All The Feels | Week 5 | Pat McCalla

Pastor Pat McCalla · May 9, 2021

Big Idea

Your anger can become your prison or your passport — and how you handle it determines which.

Anger is a human emotion even Jesus felt, so it isn't something to bury or fear. The hope is that when we acknowledge it, sort out whether it's valid, restrain our immediate reaction, refuse to let it become a resident, and admit our failures, our anger can move us toward healthy change instead of trapping us in bitterness.

Key points

1
1Anger is a universal human emotion no one has to be taught.
Pastor Pat opens with a personal story of road rage in Chicago traffic, then points out no parent has to teach a toddler how to throw a fit — anger shows up in all of us from childhood. Quotes from Ambrose Bierce, Bruce Lee, and Eleanor Roosevelt reinforce how universally people struggle to control it.
2
2Psalm 137 shows a real victim's anger boiling over into a cry for vengeance.
Pastor Pat walks through the psalm's background — a Jewish man enslaved in Babylon after watching Jerusalem besieged, its people starving and slaughtered. The psalm moves from tears of sadness (putting away the harps) to outright rage at Babylon and Edom, climaxing in the brutal verse 9, which Pastor Pat reads not as churchy poetry but as the raw cry of an abused survivor.
3
3The safest place to pour out even our ugliest emotions is in prayer to God.
Building off the shocking honesty of Psalm 137, Pastor Pat says if people remember nothing else, they should remember this — God can handle our rawest anger when it's brought to Him directly rather than acted out.
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4Acknowledge your anger instead of repressing it.
Pastor Pat names this as the first of five principles: pretending anger isn't there only guarantees it will surface later, usually in an ugly way.
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5Identify whether your anger is valid or invalid.
Some anger is righteous — Pastor Pat points to his work against human trafficking and the reality of children dying from treatable diseases as examples of anger that can drive real change. But he contrasts that with his own story of losing his temper at a lawnmower in front of his kids, admitting most anger is over invalid, small things, and quotes Aristotle on how hard it is to be angry at the right person, time, and for the right reason.
6
6Restrain your immediate response.
Pastor Pat teaches that you either own your anger or it owns you, and urges people to step away and cool down before speaking or acting. He reads Proverbs 29:11, Proverbs 25:28, and Psalm 4:4 to show that unrestrained anger leaves us defenseless, like a city without walls.
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7Do not hold on to anger — it was meant to be a visitor, not a resident.
Pastor Pat warns that storytelling and ruminating over a wrong keeps the anger tank filling until it explodes into bitterness. He shares a friend's practice of writing down the hurt and burning the paper as an act of giving it to God, and tells the story of a friend whose daughter was murdered who still has to do this repeatedly, citing Ephesians 4:26 and Romans 8:28.
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8Admit your failures when your anger gets the better of you.
No one but Jesus has ever handled anger perfectly, so Pastor Pat calls people to simply say I am sorry rather than protect their pride or position. He tells how he got on his knees before his kids after throwing the lawnmower and apologized, showing that admitting failure is a position of power, not weakness.

Application

Pastor Pat frames the response as refusing to let anger become a resident in your life when it was only ever meant to be a visitor.

Acknowledge your anger honestly
Stop repressing or pretending it isn't there; name it as a real, human emotion before God rather than pushing it down.
Sort valid anger from invalid anger
Pause and ask whether this is a genuine injustice worth acting on or something small, like Pastor Pat's lawnmower outburst, that doesn't deserve the reaction it's getting.
Restrain your immediate response
Step away, cool down, and give yourself time before you speak or act so you don't say or do something you'll regret.
Stop the storytelling and let it go
Instead of ruminating on the wrong day after day, give it to God, write it down and hand it over (even burn the paper as a symbol), and choose gratitude instead.
Say I am sorry when you fail
When your anger gets the better of you, admit it to whoever was affected rather than protecting your pride or position; this is a position of power, not weakness.

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“If you have your Bibles open to Psalm 137. Psalm 137, biggest book in the Bible, right in the middle, but here's what I'm gonna ask you to do”
From the transcript
“So now we pick it up, verse one, Psalm one thirty seven verse one. No one's reading ahead. Verse one, beside the rivers of Babylon, that's the Tigris and Euphrates for all you geography nerds”
From the transcript
“Don't read ahead. Verse two, look at this, we put away our harps, hanging them on the branches of poplar trees”
From the transcript
“Why? Look at verse three. No one's reading ahead. Look at verse three. For or because our captors demanded a song from us, our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn”
From the transcript
“Look at verse four, he repeats again, but how can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a pagan land”
From the transcript
“K. Verse seven. Oh Lord, remember what the Edomites did on the day the armies of Babylon captured Jerusalem. Destroy it, they yelled, level it to the ground”
From the transcript
“Look at verse eight. O Babylon, he's talking to his enemies now. O Babylon, you will be destroyed. Happy is the one who pays you back for what you have done to us”
From the transcript
“Then we get to this last verse. Look at verse nine. Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks”
From the transcript
“you have the spirit of God in you, and Galatians five tells us that part of the fruit of the spirit is self control, and daddy didn't exhibit self control”
From the transcript
“In fact, Psalms and Proverbs has so much to say about this. At Proverbs 29 verse 11, it says, fools vent their anger but the wise quietly hold it back”
From the transcript
“Proverbs 2five 28 says, a person without self control is like a city with broke down walls. Now that proverb doesn't make much sense to us today because we don't really build cities this way anymore”
From the transcript
“In fact, look at Psalm four verse four, this is a great one. Don't sin by letting anger control you, think about it overnight and remain silent”
From the transcript
“Look at this verse in Ephesians four verse 26. It speaks to this idea of letting go of anger. Be angry, but don't sin. You can't be angry and not sin. Be angry, but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down before you have dealt with the cause of your anger”
From the transcript
“You need to remind yourself Romans eight twenty eight, for we know that all things work together for the good of those that love the Lord our God. That somehow, some way, someday God will take this hurt that was done to me and he'll work it for good”

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Day 1

There is a moment in Psalm 137 that stops you cold. The people of God are sitting beside the rivers of Babylon — displaced, humiliated, grieving — and their captors ask them to sing a happy song. They can't do it. They hang their harps on the willow trees and weep. What is remarkable is that this moment made it into Scripture. God did not edit it out. He preserved it, which tells us something important: He is not afraid of your grief, your anger, or your despair. He can handle the full weight of what you are carrying. Pastor Pat pointed out that Psalm 137 is one of the most raw, honest prayers in the Bible. It does not clean itself up for God's benefit. It says exactly what the people felt. And if that kind of honesty has a place in Scripture, it has a place in your prayer life too. You do not have to perform calm or pretend peace you do not feel. The safest place for your unfiltered emotion is not a venting session with a friend, not a social media post — it is an honest conversation with the God who already knows what is inside you. He invites that. He can hold it.

For reflection

Is there an emotion you have been keeping at a careful distance from God? What would it look like to bring it to Him honestly today?

Pray

Pray for the courage to be fully honest with God about what you are actually feeling right now — no performance, no cleanup.

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Anger is something every person alive knows from the inside — this message takes that seriously and offers a way through it rather than around it.

Discussion questions

1
Psalm 137 is one of the most jarring psalms in the Bible — the writer cries out with raw grief and even calls down violence on enemies. What does it tell us about God that a prayer like this made it into Scripture?
2
Pastor Pat drew a distinction between valid anger — a response to a real injustice that may actually call us to change something — and invalid anger, which is disproportionate or misdirected. What makes that distinction hard to see clearly when we are in the middle of a conflict?
3
Proverbs 29:11 says a fool gives full vent to his anger, while a wise person holds it in check. What does restraining an immediate response look like in practice — and how is that different from just stuffing the emotion down?
4
Ephesians 4:26 warns us not to let the sun go down on our anger. Pastor Pat described the cycle of replaying a story of being wronged as the way anger moves from being a visitor to taking up permanent residence. What happens to a person — and to their relationships — over time when that cycle is left running?
5
Pastor Pat described saying 'I am sorry' as a position of power, not weakness. What has to be true about how a person sees themselves — or sees the relationship — for an apology to feel like strength rather than defeat?
6
Pastor Pat challenged us to bring our unfiltered anger to God in prayer, let it go, and then reach for gratitude rather than grievance when the old story starts to replay. How might that kind of daily practice — not a one-time decision — actually change the way a community like ours handles conflict together?

Pray together

Ask God for the honesty to name our anger, the restraint to hold our responses, and the grace to let anger be a visitor rather than a resident

Topics

Apology and Reconciliation Breaking Rumination Emotional Honesty with God Healing from Hurt Managing Anger

All The Feels | Week 5 | Pat McCalla

Big Idea

Key points

Application

Take it into your week

Scripture in this message

7-day devotional

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Small-group discussion guide

Open

Discussion questions

Pray together