Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Saturday, 30 August 2014 "Don't let the sun set on your anger"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Saturday, 30 August 2014 "Don't let the sun set on your anger"
Daily Scripture: Ephesians 4:25 What this adds up to, then, is this: no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ’s body we’re all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.
26-27 Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.
28 Did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can’t work.
29 Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift.
30 Don’t grieve God. Don’t break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don’t take such a gift for granted.
31-32 Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
Psalm 19:7-9 The revelation of God is whole
    and pulls our lives together.
The signposts of God are clear
    and point out the right road.
The life-maps of God are right,
    showing the way to joy.
The directions of God are plain
    and easy on the eyes.
God’s reputation is twenty-four-carat gold,
    with a lifetime guarantee.
The decisions of God are accurate
    down to the nth degree.
10 God’s Word is better than a diamond,
    better than a diamond set between emeralds.
You’ll like it better than strawberries in spring,
    better than red, ripe strawberries.
11-14 There’s more: God’s Word warns us of danger
    and directs us to hidden treasure.
Otherwise how will we find our way?
    Or know when we play the fool?
Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
    Keep me from stupid sins,
    from thinking I can take over your work;
Then I can start this day sun-washed,
    scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.
These are the words in my mouth;
    these are what I chew on and pray.
Accept them when I place them
    on the morning altar,
O God, my Altar-Rock,
    God, Priest-of-My-Altar.
Reflection Question:
We're encouraging each of us to pray daily during this sermon series, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, Lord, my rock and my redeemer."
So we might expect the theme passage in Ephesians to say, "Never get angry." Instead we find that it said, "Be angry without sinning." Then, as though realizing that "be angry without sinning" might be just a bit vague ("How do I do that?"), Paul added this timeless relational advice: "Don't let the sun set on your anger," or, as The Message puts it, "Don't go to bed angry."
Anger, in itself, is not bad—it is one of four basic human emotions. We can be angry without sinning. Ephesians also connected the topic of anger with teaching about honesty. When have you seen a failure to honestly face anger (your own or someone else's) be destructive to a relationship? Anger becomes risky when we let it fester and don't deal with it directly. One counselor said, "Bitterness is anger grown stale." How good are you at recognizing your own anger, and then promptly dealing constructively and honestly with it?
Family Activity:
Read Ephesians 4:29. As a family, discuss the meaning of this verse. Create a list of positive, encouraging words. After you have exhausted your thoughts, check additional sources such as the computer or the Bible for additional words to add to your list. Next, play a game of Scrabble (or Scrabble Junior) with your family. Play by the rules on the box but add one more rule. Agree to use only positive or neutral words. If someone uses one of the encouraging words from your family's list, he or she can receive bonus points! (Decide how many ahead of time.) Pray and ask God to help you speak only positive, kind and encouraging words to and about others.
Today's Prayer:
Dear God, give me the courage to speak truth in love, the humility to say I'm sorry when I'm wrong and the heart to forgive others who admit a wrong. Amen.
Insight from Megan O’Neil
Megan O’Neill is the Learn Events Coordinating Assistant at Resurrection.
mountainIn the last couple of months, God has gifted me a few incredibly beautiful mountain top moments. I don’t mean your typical Colorado “mountain top.” I mean, larger than the mountain in this picture, and way higher than the altitude in which we were flying.
For a quick second, I thought we were still driving past a little hill on the Malawian terrain we just flew away from. (I know what you are thinking, but in my own defense, my heart was still in Malawi). The guy sitting next to me was anxious to tell me this was, in fact, Mount Kilimanjaro. He had traveled this route between Blantyre, Malawi and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia many times for work, and had never seen the mountain tops this clearly. (Kind of a big deal!)
So I blinked a few times and realized that this was in fact a tiny glimpse of this HUGE mountain that we were flying over. Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, ascends 19,341 feet above sea level. Just for perspective, our plane was flying over 40,000 feet in the air.
In these past couple of months, the “larger than 40,000 feet tall mountain top moments” God gifted me—while in Malawi, and upon my return to Kansas—were filled with His promises, love, guidance, truth, hope, and above all else, God Himself. I felt His presence more than I had ever before. He showed me hurts in my past that He had healed. He showed me glimpses of my future. So, how could I come down from this mountain, His Mountain? How could I ever be defeated after seeing/feeling/experiencing all of this goodness?
During last weekend’s sermon—Family Words: Hurtful or Life Giving?—I listened, wrote notes, and agreed with Pastor Adam to not say hurtful words and  continue to use encouraging words (just like our passage reads today in Ephesians 4:29). I even repeated our sermon series theme verses three times with the congregation. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord….”
Then, the very next evening, I yelled at my mom. Nothing about my tone, words, approach, delivery or exit were encouraging or loving. I went to bed angry—angry that she didn’t understand, and angry that I had had acted that way. (Spoiler alert: I am not a perfect Christian!) Ephesians 4:27 reads: “for anger gives a foothold to the devil.” I had certainly allowed the devil take hold my life that evening.
Thankfully, I woke up the next morning with my eyes fixed on God. His promises were waiting at my doorstep as a gift for the new day.
God reminded me of the “larger than 40,000 feet tall mountain top moments” I had so deeply experienced just recently. Even before I had fallen off my recent mountain top moments, he was there to guide me back up my next mountain. God keeps guiding me with grace, peace, love, forgiveness, humility, and—again, always—GRACE which never stops.
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