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Who’s Pushing Your Buttons? 2nd in a series of 9

This morning we are going to talk about crazy makers and crazy buttons. Here are two examples. I love Chocolate! That was easy! So we thought it appropriate to show you some buttons in action and bring up the TL quiz teams. 1st Service TL Orange Team: Ben Harvey, Olivia McDowell TL Pink Team: Sean McDowell, Kara Landis TL Green Team: Matt Hall, Malia Waltman 2nd Service TL Orange Team: Micah Waltman, Leanne Beyer TL Pink Team: Matt Harvey, Katelin Wheary TL Green Team: Matt Hall, Emily Sensenig Please make welcome… Quizmaster Caleb Putney. He will also be serving as time keeper and ultimate judge. He may not always be right but this morning he will never be wrong. After the 4th question: Now we are going to make the match a bit crazy and we are going to mix it up with a new dimension called, ‘Who is Pushing Your Button?’

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Question 5: Sometimes in life, girls push guys buttons so... guys sit on your hands and give your buttons to the girls. They are going to buzz in for you but you will need to answer the question. Question 6: Switch Question 7: Sometimes in life, the older siblings push the buttons of the younger... so figure out who is oldest on each team and the youngest needs to give up their buttons to the older ones. Question 8: Switch Question 9: Sometimes in life, the talkative ones push the buttons of the quieter ones so figure out who is the talkative one and give your button to them. Question 10: Switch Thank you… let’s give them all a hand! Slide #1 This morning we are jumping into week two of a new series called ‘You Drive Me Crazy’. This is a series on relational health. We are looking at the crazy makers in our lives that just irritate us and we will be looking for some solutions to the drama around us. This is why I shared the crazy story with you last week about Liesl and her perfect peanut butter cracker sandwiches. This is why we intentionally messed up

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the quizzing routine, because sometimes life is crazy and sometimes we push people’s buttons and sometimes people push our buttons. Slide #2 Title Slide: Who’s Pushing Your Buttons! Can you think of someone this morning that knows just how to push your buttons? If we are going to learn how to develop healthy relationships, we must learn how to deal with anger and button pushers. Let me give you some facts about anger that I found interesting. The average woman loses her temper three times a week and the average man loses his temper six times a week. So if you have choice… be a woman! Women get angry more often at people; men get angry more often at things… computers, mechanical things etc. So if you are a woman, stay away from people and if you are a man, stay away from things! Women are more verbal with their anger; men are more physical with their anger. Here is an interesting twist. Single adults express anger twice as often as married adults, so if you are single, get married and you will be angry less often. The place we are most likely to express anger is home, because we get angry more often and more intensely at those we love. The people who make us the angriest are those we love the most, because they have the greatest potential to hurt, offend or irritate us.

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Slide #3 Dr. S. I. McMillen has identified fifty-one illnesses that can be directly attributed to or caused by anger. Fifty-one illnesses! Now, anger is not always an inappropriate response. It’s not always wrong. In fact, there are many situations where anger is the only appropriate response because anger can be evidence of love. If someone tries to hurt my wife or kids… my anger is an appropriate response. If I don’t get angry... something is wrong! There are some things that we ought to get angry about. We should get angry when we see a big kid bully a little kid or a smart kid making fun of someone who struggles with academics. We should get angry when we hear people make racial comments. We should get angry when we see a plate half full of food get thrown into the garbage by some ungrateful overfed North American. We should get angry when we see children in extreme poverty crying out because of hunger pains. This is why we do our bucket offerings! Slide #4 Ephesians 4:26-28 "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. This verse obviously implies there is a way to get angry and not sin, so not all anger is sin. But the Bible also makes it clear that most times our anger is sinful

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and inappropriate. Self-centered anger is always sinful. Let me show you a few verses out of the book of Proverbs. Slide #5 Proverbs 25:28 NKJV Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls. The word ‘spirit’ comes from an ancient Hebrew word that means wind or to blow and in this context it means anger. It’s like becoming so angry we are breathing hard and when we get to this point we are out of control and we become defenseless... there is no wall of protection around us. Slide #6 Proverbs 12:16 Msg Fools have short fuses and explode all too quickly; the prudent quietly shrug off insults. Slide #7 Proverbs 16:32 TLB It is better to be slow-tempered than famous; it is better to have self-control than to control an army. In other words, it’s more important to be in control of our own emotions than to be on American Idol or to own a Fortune 500 Company. The fact is, anger is a learned response. We learn it from TV, we learn it from movies and we learn it from

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other people. The good news is since it’s learned… it can be unlearned. So we can learn appropriate ways to deal with our anger. There are two things we are going to look at this morning. First of all we need to understand the different ways that anger shows up. It’s not always a meltdown, sometime it is as slow and creepy as dry rot… but it is still anger and just as dangerous. Secondly I want to share with you some biblical principles on how we can diffuse and disarm the angry crazy makers in our lives. The Bible identifies four different ways that we express anger. Slide #8 Category 1 The Machine Gun The Machine Guns are people who just let us have it! They mow us down. There’s no doubt that they’re mad. They’re very expressive and easy to pick out. They cuss, they yell, and they throw things. They are like walking time bombs and when someone pulls the hairpin trigger they go off. One of my earliest memories of a Machine Gunner was one of my uncles. He was big and he was loud and he would yell and scream at his kids and he freaked me out because my father never acted like this and I grew up fearing him.

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In the book of Genesis we have the very first Angry Machine Gunner and his name was Cain. Cain and Abel were brothers and they were the first two sons of Adam and Eve. Slide #9 Genesis 4:2-8 TLB Abel became a shepherd, while Cain was a farmer. At harvest time Cain brought the Lord a gift of his farm produce, and Abel brought the fatty cuts of meat from his best lambs, and presented them to the Lord. And the Lord accepted Abel's offering, but not Cain's. This made Cain both dejected and very angry, and his face grew dark with fury. Slide #10 "Why are you angry?" the Lord asked him. "Why is your face so dark with rage? It can be bright with joy if you will do what you should! But if you refuse to obey, watch out. Sin is waiting to attack you, longing to destroy you. But you can conquer it!" Slide #11 One day Cain suggested to his brother, "Let's go out into the fields." And while they were together there, Cain attacked and killed his brother. Check out the word ‘attacked.’ This Hebrew word means, ‘To smite with deadly intent’. This is the response of a Category 1 type… they attack with deadly intent. In fact their response is so radical that they are often embarrassed and regret the things they’ve said and the things they’ve done. Slide #12 Category 2 The Crock Pot

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The Crock Pot is the exact opposite of the Machine Gun. They don’t blow up; they clam up. They don’t get violent; they get silent. They stew and simmer and create a slow burn by swallowing their anger. Here’s the problem. Every time we swallow our anger our stomach keeps score. If we don’t talk it out, we are going to burn it out… all throughout our body. Crock Pot’s get high blood pressure, chronic pain, tension headaches and meanwhile they continue to say… ‘I’m not angry!’ A good example of Category 2 anger would be an OT guy named Absalom. He was the son of King David and one day he discovered that his half brother Amnon had raped his sister Tamar. Check out the Crock Pot in action. Slide #13 2 Samuel 13:21-22 When King David heard all this, he was furious. Absalom never said a word to Amnon, either good or bad; he hated Amnon because he had disgraced his sister Tamar. Slide #14 2 Samuel 13:23-24 Two years later, when Absalom's sheepshearers were at Baal Hazor near the border of Ephraim, he invited all the king's sons to come there. Slide #15 2 Samuel 13:28-29 Absalom ordered his men, "Listen! When Amnon is in high spirits from drinking wine and I say to you, 'Strike Amnon down,' then kill him. Don't be afraid. Have not I given you this

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order? Be strong and brave." So Absalom's men did to Amnon what Absalom had ordered. When people say, that burns me up! It literally does. Our bodies aren’t designed to hold on to anger. It’s like inhaling fire or swallowing poison. It’s not so much ‘what we eat’ but what ‘eats us’. If we are holding on to our anger, it’s eating us up from the inside out. So we’ve got Machine Guns and we’ve Crock Pots. We’ve got the violent and we’ve got the silent. They blow up and they clam up, but in the end, they are both deadly. Slide #16 Category 3 The Martyr The martyrs are pros at holding pity parties. They announce a pity party and are the first ones to arrive. Martyrs are usually passive and respond by punishing themselves. When a crazy maker comes into their life they don’t think, ‘She must be Crazy.’ The Martyr thinks, ‘I must be crazy, what’s wrong with me, where did I blow it, it must be all my fault!’ If we walk around saying… I should, I must, I have to, I ought to… always blaming ourselves… then we are most likely a Category 3 Martyr. If we tend to be the Martyr type, here is a new thought for us… maybe our coworker is crazy, maybe we did grow up in a crazy family, maybe, just maybe, we are not the problem.

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If we suffer from depression, take caution, it may indicate that we are a Category 3 Martyr. Depression is caused by many different things, but one of the primary causes of depression is frozen anger. When we hold on to anger and let it freeze over in our lives, be careful… depression may soon be knocking on our door. Let’s go to the NT story about the prodigal son. Here we find a classic Category 3 Martyr type. There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said, ‘Dad, I want my half of the inheritance now’ and when his father gave it to him, he went off and wasted it on wine, women and song. When he finally came to his senses and returned home, his father welcomed him with unconditional love and killed the fattened calf and threw a big party and everyone attended except… big brother. Slide #17 Luke 15:28-30 The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Slide #18 Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'

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Do you have any friends or family members like this? They have to be coaxed. They have to be pleaded with. They have to be pampered. They make everyone else miserable, because they are the only ones who slave away and pull their fair share of the load and if they’re not happy, nobody’s happy! They ruin all the family parties and they are the martyrs. It some ways their anger is just as deadly as the Machine Gunner and the Crock Potter. Slide #19 Category 4 The Manipulator The motto of the manipulator is ‘Don’t get mad; get even.’ A lot of movies and a lot of TV shows are built on this category of anger. Manipulators will never tell us to our face they’re angry with us, but rather they will do it subtly, slyly and sarcastically. They are indirect with their snide comments and they sabotage us and make us look bad. But it’s hard to catch a Category 4 Manipulator because they will never admit what they are doing or that they are seething with anger. One example of this in the Bible would be the Pharisees, the religious leaders of Jesus day. One Sabbath Jesus was in the Synagogue teaching and there was a man there with a deformed hand. These Category 4 Manipulators were jealous and looking for a way to nail him. They knew that if he healed on the Sabbath he would be violating the law.

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Slide #20 Luke 6:10-11 He looked around at them one by one and then said to the man, "Reach out your hand." And as he did, it became completely normal again. At this, the enemies of Jesus were wild with rage and began to plot his murder. They were manipulators! Now they were in position to accuse him and manipulate things to get revenge. So, what is your style? Are you more like a Machine Gun, a Crock Pot, a Martyr or a Manipulator! All of us tend to relate to one of these styles and none of them are really very helpful to us. The book of Proverbs gives us 4 very practical ways to disarm the crazy makers in our life and put our buttons in our pockets so no one can push them. Let’s go to our notes. Slide #21 Disarming the crazy makers in our lives: 1. Calculate the cost of anger. Before we allow ourselves to get mad back, we need to calculate what we are going to lose by responding in anger. Calculate the cost of anger. We are less likely to get angry, when somebody’s pushing our buttons, if we realize there’s always a price tag. The Bible is very, very specific about uncontrolled anger. Let me show you some verses out of Proverbs.

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Slide #22 Proverbs 29:22 An angry man stirs up dissension, and a hot-tempered one commits many sins. Proverbs 15:18 TLB A quick-tempered man starts fights; a cool-tempered man tries to stop them. Proverbs 14:17Msg The hotheaded do things they'll later regret; the coldhearted get the cold shoulder. So if our anger gets out of control, here is the cost: 1) We cause dissention 2) We commit many sins 3) We start fights 4) We do things we later regret What a price to pay for anger out of control! So when someone starts pushing our buttons… before we retaliate, before we get angry back, we just need to count the cost. Do we really want to cause dissention? Do we really want to sin more? Do we really want to start a fight? Do we really want to add to our list of regrets? Slide #23 Disarming the crazy makers in our lives: 2. Respond with love by looking past their words to their pain. Jesus did this. This was why he could say when crucified, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know

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what they are doing.’ They didn’t know what they were doing. They mocked him and beat him and in reality they were just acting out of their own pain. Today we have come to believe through modern psychology that we deal best with our anger through expressing it… like emptying a bucketful of water. So if someone hurts us… we dump it all out, all over them and we will feel better and we think we become healthier through self expression. Slide #24 Proverbs 14:29 TLB A wise man controls his temper. He knows that anger causes mistakes. One day I pulled into the church parking lot (before TL) and as I got out of my truck this young lady, who was a member of our church, came flying out of her car screaming at me. And she yelled and called me names till the veins were popping. So I just backed up and sat on the bumper of my truck and didn’t say a word. It went on and on for several minutes until she was finished emptying her bucket… and then she got back into her car and with tires screeching she was out of there. She had this pent up anger that she emptied on me. I think she felt better when she was done, I don’t know for sure, but one thing I do know, I didn’t feel any better. As far as I know, it didn’t solve anything. From that parking lot experience on… her anger at me and the church only intensified and she eventually left the church, the area and did as much damage as possible on her way out. To my knowledge she is still angry at

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us today. There was never a word of remorse or apology spoken, but only justification and a certain sense of satisfaction that she was able to freely express herself. But I could remain on the bumper of my truck and not say a word and not allow her words to devastate me because I knew her very well. I knew the story of her pain. In fact I don’t even remember what she said, but I do remember the emotion, the volume and the intensity. I met with her husband soon after that and he was equally angry. I asked him one simple question and he also unloaded this bucketful of anger all over me. For a number of minutes he launched into this intense tirade against me and the church without answering my question and again I did not interrupt him. But when his bucket of anger was just about empty he wrapped it up with this very interesting comment. He said, ‘wow, I wasn’t going to do that.’ And I’m thinking… that would have been nice if you hadn’t! But I didn’t need to react because again I was aware of some of the pain in his journey.. Expressing our anger in and of itself doesn’t solve anything, because angry people don’t have a bucket of anger, they often have an anger producing factory! A factory that can keep on producing anger faster than it can be expressed and often the expression of it all just fuels the factory.

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Rick Warren says that study after study after study show that that aggression only creates more aggression! Anger only creates more anger. This same young man several months earlier had left an elders meeting in a rage and slammed the door shut on his way out. Angry outbursts often lead to more anger and it becomes a habitual pattern in our lives. The answer isn’t just to express it… because expression often feeds it. I can testify to this because here’s how it ended. After both of them had the opportunity to take me apart piece by piece without me defending myself. He said, I don’t ever want you to contact either me or my wife again… and he stormed off, out of my life, and that was 20 years ago! Expression of anger in and of itself doesn’t solve anything. And I learned through this relationship that I need to look past people’s words and their actions and try to feel their pain. This was my first vivid introduction to: hurt people, hurt people! Slide #25 Disarming the crazy makers in our lives: 3. Think before reacting. We must think before we speak because ‘anger control’ is largely a matter of ‘mouth control’. It is critical that we don’t respond impulsively but rather that we put our mind in gear before we put our mouth in gear.

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Slide #26 Proverbs 13:16 NLT Wise people think before they act; fools don’t—and even brag about their foolishness. Slide #27 Proverbs 29:11 A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control. So what do we ‘think about’ while we are controlling ourselves? Here are three helpful questions to ‘think about’ while we are waiting. Slide #28 Three questions in the waiting: 1. Why am I angry? What is underneath it all? 2. What do I really want? This person is pushing my buttons right now and I’m tempted to either deck him or be sarcastic, but what do I really want in this relationship? 3. How can I get it? How can I make this a win win situation? If we reflect before reacting, if we think before speaking and if we wait before jumping to conclusions, we can often identify the root cause of the anger. Anger is almost always caused by one of three things. Slide #29 The root causes of anger: 1. Hurt. When someone is pushing our buttons and they get angry, they most likely have been deeply hurt. When we get hurt we get angry.

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Several weeks ago I was putting wood on our stove and my arm touched the hot stove and I burnt myself and it hurt. I should have immediately put it under water to stop the burning process but I didn’t take the time and the longer it went, the more it hurt and the more it hurt the angrier I got…stupid stove, stupid piece of wood, stupid gloves that didn’t come up high enough, stupid skin that continues to get thinner with age. Hurt almost always creates anger, but if we can identify the hurt, it’s easier to respond to than anger because we can usually sympathize with hurt, but anger on the other hand… just makes us defensive. 2. Frustration. When we get frustrated we get angry. When we are forced to wait or we are inconvenienced we get angry, especially if you are wired like me. Here is an embarrassing confession, this past week my angry meter spiked several times over the dumbest thing, a locked truck door and here is what happened. I never lock my truck doors except when I go into Lancaster, so I lock my doors and when I come out I always forget to unlock the passenger door and then 7 hours later or a day later I’m at home and I have my hands full of something that I want to put in the passenger side of my truck and so I walk around that side of the truck with my hands full and it’s locked. And so I need to put down what I am carrying and walk the whole way around the other side of the truck and go in the driver’s side door. By that time I’m frustrated and I’m muttering to myself about the dumb locks, the dumb door and the dumb city of Lancaster

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that forces me to lock the stupid door. I’m sure you are much mature than me… but that happened to me numerous times this week! 3. Fear. When we feel afraid, when we feel threatened or when we feel attacked… we fight back. We use to have this fantastic dog named Mutser, named so because he was a mutt, but he was the greatest! He was gentle, smart and just a lot of fun. One day this goofball came over to our house and started to tease him. Mutser was tied up and this guy got down on his knees and grabbed the chain and started growling at him and slowly started pulling the dog towards him. And Mutser tried to get away but he just started dragging the dog towards him and when he finally pulled him up close Mutser attacked him and bit him. And he got up with a bloody hand and came over to me and said, ‘he bit me!’ And I’m thinking… DUH! When we feel fear we often become angry and attack! This is why delay is a great solution for anger. It allows us to reflect before reacting. Am I hurt? Am I frustrated? Or am I afraid? Is that person hurt? Is that person frustrated? Is that person afraid? The longer we control our temper the better we can think! Thomas Jefferson was not a theologian but here is what he said… when you’re angry, count to ten. If you’re really angry, count to a hundred.

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This is wise advice. Don’t immediately text back! Don’t immediately respond to that email. Don’t immediately start running at the mouth! Think on it. Sleep on it. Let it cool. Calm it down. Count to ten. Slide #30 Disarming the crazy makers in our lives: 4. Ask God for help. This is a tube of toothpaste. If I squeeze this tube, what’s going to come out? When we squeeze our life and our heart, what comes out? Whatever’s inside! So the problem we are facing with our own anger is a result of what is within. We can’t blame others or the circumstances, because the problem is inside. The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart. So when we are under pressure and all of the sudden we start to attack others around us, it reveals what’s inside of us. None of us like to admit this. But it’s the truth. If we have a well and the well has bad water, fixing the pump is not going to help what’s in the well. That is often the problem of modern day psychology and self-help books, they tell us how to fix the pump but they don’t tell us how to fix the water in the well. Unless we fix the water, things aren’t going to change. So what do we do? How do we make a difference? We need to ask God for help and allow His Spirit to fill our lives.

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Slide #31 Galatians 5:22-25 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. I have found that when I’m filled with myself, when I’m filled with marlin, almost anything can upset me. It can be locked truck doors, slow traffic or unhappy TLiners. But if I’m filled with God’s Spirit, I can sit back on the bumper and watch others melt down without overreacting and when I open my heart to their pain sometimes I can even feel compassion. How do we get filled with God’s Spirit? Let’s not make it too complicated. It just means we depend on God and ask for his help. Three very simple words, Lord help me! Do you remember this verse? Slide #32 Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. In closing:

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The key is in humility. It starts with the willingness to admit we have a problem and that we are willing to trust someone else to help us. So whether it is with our own anger or those who are pushing our buttons, it begins and ends with praying this prayer… Lord help me! This is where our security lies. This is what is happening this afternoon at Landis Homes at 4:30, and I’m afraid that some of you are going to miss this. Six people are making public their need for God to help them. God gave each one of them a heart transplant, so the well water is good! They have a new identity. For some of them this is a recent event. For some of them they received a new heart many years ago but never made it public through water baptism and they are going to do it today and I think we have a wonderful opportunity to witness this. The better we understand our new identity, the better we are equipped to deal with our anger and the anger of others. If you have never been baptized, and I’m not talking about baptism as an infant or a child due to the decision of your parents, I’m talking about you personally deciding that you need a Savior, I want to challenge you to make a choice today, to ask God for help and make your decision public through water baptism.

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It is a starting point that says I want a new identity. I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of having people push my buttons. I’m tired of being worried about what other people think and letting that influence me. Prayer: Father, it’s sad but true, we often get angry with the people we love the most, those we are closest to. Because we forget that you’re the source of all that we need, not others, we get angry. Father help us to remember that when we expect someone else to meet needs that only you can meet, we’re going to be disappointed. We’re going to be let down. We’re going to be angry. Forgive us and help us. Benediction: Jude 1:24-25 To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy-- to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen