Color, scene two

This week's message is about anger ( as is the daily meditation guide downloadable from the Crosspointe website, message section, as well as along side the podcast via iTunes).

For Jesus, many of the themes in His sermon on the hill have similar themes. Anger, judgment, anxiety. They all touch on a life lived in fear of others, vs the Kingdom life that loves others with the same "others-centeredness" He offers.

Be mindful that judgment, anxiety and more are yet to come as you begin to do the work as a group of trying to find more ways of letting love win out.

You may also want to have fun by starting with this classic 80's style Anger-Management therapy:

Thaw

• What's something you feel God has been teaching you in recent weeks?

Leader note: this isn't specifically tied to the message on Sunday, but is a great question to ask often in general because it a) leads to good discussion about what God is doing and b) builds a value in the groups mind that they should be looking for what God is doing in their life, since the question comes up so often. Remember, questions reveal and reinforce values!

• What do you feel like God is challenging you to do that this group needs to know about for the sake of encouragement, challenge, prayer and accountability?

• What's something from Sunday's message that really stuck with you?
• What's do you feel like God has been telling you through that message, and through the daily devotional guide?

Read

• Matthew 5:17-26
• Thoughts?

Leader note: Some key parts of Jesus' teaching need some background. First, the phrase "angry without his brother without" cause didn't originally have the "without cause" part. This was later added as a way of trying to make sense of a seemingly unbearably strict teaching by Jesus. But that creates confusion about when it's okay to hold someone in contempt. It creates an argument about "just cause". Jesus is speaking to something deeper. Second, "Raca" is an Aramaic term that Matthew doesn't translate. He must assume his readers know the term. It seems to best translate to "empty head", but is also thought to be the guttural sound of clearing the throat before you spit, as in spit in the face of whom you are angry. Third, not that it's brothers in the first two cases, while it suddenly broadens to "you fool" being spoken to anyone. Jesus isn't just trying to mend family issues. He's forbidding this attitude toward anyone. How often do we tear down people from afar, as they play a televised sport, speak politically in a press conference, or cut us off in traffic? We don't know them, yet we vent our anger on them.

• What key words and thoughts stand out to you?
• What from the message is most brought to mind?

• Why would Jesus start with such an intense topic as anger, seeing how He'd just been clear that He was inviting people from different places in their faith and maturity to follow Him?

Read

• Mark 3:1-6
• Thoughts
• How would you describe what Jesus does with His anger?
• Does His frustration create ugliness for anyone, and what can we learn from Him about the role anger can play?

Read

• Galatians 5:22-23
• Thoughts?
• How are these words contrary to living with the "low boil" of anger, disappointment and contempt?
• Agree or Disagree: sin can be defined as when a value, like one of these 9 words in Galatians 5, is ignored because of something that angers, disappoints or upsets me. Explain your answer.

Leader note: see if you can get your group to discover that, for His teaching that the whole of God's Law and will is summed in loving Him and others (Matt 22:35-40), withheld love is sin. Help the group get that anger is too often used as a self-preserving, self-preferring, self-establishing reality. It's the love of self. And those things have a way of putting others in subjection to you, which isn't self-sacrificial love, of loving others the way you love yourself. Anger towards others is most often a refusal to love like Jesus.

Discuss

• What exercises from the message do you remember sounding like a something you should employ?

Leader note: counting to 6 or 7 is all the brain needs often times to reset itself and begin thinking with higher reasoning again, after being highjacked by the "fight or flight" reaction of the lower brain that comes on the heals of being angry, scared, etc... Praying this prayer:

"God, I am seeing and hearing this person as an obstacle, help me see and hear them as the object of your love"

is a great way to get your brain turned back on, as well as asking for Gods help to love like Him, versus letting anger get a selfish foothold.

• How can this group help you with pausing, praying, forgiving and asking for forgiveness, so as to do the difficult work of destroying all the barriers that exist between you and others?
• What are we up against in this culture that operates contrary to Jesus' teaching on anger?
• What changes of thought and behavior need to happen immediately if we're to have a chance of growing into the kind of love and peace that Jesus is leading us into?
• What are things that we need to remain angry about? What's the difference between this and other issues that we need to let go?

Meditation

• Spend 5-10 minutes reflecting on the following proverbs ( you may want to write your thoughts during this time), and then end your group time in prayer, confession and openness to the steps God wants each member to take with the group, and beyond.

“Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.” (Proverbs 14:29)

“He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city.” (Proverbs 16:32)

“A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.” (Proverbs 29:11)

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” (Proverbs 29:15)

“A hot-tempered man stirs up dissension, but a patient man calms a quarrel.” (Proverbs 29:18)