. Throwing stones at the king. While the king has a full army standing right next to him.

If you have read the Bible, you know what David did with a stone in his hand once before. Goliath did not survive it. You really do not want a stone fight with David.

But David said nothing. Abishai shows up again, same energy as always. "Why is this dead dog allowed to curse the king? Let me handle him." And David said, "Leave him alone. If the Lord told him to curse me, who am I to stop him? Maybe the Lord will look on this and bring something good out of it for me."

That is a king with an army, walking past stones and curses, refusing to retaliate.

Here is the picture. There was a season David was under authority and a season David was in authority. He did not respond in either one. The higher he went, the more he restrained himself, not the less. And that is a word for whoever is reading this. The higher you go, the more eyes are on you. You may not feel known, but people are watching. So how you respond when you have all the power matters more than how you responded when you had none.

You are responsible for your response

Here is the line I want you to put on the mirror. You are responsible for your response.

You cannot control what they do to you. You can control what comes out of you. Say it out loud. I am response-able. I am able to respond.

Proverbs 19:11 says good sense makes a person slow to anger, and it is to their glory to overlook an offense. Your level of wisdom shows up in how you respond. Anybody can pop off. It takes a grown believer to pause, ponder, pray, and proceed.

And Psalm 119:165 brings the whole thing home. Those who love the Lord shall not be offended. There is no extra to it. Drop the mic. Because I cannot hate people and love God at the same time. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul, and the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. They come together.

A lot of us are great with the vertical part. Me and Jesus. I love Jesus. I have my quiet time. But the horizontal part is where most believers fall apart. How are you stretching for people? People are messy. People are broken. How you treat them is the receipt for how you love God.