A few minutes ago I had an “AHA” moment, and it had nothing to do with sparkling water. I literally woke up with a revelatory thought and it has to do with misunderstanding a verse in Ephesians. The verse actually says:

“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, ESV

But unfortunately, I internalized a twisted version of the command:

“Don’t be angry, lest you sin.”

The only problem with this distortion is that in a fallen, broken world, there is a lot of stuff to be angry about. Even as very young children we encounter things that should make us angry because they are wrong.

Looking back, there were indeed things in my life that I should have been very angry about. With the distortion that I was taught, I learned to suppress the anger rather than express it appropriately.

The effect is that in a situation that should cause anger, rather than stand my ground and challenge the source of anger, I choose to shut down and walk away. In that moment, I function as if I have no right to be angry, even when anger is the appropriate response. Whether I do so physically or not, emotionally, I turn tail and run away.

I am too often Neville Chamberlain when Winston Churchill is required.

The last few months have been revelatory for me and I now have a better understanding of why I gravitated so completely to the distortion of Paul’s command.

I was exposed at an early age to someone who expressed anger in a very inappropriate way. I felt the sting of that anger and had no tools to know how to deal with it. I should have been protected, but I was not.

I play the Neville Chamberlain role because I learned to anticipate the rage and assumed the responsibility to prevent it if I could. I learned to be a people-pleaser, suppressing my own desires in an effort to maintain an illusion of peace. As a young child, that was the only option available to me. But unfortunately, I carried that same people-pleasing tendency well into my adult years where it has not served me well.

People-pleasers may make good employees, but I know from experience that we are relationally challenged. It’s hard to be a full person when you are always worried that you might say or do something that will cause tension. It’s hard to be a full person when you are taking responsibility for things that are outside of your control. It’s overwhelming to do so.

To borrow language from a twelve-step program, I am a recovering people-pleaser and I chose to be different moving forward. I will seek to follow Paul’s actual command and not my distortion of it.

I chose to be angry when it is appropriate to be angry and I also chose to express that anger in a constructive way. I trust that as I read Scripture, pray, and seek counsel, that I will learn new skills to do this.

One last thought. In v. 27, quoted above, Paul lets us know the consequence of not dealing with anger appropriately, it gives the devil a foothold in our lives.

Anger expressed inappropriately, or anger suppressed will lead us away from following the two great commands to love God and love our neighbor.

One of the most often memorized verses in Scripture is Matthew 6:33 which reads:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Matthew 6:33 (ESV)

This comes at the end of a section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus it talking about trusting that God will meet the believer’s needs. Jesus is saying that rather than worrying about food and clothing, we should seek God’s rule in ourselves and others and seek to pursue his righteousness.

Due to the fact that Jesus felt the need to highlight this concept in his sermon, I am confident that I am not the only one who needs to be frequently reminded about the priority that I should have.

The verb “seek” is a command. Jesus is not making this optional for the believer. And we are not only to seek but to seek first, before anything else. Jesus’ reign and sovereignty on earth should be my first priority. But truthfully, I often function in a way where Jesus’ kingdom is not my first priority.

I often fall into the trap of pursuing what I think will provide for my physical and emotional needs. This, despite Jesus telling me that I don’t need to worry about these things.

When I fail in prioritizing Jesus’ reign, I find that I focus on the wrong things, and this misplaced focus strains my relationships, especially with those closest to me. My stress level goes up, and I put stress on those around me.

Falling into this trap does damage to those around me and also does damage to me.

There is a part of me that feels that I should be able to stay out of the trap of misplaced priorities. After all, I’ve been a believer for a long time now. But alas, I frequently do indeed get this wrong.

But the feeling of “I should be farther along in this” is an error in itself. The whole point of the gospel is that my heart is sure to go wrong without the guidance of the Holy Spirit and his support in pursuing the right path.

The only way to recover from misplaced priorities is to repent and seek forgiveness for my selfish focus while trusting that God can heal the damage that I do to others when I fail.

I have written more than a few posts which catalog how much of the church has become unhelpful to those who are pursuing true spiritual growth. While it is easy to point to things that are wrong in the church, I have struggled to say what the church should look like in 2021.

To better answer the question of what the church should look like, I have decided to pursue a reading program of works that might help me answer this question.

Recently, I saw a reference to a book by Richard F. Lovelace that I had read many years ago and decided to read again. That book is Dynamics of Spiritual Life.

In the opening chapter, I ran across a paragraph which summarized some of the thoughts of Jonathan Edwards with regard to true revival and what the church should be about.

I share the paragraph below for two reasons.

First, it shows that the problems being experienced in the church are not new. Edwards struggled with them in the early part of the 18th Century.

Secondly, it is a good comparison of the traits of false spirituality with those of a true work of the Holy Spirit.

“Edwards was especially concerned to make clear that fallen human nature is fertile ground for a fleshly religiosity which is impressively “spiritual” but ultimately rooted in self-love. High emotional experiences, effusive religious talk, and even praising God and experiencing love for God and man can be self-centered and self-motivated. In contrast to this, experiences of renewal which are genuinely from the Holy Spirit are God-centered in character, based on worship, an appreciation of God’s worth and grandeur divorced from self-interest. Such experiences create humility in the convert rather than prided and issue in the creation of a new spirit of meekness, gentleness, forgiveness and mercy. They leave the believer hungering and thirsting after righteousness instead of satisfied with self-congratulation. Most important, their end result is the performance of works of mercy and justice.”

Richard F. Lovelace in Dynamics of Spiritual Life

When I attend church on Sunday, I should leave the worship service more focused on God, who is to be the tangible subject of the preaching, rather than being impressed with the skill of the preacher and how he held my attention.

This is not to say that there should not be skill displayed in preaching, but the focus should never, ever be on the preacher.

If I remember the cool hairstyle, the trendy fashion, the slick cultural references, the touching illustrations, or the easy manner of the preacher, but don’t come out with a sense of my own need of Christ and an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the grace that has been given to me, then I wasted the entire morning.

Focus on the “worship experience” can reinforce my own self-centeredness rather than challenge it. Making stars out of the worship leaders or preachers can do damage to their souls because such false worship will likely promote pride in them.

There is much more that can be learned from the paragraph quoted above, but I will leave it to you to gather your own conclusions. Feel free to share them in the comment section below this post. (For those of you who get this by email, click on the link in the title to go to the post on the web, and then you will be able to comment).