Gratitude for the Angry

Porch, how are we doing tonight? Are we doing okay? Hey, we have one more Tuesday here, and we are going to go all the way forward. I'm so excited you're here. It's Thanksgiving Tuesday, which feels like the best kind of Tuesday for me. Thanks for choosing to make time in your schedule amidst a busy week to join us here tonight, not just those of you here in the room but everybody who's tuning in online.

It has been an amazing year. I mean, we have been together for 45 Tuesdays, this being the forty-fifth. The forty-sixth will be next week. This is our last official Porch. So, whether it has been here in the room or it has been you online tuning in with us, whether tonight or at some point in the future and you're seeing this, just know we fully believe God has been doing something really special in the lives of young adults just like yourself, and we think he is far from finished. Special shout-out to Porch.Live Springfield, Dayton, and Fresno.

Well, when the time came for me to eventually transition out of college ministry, which is what I was doing before I officially moved into young adult ministry, Brooke and I were wholeheartedly available to wherever God wanted to lead us. We were praying and processing. We knew wherever he called, whatever assignment he had to give, we would get up and we would go.

We certainly had opinions on where that might be, so we prayed a lot, because we thought, "Man! It would be amazing to go somewhere exciting, like L.A. or D.C.; or somewhere beautiful, like San Diego or the Carolinas; or somewhere full of culture, like Nashville or Tennessee." When the call came, when we finally got our commission from the Lord on where we were supposed to go, wouldn't you know it, he took us to Houston.

I'm not a Houston hater at all. In fact, I've grown to love Houston, but when we got the call to go, I was anything but thrilled about it because I'm not a Houston sports fan. I don't necessarily love the humidity. Maybe you do, but I certainly don't. I knew down south of here they have mosquitoes the size of hawks. So, it was a running joke (but there's always some truth in every joke) that I felt like Jonah going to Nineveh. I was being called by God to go someplace I didn't want to go.

All of my fears were confirmed. I showed up, and in the first couple of years of time we lived through what was one of the hottest summers in recorded Houston history. Not what I was wanting. We also experienced not just one hurricane, though that is enough of a natural disaster, but also a snowstorm in our first year. I got so comfortable carrying a bug zapper on my hip. It became my new form of concealed carry. I was absolutely locked in to living in this city, though I did not want to be there.

I remember looking at my wife, after having lived through some serious suffering, and just telling her, "This feels like a nightmare." Yet everything changed for us toward the last year of our time there. The reason is we had really grown to love the city. We had met some of the best people we'd ever met. We had eaten some of the best food we had ever had. We met some of our best friends there.

Then, what we learned was that God was moving in a way that was completely unexpected to us over the course of our time there in Houston in ways we didn't anticipate nor were we prepared for. He was moving. What it did in our hearts is it shifted everything. I remember we were driving home within one of the last few nights we had there. It was actually around this time of year that many years ago. I remember looking at Brooke and being like, "Are we sure we want to leave? This is the land of the living," which was a crazy change in attitude.

I had gone from calling it a nightmare one minute to literally, within just three years' time, saying it was the land of the living. What in God's name could possibly produce that sort of shift to bring me to a spot where it was bleak in the beginning, but it was bright at the end; where at the outset, at the very beginning of our time, those first few chapters were so very difficult, but those final few chapters were so very beautiful?

I'll tell you how. God moved me from worrying about everything that stood to threaten my happiness, and instead, he caused me to remember just how good he was and how much I had to be grateful for. He got my eyes off the past and got my eyes on him. What happened as a result of that was everything changed.

Now, why do I tell you that? Because everybody has been and everybody will, at some point, live through a similar set of circumstances, those that are difficult. When I got there, I was bitter about the move. I felt some frustration around my circumstances. I was even angry about some of the resistance I was facing. Some of you in this room right now, tuning in with us online tonight, know that because you're feeling that where you are.

Like, you're going into Thanksgiving this week, and you're thinking to yourself, "Oh my gosh. Yeah, I'm frustrated. I can't wait to see that family member who still has not apologized for that thing they said to me." Or you feel so embittered. You're so embittered because you keep looking at yourself, and you see a lack of company around you despite the fact that you've put yourself out there. You've tried to make friends yet, even still, you feel so lonely.

Some of you are jealous. You're jealous of another person's relationship. You're looking out at the world, and you've spotted some situations you'd like to be a part of, yet what you realize is, "Man, they're not as mature as I am. They're not as ready for marriage as I am, yet they're the ones with the relationship and not me." Others of you are irritated because, for the love of God, would your roommate just put their dishes in the sink? You just feel that deeply inside.

Others of you feel aggravated because you're working in a job where people show up late, coast through the finish line, and don't contribute to projects, yet they always take credit that is not theirs to take. I don't know what it is for you, but the reality is we all experience these intensely negative emotions. While on the surface they all differ in nature, deep down they're all rooted in the same core emotion, which is the emotion I want to talk to you about tonight. They're rooted in anger.

As I say that, I know some of you are really repulsed, because you're thinking, "I'm not an angry kind of person." I'm not saying you're an angry person, but I am saying you experience anger, because everybody does. Anger is a basic human emotion. It's like sadness or disgust or surprise or happiness or fear. It's one of those core emotions we experience as human beings that's not intrinsically wrong or sinful. It's okay. It's not bad to feel angry. It's actually okay. It's the "fight" reaction to the fight, flight, or freeze response of our sympathetic nervous system.

Anger as an emotion is not the issue. It's how you express or process your anger that's the issue, which is what I want to talk with you about tonight. I want to help you understand how you're supposed to express this powerful emotion, this emotion that is a genuine motivator behind so many of the actions we take in life. So powerful is anger that it can drive you to tailgate behind that person who cut you off in traffic, as if you have some kind of point to prove. Some of you are smiling because you know you did that, maybe even coming here tonight. You can confess and repent later.

It's the same motivation behind that as it is the desire to get out there and end injustice in the world and bring an end to modern-day slavery. It's the same primary driver behind both of those things, but how you express it determines whether it is evil or not. So, how then are we supposed to process it rightly? That's what I want to talk to you about. If you have a Bible, we're going to be looking at chapter 37 in the book of Psalms.

We've been journeying through a series called 20/20. Tonight, it's not just our last official Porch of the year; it's also our last official evening in this series. This series was really strategic. If you want a little behind-the-scenes look at how we do this, every year, as a team, we get away, and we commit an entire day to praying and fasting and asking God, "God, this is your ministry. What do you want us to teach?" We receive from that day some sense of what the Spirit is leading in, and then we map out the series calendar for the year.

So, over the course of this year, everything we've taught has been by way of the Spirit's prompting. As we got toward the end of this year, we had something else in mind, but we felt the Spirit really leading us to engage with SAD season. If you don't know what SAD season is, it's seasonal affective disorder. It's that time of the year where the winter blues begin to play. You walk outside of your office, and the sun has already set, and thus you feel so despondent and down inside and, potentially, a little bit more irritable or sluggish even.

That's the way this season often works within the lives of people. It can put us in an emotional and mental place that is irregular from our normal reality. Knowing that's the case, we felt like God was saying, "Hey, jump into this issue with me. I want to help people look through my Word about what I'm saying for their feelings."

So, we've been journeying through it over the last several weeks. Tonight is the last one. Wouldn't you know it, we're going out with a bang. We're talking about anger on Thanksgiving week of all weeks, which just feels crazy, because that doesn't feel like it really lines up, yet it actually lines up perfectly. I'm going to explain that to you in just a moment.

Before we do so, we have to do in this series here tonight what we've done all throughout this series, which is we need to understand the problem before we can catch God's perspective. So, when it comes to anger, what is the problem of it? As we identify the truth therein, we'll be able to see what God has to say about it.

So, what do we need to know? First and foremost, you have to know what we've already said. You need to know anger is not inherently wrong. It's not intrinsically evil. The Bible would support this. Just some Scripture to give you an idea. Ephesians 4:26 says, "Be angry and do not sin…" See it? Gosh, that's such a great verse for this idea. The emotion is not wrong, but the expression can be. "…do not let the sun go down on your anger…"

Proverbs 14:29: "Whoever is slow to anger…" It doesn't say, "Whoever never angers." No. It says, "Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly." Psalm 103:8 says, "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." We know that even Jesus himself was angry at different points in time. And he was perfect, which tells us exactly what we've been saying. Anger is not intrinsically evil, which begs the question…When is anger evil?

Well, you need to understand something definitionally about anger. Definitionally, something that is true of anger is anger is the natural response to a perceived threat to one's happiness. Most often…not always, but most often…what determines whether anger is righteous or unrighteous is whose happiness is threatened. Let me give you a little bit of a breakdown. Two different categories.

Righteous anger is when someone else's happiness is being threatened. We see this as the kind of anger Jesus was imbued with. When you read in the gospel of Mark, it says he was angry or indignant to his disciples because they kept the little children from coming to him. In the gospel of John, you see that he started flipping tables and driving out money changers with a whip because they had turned the Lord's house of prayer into a den of robbers. That made him angry as well. He was angry not on his own behalf but on behalf of other people. See how that works? That's righteous anger.

I love the way John Stott says it when he's talking about Jesus' anger. He says, "[Jesus'] anger is neither mysterious nor irrational. It is never unpredictable, but always predictable, because it is provoked by evil and evil alone. The wrath of God…is his steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in all its forms and manifestations." Do you see that? God feels anger himself, yet his antagonism is always toward the same thing, and only that thing. It's always directed at evil.

That is so encouraging, isn't it? God's design for his world was not one where people would be abused and slandered and manipulated and attacked and hurt even. That was never a part of his design. So, we know evil's days are numbered. Ultimately, Jesus has already dealt the initial blow. He has taken death out by dying himself, yet he's going to come back and finish the job. That's righteous anger.

Now, unrighteous anger is when my happiness is being threatened. Now, I want to be really clear. Some of you have suffered some serious injustices through abuse or assault at the hands of another person, and you have every right to be angry. That's not what I'm talking about here. You need to know that makes God very angry, and he promises in his Word that he will deal with the wicked. That's not what we're talking about here.

What we're talking about here is this idea that most people's anger orbits not around evil; it orbits around ego. It's why people get defensive whenever someone says something they don't like or they disagree with. It's why we grow hateful because we didn't get the kind of outcome we wanted or we feel bitter because someone went against us and never apologized for it, and now we feel this resentment boiling up and building inside. Unrighteous anger always comes to its own defense.

I remember seeing this when I was in grade school and high school, growing up. You would always see two guys get into a fight with one another because one of them encroached on the other one's territory, hurt that other guy's pride. They would always do the same thing. They would bow up in front of each other, and they would lock eyes with one another. They'd begin to stare each other down. Then, if it was really serious, one of them would take his shirt off, which was always kind of strange, yet you knew, "Oh my gosh! It's really about to go down. He just took his shirt off, man."

We were joking earlier that would not work today. You know, it would be like, "Please put your clothes back on. I'm not intimidated in the slightest. Please don't do that any longer." But at that time, it was like, "Man, this is crazy. They're really upset. They're really angry." Why? Because someone had threatened their happiness…happiness in their reputation, happiness in their pride, happiness in their comfort. Because no one else was going to do anything about it, they had to do something about it. That's unrighteous anger.

We don't do this, do we? Of course we do! Now, you may not puff up and bow up on somebody, but you do possibly mutter under your breath, or you do nurse a grudge. Some of you indulge revenge fantasies, because you might not be able to get back at them, but you know how you would get back at them, and you love to go to that dark place.

Maybe that's not the case. Maybe you just sulk. Like, you just find, "You know what? I'm not going to be able to express this verbally so I'm going to just embody this physically, and I'm going to feel really down and despondent in my own spirit." I don't know what it is for you, but here's the thing: anger can be dangerous if not expressed effectively.

It's fascinating. Anger is an emotional response to some threat against your happiness. The irony is anger itself can be the threat to your happiness. The American Psychological Association says ineffectively processing anger can lead to hypertension, high blood pressure, depression, and anxiety as well as a suite of other mental health disruptions. Meaning, it literally can impair your happiness.

So, what are we supposed to do about that? Well, Psychology Today said this in an article on the topic of anger, and I thought it was so good I just wanted to read it to you. They essentially said, "Unleashing your anger does not produce the sense of catharsis that people crave." Which just tells us that venting is a myth. Venting is actually not helping you whatsoever. Neither is gossiping. It's only hurting you.

"It does not produce the sense of catharsis that people crave. It tends to feed on itself instead. The best path forward isn't to unleash your anger; it's to understand your anger, its roots, its triggers, its consequences, and then cultivate the ability to manage it." I love that. I love that it says, "Cultivate the ability to manage it."

It's like a farmer who cultivates a field. That's what you're supposed to do with all of those negative feelings inside, those feelings rooted in the core emotion of anger. You're supposed to till up the soil, pull all of the weeds, remove all of the rocks, lay down some seed, and carefully water it so that you grow something good in its place.

That's everything David wants to talk to us about in Psalm 37. He wants to teach you, "Hey, instead of growing your anger, let's grow something better instead," because although your problem may be anger, your perspective…God's perspective…could be gratitude. It could be gratitude.

You see, what we need to know as we think about gratitude in God is that though anger is a response to some threat to our happiness, what if we put our happiness someplace it cannot be threatened? What if we put it in God who can never be encroached against, who never at all worries in the face of evil? That's what David is prompting us toward.

He wants us to step into a kind of relationship with God where we remember how good he is, even in the face of how dark the world may become and how troubling the times may get. He tells us as we get into Psalm 37, very specifically, how to do it. He wants to give us four disciplines for growing gratitude.

The first one we see in verse 1. "Fret not yourself because of evildoers; be not envious of wrongdoers! For they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the green herb." We need to stop and talk, because what we need to know is what this word fret actually means. We're going to get into this, and what you're going to see is all of the disciplines very quickly come, yet before any of them do, David just gives one command. He says, "Hey, do not fret yourself."

We need to ask ourselves then…What does it mean to fret? Because we don't actually use that kind of language. Nobody is looking at their friend at the end of a hard day and saying, "Do not fret, my friend." No one says that. So, what does David actually mean? He's saying, "Hey, be on guard against anger."

You see, it's interesting. The Hebrew primitive root to fret is the idea of to glow or to warm. When you take that idea and morph it into a verb, it means to get heated. Meaning, to get angry, to feel something boiling up inside, burning within, kindling in your soul against whatever someone may have said or done. We see this all throughout the Scripture. We don't have time to unpack it, but you can go and see.

It happens in Potiphar. He looks, and his anger is kindled against Joseph. You see Samson. After he kills 30 men from Ashkelon, he returns home in hot anger. You can see this idea all throughout the Scripture, because the thought behind anger is it's not just a flip of the switch. Yes, of course, there's an instigator, something that catalyzes it into reality, but it doesn't stay there. It grows. It's like a fire. It spreads, and if not stopped, it burns the whole forest of your life down.

So, we have to know, then, how to keep it from growing. Well, he's going to tell us. You need to grow gratitude. That's what he says in verse 3, and he gives us the first discipline. He says, "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness." He tells us to trust the Lord, which just feels like good old Christian advice, doesn't it? "Just trust in God."

"How the heck am I supposed to do that? Has anyone ever considered that reality? Like, I read the Scripture, and it's like, 'Trust in the Lord,' and I'm like, 'Okay. I know I'm supposed to, but I'd like to grow in my capacity to do so. Can someone help me know how to trust in God?'" Well, how do you trust in anybody? You remember what made them trustworthy to begin with.

That's the thing here. You remember. That's the first discipline. If you want to grow your gratitude, then you need to learn the discipline of remembrance. I mean it when I say discipline. This isn't just something you subconsciously wander your way into; it's something you should very meticulously apply to your life. We should learn to discipline ourselves in remembrance, because remembrance is what leads to trust.

Whenever I want Brooke to trust me, whenever she needs me to show up on time or I need her to trust that I'll get that thing done or I need her to trust that I'm going to call those people, I don't appeal to her trust by saying, "But, baby, you know I'm such a good man." I don't do that. That's not going to get me anywhere. I don't look at her and say, "But you know that I mean well." That doesn't work either.

What do I say? "Hey, you can trust me. Remember when I showed up all those times before. Remember when I called all those times before. Remember when I did whatever it was you wanted all those times before." I call back times of previous trustworthiness so she can know she can trust me today.

Here's the reality. I can look at her and be like, "Hey, remember when?" and she can look at me and say, "But remember when you didn't?" The truth of the matter is, though, we cannot do that with God. There was never a moment in our relationship or over the course of all time where God did not keep his word, did not honor his promise, or did not come through in the clutch.

When Abraham went to sacrifice his son, God provided an alternative instead. When God's people cried out from slavery in Egypt, he heard them and delivered them. When Ruth had no kinsman redeemer or hope to speak of, God sent Boaz to give her a family. When David stood toe-to-toe with Goliath, the God of Israel's armies fought for him. When Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, God sent fire from heaven. When Jehoshaphat saw armies invading all around, God heard his prayer and vanquished his enemies.

Here's the thing: when we were dead in our sins, Christ, our rescuer, came running. Why? Because God is trustworthy. He's trustworthy. We can believe he will keep his promises. He will honor his word. He never fails a commitment. When he commits to deliver us out of our sin and bring us back to himself, we can believe he's going to do it. He's going to do it. But we have to cultivate remembrance.

We have really good reason to trust God biblically. If that wasn't enough reason, then just go read the rest of the book, because you'll see it again and again and again. Not only do you have good reason to trust him biblically; you have good reason to trust him personally, and it serves us to remember it. According to one study, if you spend five minutes a day remembering what you have to be grateful for, that can increase your long-term well-being by upwards of 10 percent or more. Just five minutes thinking about what you have to be grateful for, remembering God's goodness in the past.

So, what reasons do you have to trust God? I don't know what they are for you, but I know what they are in my own life, because over the course of my life, I have seen God be so very faithful to me. There are three things that stand out as being especially significant. I can look back, and I can trust God because of my salvation. Like, I wasn't looking to get saved at Taco Bell at 11:00 p.m., sitting across the table from a friend in a corner booth, yet that's exactly what God intended to do that evening.

I didn't go there looking for that. I don't know what I went there looking for to begin with. It was Taco Bell. Yet God knew I needed to find him in that place. So, I showed up, and I sat across the table from a buddy, and he just started unpacking for me not just "Here are some good rules of Christian living to abide by." He started telling me about the character and the nature of God and his signature across creation.

As I heard all of it, my curiosity was replaced with desire. I wanted what he had. Have you ever been in that place where you were like, "I want what you want. I want what you've got. I want him"? That's where I was at. The beauty of it was it didn't come out of me; it came from God. He wanted me first, and then I wanted him in response.

The second reason I have good cause to trust in God is I can look at my marriage. I know in my marriage I was way more immature than I thought when we first said, "I do." As a result, we dealt with some really tough times, many of which were my own fault. Yet, I can confidently stand before you and say Brooke and I have never been happier in our marriage, and it's because God is faithful, not because we figured it out. God was faithful when we messed up. When I continually screwed up, he didn't. He persisted in his kindness toward me and his patience as well.

The third reason is my job. I all but gave up on ministry at one point. Like, a dream I had for so long, etched in the journals from my days in college, was snatched away from me. Yet, though that was my dream, God replaced it with a better dream. He replaced it with this, with you. Because he did, I have good cause to trust him. I have great reason, because I stand here in the joy of my life ministering to young adults in Dallas, Texas, and all across the nation.

He has given you really good reason to trust him. So what reasons has he given you? Even if you're here and you don't know Jesus…you have no relationship with God…whatever good you have in your life, it's from him. He's the giver of every good and perfect gift. It didn't come as a result of anything other than him. So, even though you may not have a relationship with him, you can recognize him tonight. You can see it as true from he who only and always gives good.

Psalm 103:1-2 says, "Praise the Lord, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name." I love that. Not "all my outmost being." A lot of people do that, don't they? They praise externally, but they don't praise internally. He's like, "Not me. I'm going to praise you with my inmost being." "Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits…"

So, friend, let me ask you… What benefits of his have you forgotten? If you feel like your trust in God is struggling and your gratitude to God is failing, what benefits of his have you forgotten? Have you forgotten the fact that he has given you a new name? Do you look back at your past and think those are the things that define you? Those are not the things that define you. The thing that defines you is the fact that he has called you son or daughter if you place your faith in him.

Are you sitting here tonight and you've forgotten that he has given you a bright future, one where he has prepared good works in advance for you to walk into? Are you here and you've forgotten he has given you a really big family? You have brothers and sisters all across this room. I don't care what kind of home you came from. He has given you a big family full of brothers, sisters, spiritual fathers, and spiritual mothers.

He has gone and prepared a place for you in his house. Have you forgotten that he has given you unconditional love, no matter how big a mess you've made of your life, how big a mistake you feel like you are, or how deep the stain of your sin actually goes? Christ loved you when you were already at your worst. Forget not his benefits, because it's in his benefits that we remember. We have good cause for gratitude.

That's the first one. Let's keep going. Verse 4: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." I love this. Notice it doesn't say, "Get the desires of your heart and you'll delight in the Lord." Like, "Just get that job or that bonus or that boyfriend, and then what you'll feel is a deep sense of delight in God." That's not what he's saying. What he's saying instead is that when you get God, you get everything.

That is important for us to know, because if we want to grow our gratitude, the second discipline we have to learn is the discipline of presence. What do I mean when I say presence? Well, what does it mean to be in someone's presence? It means you're near to them. You're encountering the expression of their personality. You're engaging with them face to face. It means you're close to them. That's what we're talking about here.

Dating gurus galore all herald the importance of being present in a relationship because it creates an environment where your significant other understands just how much they matter to you. When you're willing to block out all other distractions and focus your attention, they understand that they matter, that they're important, because nothing says, "I love you" like silencing your phone, looking in their eyes, and listening with your face. That's ultimately what's going to convince someone that you care about them. It's that you're present with them.

As just one example, some of you really understand this because you honestly thought about skipping tonight so you could watch the season finale of Dancing with the Stars. (What would you do without recording it?) The reason you thought about skipping is because you are just so smitten with Robert Irwin.

Notice the laughter in the room was all female, not because any of them are animal conservationists but because they think he's cute, they like the way his hips move, and ultimately, they just want to see how this chapter in his life is going to conclude. You've spent so much time with him, and thus you care about him. You have been present for all of his highs and lows.

That's David's point. We need to practice presence with God. That's the secret to loving him more. But here's the thing. When we don't do it… That's why so many Christians are full of bored belief and casual kinds of living. Thus, they fall prey to other desires instead. Do you hear me out there, Christian? If you're settling for less than the life God has come to give you…

If you're just stamping the Christian membership card, submitting your monthly dues, attending church twice a month, cashing in 2 percent of your tithe, and occasionally coming to Bible study because you feel guilty that you haven't been in several weeks… When you do that, you're not setting yourself up for the kind of life Christ has come to give, because he didn't come to give you that. He came to give you so much more.

Do you think he came from heaven to earth, lived perfectly, endured every temptation you do, died the most miserable of deaths, yet rose forth in victory over it all just so you could feel "meh" about all of this? No. It's deeper, richer, bigger, and more beautiful than so many of us experience. When we settle for less, what happens is we fall prey to other desires.

That's what happened to us from the beginning. Genesis 3:6 says, "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate." You see, if you delight in God, you'll desire God, but if you don't delight in God, you're going to desire something else.

So, what are you desiring after? The reason you do is because you think that's going to make you happy. But here's the thing and how it all ties back to anger, because anger is a response to someone threatening your happiness. If you don't desire him, you're threatening yourself. You're choosing to put your own happiness on the chopping block. What you'll feel is not anger at the world; you'll feel anger at yourself. Some of you know this so very well.

Some of you here delight in love. Oh, the concept of it! So, you just desire a boyfriend or a girlfriend. You're willing to do things you absolutely and utterly regret, because that's what's required to be with whomever it is you've chosen to spend your time with. Some of you delight in success, so much so that you have a high-powered job, but you hate yourself because you have sold your soul in order to achieve it.

Others of you delight in a particular outcome. You have a plan for your life, so you desire control, but not a single one of us has absolute control of anything. Because you don't, you're stressed, anxious, and not as happy as you could be in God. That's the thing. I need you to hear me. Delight in God is the key to a happy life. That's not some prosperity nonsense I'm selling up here. That's the truth. There is no joy like the joy of the Lord.

Psalm 16:11 (I'm going to rattle these at you) says, "You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." Psalm 63:3: "Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you." Psalm 84:2: "My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God."

Then Psalm 73, a personal favorite, says, "Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. For behold, those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God…" It's good to be near God, so learn the discipline of presence.

We have to keep going. Look at verse 5. "Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday." For the sake of time, we're not going to read all the way through this psalm. It's too big to do so. But we are going to look at this first section.

What you need to know (it's articulated in the first section, but it is absolutely explained if you study all of it) is that David is not just angry generally; he is angry specifically, and he is advising those who might feel angry as well, because they are not just generally upset; they are upset at the prosperity of the wicked. Those who ultimately do not deserve the good they have yet succeed anyway… That can be really infuriating. So, David is writing to that type of person.

Yet, in the midst of that, when it feels like you have every good reason to be angry, he says, "Commit your way to God." Even when you feel like you have a good reason not to, to actually grow angry and retaliate against someone else, don't do it. Instead, hold fast to the course at hand, because in the face of growing anger, you grow gratitude through the discipline of innocence, which is actually a really incredible way of growing your gratitude.

If you think about it, what robs us of gratitude? Guilt. Guilt robs you of gratitude. You're going to experience a lot of this over the course of the holiday season, because Hallmark has absolutely formulized this within their movies. They know they can spin the tale of a young businesswoman who makes a journey to some small town, begrudgingly, yet falls in love with the locals as well as the hometown hero.

Right when everything seems amazing, the article she wrote gets published and everybody is upset or the company closes down the mill or her ex-fiancé shows up and causes trouble. In the midst of all that, all of her gratefulness is replaced by "regretfulness." Her gratitude is zapped dry because she's guilty. So don't be guilty. Instead, be innocent. That's why we should pursue it, because it's ultimately going to save us from that great enemy of gratitude.

So, what does innocence look like? Well, innocence looks like kids. It looks like children. It's amazing. There was a study done recently. They basically were trying to prove how overstimulated children are, so they released a group of kids into a room that had nothing but tables and chairs. At first, the kids looked absolutely clueless as to what to do because they were overstimulated and didn't know how to engage with a situation where there was nothing, no fodder for their entertainment.

What you saw was by the end of that study, their imaginations were running wild because their innocence was taking over. They were building forts and leading battleships and all sorts of crazy things. That's what innocence looks like. It's humility and purity. Jesus loved kids for this reason. He talks about it in Matthew 18. It says, "At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, 'Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?'"

Do you know what he did? He called a child and put him or her in front of them, and he said, "That's what the greatest in the kingdom of heaven looks like." Why? First, because they have the air of humility. They're dependent on someone else to take care of them. All of us are that way when it comes to our salvation. Also, they're innocent. There's a purity about them. They enjoy the world free of unadulterated evil. They don't think about the things we think about. Because they do, it should be good instruction to us that we should pursue innocence.

I've said this in here before, but it feels good to do good, doesn't it? Like, don't you feel accomplished whenever you sit down and watch an episode and then choose to go to bed as opposed to letting Netflix just bathe over you until 1:00 in the morning? That feels accomplished.

Some of you feel very successful and good about your life decisions when you wake up with your alarm as opposed to hitting snooze and getting eight minutes more of time in bed, but you go through nine cycles and never actually go to sleep, and you would have been just as well to get up when it first went off. Some of you feel great when you actually put the lid on the ice cream and go to bed. That's the reality. You can do it, man. It feels good to do good.

So, let me ask you: How are you pursuing innocence in your life? This week is a really great week to start, because you're going to face some unique pressures as you go into the holidays. Like, some of you know you don't feel pure in the way you partake of alcohol whenever you're around your family. You don't feel innocent; you feel guilty. So don't do it.

Some of you feel what I felt when I was in high school and college. You go back home, and the experience of going home stirs up old haunts, things you left in the past that come back to roost. Maybe, for you, it's what it was for me. It was lust. Man, have a friend put a lock on your phone. Others of you are staring down the barrel of this week, and you know you're going to have to measure up in the eyes of all your family.

Your siblings are going to show up with all of their accomplishments and accolades, and you're worried about that experience. The most innocent thing you could do is before they ever share what's going on in their life, you just share what's going on in yours, and you're honest about it. You don't try to measure up. You don't tell any false truths. You just deal straight with them, and then you see how they respond, because it might be liberating for them instead.

It's better to feel innocent and grateful than be guilty and regretful, so much so that Jesus came to make you innocent. You wouldn't have this without him. He came to make you innocent, to take away your guilt and lead you into a kind of life where you have good reason for gratitude. Last one. Verse 7:

"Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land."

There's power in waiting for the Lord. I love it. Four commands he gives us after that first one, "Do not fret." He tells you from the drop. He says, "Trust in the Lord. Delight yourself in the Lord. Commit your way to the Lord." Then here, lastly, "Be still before the Lord." You need to learn the discipline of patience.

Here's why: anger is instinctive. Someone says something to you that hurts you, someone crosses you in a way they shouldn't, or someone looks at you the wrong kind of way, and you instinctively want to respond. Patience is not instinctive. Patience is always a conscious choice, yet patience is the way out of anger and into gratitude. I'll just share one really quick story as we bring this thing to an end, because it's important for us to understand.

In my marriage with the woman I love most, my natural impulse is to spring into Enneagram Eight action whenever we get cross with one another. Like, it's amazing. I lawyer up so fast. I'm ready to approach the stand and argue my defense, because I'm a challenger. I love to get myself into a good fight.

So, we've had to inject into our conflict resolution a period for patience, where whenever something begins to stir between the two of us and we sense, "Man, we're just not aligned with one another, and we need to reach reconciliation," we'll just take 15 minutes. We'll just take a breath. Why? Because the feelings subside and the truth rises. It gets me in a place where I'm not thinking with my feelings; I'm thinking through my feelings.

I can run instant replay on every reason I might be angry, and I realize I probably don't have good reason to be. It leads me to a spot where I can ask her honest questions that help me get to the bottom of what she is thinking. It leads me to a place where I'm slow to speak, slow to become angry, and quick to listen. I'm seeking to understand. It all comes by way of the power of patience.

Here's why that matters so much for you. That's God's heart for you, friend. There's a beautiful Scripture that Peter writes, and he says, "God is patient with you, not wishing that any would perish but all would come to repentance." That's his heart. He is patient with you. For today, this moment, the time we live in now, is the day of salvation, but there's coming another day, the day of judgment, where God's righteous anger will rain down on all evil, as it rightly should.

Before that happens, he's calling you. He's compelling you. "Come to me. Place your faith in me. Trust in me, because I've not forgotten about you. You have good reason to remember, but listen, I've always remembered you." In the midst of your waywardness and your wandering, God is looking at you, saying, "I've never once forgotten about you. I've always had my eye on you."

He's looking at you, and he's wanting you to know, "Hey, I've come close to save you. Yes, you get to come into my presence now, but only because I came into your presence to begin with." That's the beauty of what we're going to celebrate when we come into Christmas: God with us. That's the story of Scripture. Nothing was worth keeping God from his people. He wanted to be with us. So, since he has, we now have the ability to do likewise, but he had to do it first.

You can know that Jesus has come to make you innocent, and thus you can live innocently today. You can know here tonight, friends, that Jesus is waiting patiently for you. But we are under a shot clock. Time will run out, and his patience and lovingkindness will be replaced with a righteous anger and a holy fury, because he wants to make the world as it should be. The beauty of it is he wants to make you as you can be, starting now.

All you have to do is place your faith in him. All you have to do is trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Know that he lived the life you can't. Not a single one of us is good, yet he was good in our place. He died the death we deserve. Because he did that, we can rise forth with him out of the grave, which he was resurrected from, by simply claiming him as he is, as Lord, Savior, and King. What's keeping you from putting your "Yes" on the altar if you don't know him tonight? For others of you here who do know him, why are you so angry? You have great, great reason for gratitude. Let me pray that you would remember all of those reasons.