NORTH LIVERMORE — At the North Livermore Baptist Church March 21 service the congregation was welcomed in by Pastor Bonnie Higgins at 9:30 a.m. to begin the service.
The Call to Worship was read and the Invocation/Lord’s Prayer was recited. The hymns that were sung was “At Calvary”, “Since I Have Been Redeemed”, “It is Well with My Soul”. We completed the service with “Go Now in Peace”. Linda Lyman is the organist each week.
The sermon, titled “I’m Angry” reading the scripture from Ephesians 4:26-27 and Pastor Bonnie also used James 1:19-20. Pastor Bonnie began the service explaining how she is angry about how the world is now. How far away the world is from God and allowing Satan to rule so much. She gave examples of why she was angry…children going to bed hungry, elderly choosing between basic essentials like food, shelter, heat-to getting their meds. They shouldn’t need to choose between them. How people are treated without any regard to the love that God has shown. She went on to say if these things don’t get you angry that we all need to check ourselves. Many people get angry for one reason or another, but we all will get angry at something. It is how we use that anger tells a lot about each other. The question is, is anger a sin? Sin is an emotion and we all have emotions.
Pastor Bonnie explained that it depends on how we use our anger of emotions. If we use our anger to change a wrong to a right, it is not a sin. But, if we use our anger to get back at someone, then it is a sin because we then let Satan into our anger. She went on to say, even God gets angry. We know that God is sinless, so, anything that God does in anger is without sin. An example of anger is found in Genesis, (God knew that anger would be a problem for us, that He put it in the first book of the Bible) between the brothers Cain and Abel. Cain wasn’t happy that God rejected his offering but accepted Abel’s offering. Cain let his anger get the best of him and when he had the chance, he killed Abel. Even Jesus got angry, when Jesus turned the tables upside down in the temple when they were trying to turn the temple into a market place instead of a place of worship. The Bible tells us directly that Jesus was angry when The Pharisees were abiding by manmade rules about the Sabbath when Jesus healed a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath and in Mark 3:5 it states that Jesus got angry because they were questioning Him about the healing. Scripture says that Jesus never sinned, tells us that anger is not always a sin. It just depends on how we use our anger.
Pastor Bonnie used three points to explain how to use our anger. Point one was that as long as we use our anger for good and not evil, God will bless us. Point two was to deal with our anger quickly. Scripture tells us not to let the sun go down while we are still angry. We shouldn’t have unresolved anger. If we let our anger continue, it will fester and get into our lives more and we will hurt others with our anger. Our bodies are not meant to keep anger inside of us. Point three was to learn to let it go. Many times, holding onto anger is not worth holding onto. We need to let it go and forgive others. Once we forgive others, our peace will come through. The longer we hold onto the anger, Satan can use us for his use and not for what God has intended for us. God wants peace and joy in our lives, not hate and revenge. We know that God’s wrath, His anger, will be shown on Judgment Day when He comes back to pass judgment on those who had rejected His Son, Jesus Christ.