Resources
Thank you to so many of you who have been reading. My hope is that a snippet a day may grow our conversation around a weekly topic. It won’t always be particularly relevant to you, but I mean to invite each person with a particular need into more focused consideration. Yesterday I included several typos. Did you catch them? What did you do with that? Mary Lu will die when she sees them. I haven’t heard from her yet (she must not be reading them!) In her family, speaking or writing incorrectly equaled non-intelligence. My family was similar for the most part, only my mom couldn’t spell. I used “there” instead of “their” in the Loop this week and it got by Steve! Some people will lose the whole article because grammar goes to their core… and by the way, I love hearing it, I’m just not genetically capable of changing. I do care and we will always try… I’m just a lot to fix for these people!
If you are concerned that no one else understands why things really are “the world” to you… If people around you don’t meet your expectations and you find that separates you from the ability to love them in their struggle (almost wrote ‘there’ just to be mean)… Again, I love to be corrected, because it means someone gives a blank! Cultural values are important…but when it comes to God and others, having money to pay the bills or not shouldn’t make you hate God or people. Eating or overeating is not the measure of a human’s value.
Below you will find links to resources that I have found helpful. Let me know if they bring comfort to your angry soul and/or forgiveness to your heart?
Three steps to growing in your ability to process anger (adapted from Dr. Tim Keller):
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Understand your anger. (Ask someone else if you are out of balance… someone honest.)
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Channel your emotional drive to the real source of the problem. (Put your heart and enthusiasm into the problem of your love choices. Fix the real problem.)
- Forgive – forgive everybody, everything…but begin with forgiving yourself. (Only a person feeding deeply on Jesus can even begin to face this step. Meet him alone.)
Resources: Either of the following would be an effective tool to work through with a friend.
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Tim Keller sermons on Anger and Forgiveness
- Peacemaker Ministries (hispeace.org) has a great resource about identifying the source here and other helpful articles here.