Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.—Ephesians 4:26-27
We are all guilty of moving anger in the wrong direction. Everyone has escalated an argument, and nothing good comes from it. And here's a classic signpost that will tell you if your anger is moving in the wrong direction.
Inflammatory Words.
When we get heated, and the words start to fly, our language begins to change, and the inflammatory words start leaking out—this is a sure sign that your anger is moving in the wrong direction. For example, words like "You always" or "You never" are a sure indication of impending trouble. First, personal pronouns like "you" are pointed, and others focused. Second, words like "always" or "never" are almost always or never accurate. It's in our sinful nature to do this, but it's not helpful. And in the end, rather than sunsetting the issues, we might be raising new problems.
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I am currently going through a seperation possible legal with my wife for my anger. This isn’t the first time over 28 years that we’ve been separated but the third. We’ve seen 14 counselors over that period and I was clinically diagnosed with intermittent explosive disorder by a phychiatrist. I have no promise of reconciliation with my wife but am determined through therapy and medication and being in gods word I can overcome this issue that has held me prisoner since I was a child. Thanks for this lesson.
Please pray for me to have a Christ like attitude with my 15 year old son.
Vince I am guilty of being quick to anger and speaking well before I have a chance to process the emotions that I am feeling. My sinful nature far to often rears its ugly head and I end up saying things that I immediately regret. I thank God that he at least has started working in my heart to address this problem by encouraging me to ask for forgiveness from both him and whoever happened to be in the line of fire. I pray that God gives me the strength to be slow to anger and quick to love in everything that I do and when I falter I ask that he impress on me the importance of reconciliation. To do this within 5 minutes or less so that it doesnt continue to fester and burn not only me but the ones who I have hurt.
there is a big difference between anger and being passionate about your beliefs, i try to respond as a Christian should respond but I’m afraid most people take it as anger.
Gave me something good to think about. You always you never… Need to sunset the angry thoughts before they turn into words.
Excellent!
Thank you for sensitizing me to these issues and giving me a tool to use. I will give myself 3 minutes and then sunset when I get angry and make a conscious decision to avoid using these words
Definitely gave me something to process today. 100% guilty of this.
As a caregiver for my wife, I often get frustrated and angry with her. I know it’s Satan trying to worm his way back into my life and that he’s trying to keep us both at odds with each other. It happens so quickly that it’s hard for me stop before I react to a situation negatively. Lord Jesus, I ask you to remain first and foremost in my mind!
Even if I don’t say “you always” or “you never,” I think it way to often. Not only do I think it, but I stew on it and truth be told, lose sleep because of this. I would rather be mad and miserable than give it to God and let it go. Life is too short. I need to let it go within 5 minutes.
5 minutes
It has been a lifelong struggle for me but I’m at the point where I am trying to curb it within seconds so as to defeat this burden.
Get after it Tim!
My Declaration today is to Address my anger within 5 minutes of becoming angry. i want to strive to be able to recognise Anger and deal with it before i am angry. as this has caused me great strife and trouble in my life. it just causes me to stumble all the time.
I have always had a problem with anger since I was a child and I am sixty-nine years old. I am not quite sure I understand the call to action for today as I try to address my anger moment be moment.
Sam
I plan on addressing my anger within 5 minutes, at MOST, of the end of a conversation that is irritating, usually from the wife, kids, or in-laws, and not give the enemy a foothold in my life anymore. I am going to journal these irritating conversations, talk them through calmly with my wife, even if she’s the trigger, and find a peaceful resolution to these conversations, apologizing to anyone I have wronged and also to God for being short of the mark and releasing human anger at another person, who is created in His image. Remember when we use human anger at another human, we are also using human anger at God’s image, directly and indirectly at God.
I really need to not go longer than 10 minutes to address my anger, Unfortunately if it is an an argument with my wife, and I try to address the issue, it turns into another argument. So, I usually just end up settling with God.
I will give myself 5 minutes to figure out what is causing the anger. I’m actually working on this sort of thing with my therapist. I’m trying to slow down and take note of the reason of the anger!
My son and I resolute to address our anger with 1 hour of any argument.
Gives us a cool down time
My anger USED to be like the snap of a finger!
I grew up in those type of conditions. Through daily Bible study and WANTING to get closer to Christ I seldom get angry but pray that it resolves as quickly as it occurs!
I will make the declaration of addressing my anger within 30 minutes. Let me be specific-the deepest expressions of anger have been at those I love deeply( wife and children) taking that 30 minutes to decompress and write out my feelings will allow me to talk through and have resolution.
I pray that the Lord can help me sunset my anger within 5 seconds (hopefully shorter) and that I can give my anger up to the Lord and have Him help me replace my anger with positive actions and love.
Strive to let it go in 5 minutes. Examine my “why’s” and try to recognize the signs of impending upset.
I need to acknowledge immediately,
And pray God would calm my spirit as I tend to go 0-100 in blink of an eye. And not let anger effect more then 5 min.
I will make it a point to pray each morning for God to help me fight down anger when it appears then attempt to recognize within a few seconds of when I’m feeling the anger stir in me and just “take 5” to calm down and pray.
I declare that one hour is long enough to feel that emotion, process it, surrender it to God, and move on. I pray that God will walk me through feeling angry and help me to forgive and move forward faster.
It’s hard to determine when this time can happen as it’s hard to know when it will come. But what I can say is that I have two meetings coming up this evening, and I will target that time to focus on my anger and my response to the presence of my anger.
That is great advice, I always walk away from the situation to cool down, but now I will set a time frame to let go of the anger. I will start with 30 minutes and work to improve that time in the future.
Ten minutes. That should allow me to self convict initially. However my goal is to redirect my anger immediately by recognizing that lashing out is inappropriate.
My time frame is end of work day. Release stress and irritants from the day before evening with family
My plan is to journal notes re: my anger and some potential anger resolution steps. I’ll have several hours as I’m traveling today for work to focus on this and take some time for introspection. This will all be helpful as I prepare for a very serious conversation with my wife re: our marriage and our future.
15 minutes in the morning during my devotional time and 15 in the evening before bed. Main issue is changing how I respond to my kids and wife when I am stressed.
I will take a few min after everytime I get angry today to let it go . I will stop carrying all the little things that make me angry ,that turn into big anger blow ups.
Lately I am often going to sleep with unfinished anger and frustration with my wife and kids. I resolve to work towards closure on these frustrations
I can’t always put a time on it but the challenge for me is to deal with it in a time frame that is responsible & effective.
30 minutes
1 hour
remembering that there is a delete key on facebook before you hit the send key
Within 5 minutes. This has been a “thorn” since pre-teen years and best I can determine triggered by loss of father at age 10. Mostly, anger directed at self and wife (considered self) but ultimately recognize that it is at God and not fully recognizing His Sovereignty over my life in all things. Need daily practice of dying to self and letting the Spirit live through me, acknowledging that He is in control of all things, even every little detail that occurs throughout the day. Easy to say, hard to practice.
5- 10 minutes
With 30 minutes!
10-15 mins
5 to 10 mins after an anger moment
1 hour
I work from home, so before I sit at the computer each day, within 30 minutes
With in an hour.
1 hour
Up to 16 hours (because of my work schedule), but always before bed.
Within the first 2 minutes
1 hour
I like this ! I ‘m looking for ways to help some guys in my group and my self of course .
I want to challenge myself to address the anger within a hour.
Starting each morning along with my time with the Lord I will include a few minutes or more to give focus towards my issue of anger.
I know this will sound bad but its my wife. Instead of responding to her in anger Im going to remain silent and talk to her when I am calm.
I will address my anger, be it at home or work, within 60 minutes of the outburst.
Dedicating prayer time before my devotional each morning to turning my day over to the Lord asking for God’s wisdom throughout the day
Depending on the situation I might need less or more time to calm down and get my mind cleared and approach the situation in an altered mindset. It might be helpful to to talk to others to set a new perspective. – Defenitely it is essential to get things cleared and not to let anger destroy a relationship.
60-90 seconds. The sooner the better for me!
5 minuts
5 min’s
I haved used inflammatory word during an argument and the argument definitely escalates after those words. Just listening and reading the the Bible verse made me realize that. I’m going to take 10 minutes for this challenge to address the problem and anger.
I pledge to reduce my anger outburst substantially. These tools will help immensely. The old saying “ PAUSE WHEN AGITATED “ will be much easier now. Because you are right, foul words immediately come out of the mouth. That is the sign to pause….. and develop a more beautiful response. But I am sure there will still be something that I have to apologize for. But of course do not let the sun go down angry.
I will address my anger within 15-minutes. Yesterday in the car while headed on vacation the kids were acting up in the car. Instead of going if, I put in ear buds and listened to relaxing music.
I pledge to address any anger I have within 30 minutes from onset
Normally when I get angry, my sunset time will be days, after todays I will try to set the sunset time shorter. please pray for me thanks.
Anger and frustration have been a problem for me. I come from a very dark place. Often pray that God would give me the wisdom to manage my life
Great advice…the idea of controlling your anger in a righteous way is something I want to make a habit of. I declare to address my anger immediately and then confront my thoughts before I put my head down to rest!
I have no idea what “determine a time frame for addressing your anger” means. No idea how to do this challenge.
I am learning to try and address my anger at it’s onset. Instead of engaging , I try to silence myself and and focus on Jesus. Unfortunately, when I am driving in traffic this practice seems more difficult, so during these times I am going to shoot for the five second rule.
10 (Minnesota) seconds, long enough to address the situation and calm my mind and breathing. When I get angry, I normally respond with mocking and or sarcasm, I plan to let God rule my emotions from now on and not respond until after I have counted to ten. after all men, we are SUPPOSED to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.
Focus for 5 minutes when I inevitably get upset while at work.
I learned a lesson from my 3 year old son, who takes “one deep breath” when he gets upset (something my wife taught him). If that works for him, why shouldn’t I try it?
So funny enough, a few weeks back when this challenge was put out, I was like “ that’s not for me I don’t get angry anymore“😂! Well I think God has a sense of humor!
Last week I had had enough and I got very angry for the first time in many years, and yup the words started flying! Totally my old self! Where did that guy come from, he’s been dead and born again a long time.
You know all growing up I had anger issues! Big anger issues! Outburst of rage!🤦♂️ Over the course of these last year’s getting closer to God and he becoming more and more real to me , he has been stripping this from me, and of course I thought it was gone. Until last week that is!
I am going to declare addressing anger right away and a time of no more than 10min and giving it to God. I feel that is the right amount of time for me now.
Thank You Vince for posting this challenge again! It’s in these things that I see God moving in my life. The Holy Spirit prompting one another on behalf of one another! It’s so cool!
I can address my anger almost immediately, when it happens, so I intend to address it within five seconds after feeling it, starting with asking God to guide my response.
My goal is to resolve any anger within an hour. Depending on the situation and location (work?) or? I’ll take time to process the contributing factors, talk with God a bit about it and move forward. Holding on to anger is never good and only yields more negative consequences!
6pm when leaving the job site.
I would say that 10-30 minutes could be enough time to remedy the situation. Often times I find myself instantly jumping to say something when I get upset and over time have made myself stop walk away and cool down and think about it before saying something. Often time it’s something I’ve done to add fuel to the fire that doesn’t need to be there.
The mantra of be quick to hear and slow to speak can be adjusted to slow to interpret as well…it is not unusual to see/read something as well as hear it and react/judge. I am reminded of this middle school experience… a counter clerk accused me of Pickering candy and trying to leave the store. In my pocket was my new eyeglass case because I did not want to wear the glasses I had just gotten. She wrenched my arm and the 6 ft something manager threatened to give me a fat lip. A week or so later who stood beside me on a crowded bus but this counter clerk. I can be quite reactionary when hurt or disappointed. My 12 year old self was cool enough to not lose it…my adult self with the Holy Spirit certainly can resurrect that calm.
Life happened, I’m a day behind but I will set aside 2 minutes while at work and will do 5 minutes while I’m home.
10min to 30 min to step back and pause with most things should work!!
5 to 10mins of box breathing to try to get my prideful perspective, which is what usually drives an anger flare-up, contained.
The faster that I can do this, the better. Though each situation may have its own time frame. Though I do try to make it a point to get away and calm down as soon as I can. Doing this allows me to go back to the person I am angry with and ask for forgiveness if need or just simply apologize.
I’m 61, have been a believer since age 12 and have been with my wife 41 years ( 38 of them married) . I’ve always tried applying the scripture you referenced, but sadly…I haven’t always succeeded. 28 years in the Army didn’t help as I brought my rank home with me way to many times and had a zero defects mentality! I’ve definitely struggled with anger issues over the years and have realized it. I look forward to this and will definitely apply sunsetting my issues!!!
Usually my anger is a result of a button pushed in my life. For example, a wound that has not fully healed. I need to spend more time processing my responses. I try to go on a walk or drive, which helps remove myself from the situation and clear my mind. Being consistent in this process is key for me.
Is 30 minutes ok
Looking for advice here because am a overthinker
I don’t think you can put a time restraint on this process. You come before God and let Him change your heart in His timing.
I try to focus on the cross my sins fueled by anger are forgiven and it’s my responsibility to repent and do better not for my sake so much is for the glory of God
The sooner the better but it depends on the situation and the level to which my anger has risen. Regardless, I need to process it once my emotions have subsided and do my best to resolve before the end of the day. I will also try and practice empathy so that I can see the other person’s point of view and gain some insight or understanding as to why they feel or act as they do – then realize why it bothered me to the point of anger.
I will deal with my anger immediately when I recognize my inflammatory words in my speech or thoughts. If I do not deal with it immediately, I know that I will sin. I will deal with this by reciting Eph 4:26-27 and then asking God why the situation makes me angry.
I like how it says that it’s ok to be angry, but just don’t sin.
I determine I want to deal with my anger issues and try to rid myself of negativity in my life.
For me, each scenario or person it’s directed at requires varying amounts of time. I believe the key for me is to immediately remove myself from the situation, but then verbally commit to a very specific time for resolution. I believe writing it down would be even more effective. I’m the type of person that follows through with my words and if I see it in writing I have to deal with the problem and can’t continue to kick the problem down the road. The sooner I return to the conflict, the other person is no longer in limbo and the sooner a resolution can occur. I just need to be mindful not to return too soon, so realistic timeframes are essential.
I have to divert the anger until the proper time to discuss what is bothering me. Sometimes a couple of minutes, sometimes a couple of days. Regroup and readdress is the way I try to control angry moments.
5 minutes. 5 seconds … too short. 5 hours … too long. Set a timer on my phone. Walk away. Use this … “When you __________, I feel __________.
After work where I’m still fairly heated due to the demanding labour often feeding my suppressed rage.
When my anger starts growing I will hit the PAUSE BUTTON for 10 seconds and get my words under control.
It would be great to avoid anger altogether but if that can’t happen, I want to address the issue(s) immediately.
I will address my anger within the first 10 minutes. More importantly, I will be aware of the language I am using.
going out for a long walk to reflect on how I will be positively turning from negative anger toward a positive forward move.
Good point to watch word choices verbally or in head… especially always and never.
My # 1 goal is to try to angry less. The “DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF” thinking. Easier said than done
Like it! 🔥🔥
Immediately or no longer than 24 hours
When I feel my anger starting to “boil”, I will take five minutes to pause and think about why I’m feeling angry… before I speak or act.
Good job Tom! 🔥🔥
I will address my anger within the first 5 minutes.
Keep it going, Billy. 👊🏼👊🏼
my anger generally
last 24 to 48 hours and consists of giving my wife the “silent treatment”. i go about my day in a horrible state and cannot seem to shake it. I’m so happy when it
finally leaves. I want to shorten the time by 99%
Been there, done that. Nice job trying to shorten the delay significantly! ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Ha. There are so many things I’m angry about. Also, there are things I have worked through. Still, there is quite a bit of residue left over. I try and sunset and succeed in giving it over to God. Not to let it grow. I’m some ways I have succeeded and others I have failed. In the failed category I give it to the Father to deal with. Truly. This is a process. I need His help. I would spit in the face of strongholds if I could but instead I learn to continue to take up my cross and defeat them that way…. I could ramble, but here’s to sunsetting. I will continue pressing on. Peace🌺💀’s and🌈’s🌺-WJAMES
Ha. There are so many things I’m angry about. Also, there are things I have worked through. Still, there is quite a bit of residue left over. I try and sunset and succeed in giving it over to God. Not to let it grow. I’m some ways I have succeeded and others I have failed. In the failed category I give it to the Father to deal with. Truly. This is a process. I need His help. I would spit in the face of strongholds if I could but instead I learn to continue to take up my cross and defeat them that way…. I could ramble, but here’s to sunsetting. I will continue pressing on. Peace🌺💀’s and🌈’s🌺-WJAMES …. ASAP to deal with anger when it turns into sin. I don’t mean to be vague on the time… could be a minute or hours. Depending on the day😎 Right guys? Here’s to God using me and us for His purposes ❤️🔥
Here’s to God doing a work in us! 🌟🌟
Ya man 🌺
Within 10 minutes
Yes! Jesse. Good time frame.
5 minutes
There we go, Michael. Keep it going!
7am-7:30. A time I’m normally driving and set aside time for prayer.
Really on time. I’m finally dealing with my anger and you send me the invite Thank you sir!! I will not let more than 2 hours go by without praying and trusting God so i can be free of the anger.
Good job Sam! 👊🏼👊🏼
Wise words! 5 minutes
Pray, while in the moment, especially James 1:19, I must be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. I learned that lesson the hard way. Nothing good comes from getting angry. I also believe we can get angry as Jesus did with the injustice we see in this country but do it in a loving, productive way.
Address it immediately, (objectively) name it, quietly and reflectively sit in it for < 5 minutes, then let it go. It's not my burden to bear.
Super Good! 🔥🔥🔥
Within 1 minute
7-12 through 7-19
I will address any anger within 60 seconds.
Nice Dennis. Proud of you! 👊🏼
Within 5 minutes. The more you dwell in anger, the more it will consume you.
That’s right! 🌟🌟
5 to 15 mins
#boom ⚡️⚡️⚡️
Praying I would be slow to anger and quick to resolve any anger.
There we go!
7-7:10 pm today. Praying about any anger I created or experienced today. Set my alarm to remind me.
Damien, nice strategy! 🤘🏻🤘🏻
Within 1 minute.