thank you very much thank you thank you it's wonderful to be here love being with you guys always now pastor lee and jane they're my family so you're my family is that we we have been very close for a long period of time pastor lee has written a book i don't know if you guys know about this book school of the spirit um i grew up in a church in amarillo texas and i never heard the name of jesus not one time did my church ever mention the name of jesus so a friend of mine and i at 13 years old we didn't have to go to church anymore that was just kind of a right in our rite of passage in my family so i turned 13 i thought i'm not going back to church and this friend of mine invited me to go to his church at baptist church and i said i'm never going back to church again and he said let me tell you the girls that go to my church i became a baptist and so and i heard the name of jesus for the first time and i thought who is jesus and they talked about jesus and i thought that's great but i never heard the words holy spirit and i received jesus at 19 years old and i just i felt stuck i mean honestly i thought well i'm glad i know jesus i'm glad i'm on the way to heaven but this is the most boring thing i can imagine and um i heard about the holy spirit and i began to look in the bible into the holy spirit and my wife and i at about 21 years old received the baptism of the holy spirit the holy spirit has transformed my life and i thank jesus for saving me and i thank jesus for dying on the cross for me but i thank the holy spirit for living in me every day and giving me the power to live in this world and to overcome it was dramatically dramatically important in my life this this is the best book on the holy spirit that i've ever seen honestly pastor lee is brilliant i mean you guys know that but but there's there's two he is i mean he's he's smarter than me i mean i i ask him questions all the time not only is he a theologian but he's but he's a man of god and you need both because you can write a book on the holy spirit that's kind of weird you know and people have done that this is a very very biblically balanced book but it's also written by a man who's walked in the holy spirit for many many years intimately familiar with the ways of the spirit in a very very balanced and sound manner this is available at the campuses all the campuses it's available audio audible.com pastor lee read it so he narrates the book if you want to listen to it on audible it's also available on amazon.com pastor robert morris did the forward on this book he does very few forwards but it's a it's a great honor for him to have done the forward for this book i encourage you to get it also encourage you you may know someone who is a christian uh but they're not walking in the fullness of the spirit make a great gift make it make a great gift for someone who really needs something extra in their life and so just encourage you if you haven't already check this out it's a wonderful wonderful book by my dear friend now i want to bring a message this message is a relationship message it's a marriage message and it's called disarming anger and resolving conflicts now i know you guys don't deal with anger but those crazy friends of yours do so just take notes and listen to this for them okay disarming anger and resolving conflicts if if our marriages are going to be strong if relationships one of the reasons i like preaching this message on a weekend this is for everybody anger and conflict resolution this isn't just for marriage i'm going to orient a lot of my comments toward marriage this is for every relationship that you're in a great marriage is not a marriage that doesn't have anger because there's no such thing a great marriage is a marriage where you can process your anger you're going to get angry at each other okay i've been married 48 years and karen still has problems she's not here i'm going to talk about her all night don't you dare say what i tell her what's that but you know we've been married for we get along great you don't have a great marriage but we still get angry at each other sometimes but we have a great marriage because we can process that anger but most of us came out of a home where we were not taught well how to deal with anger okay so our parents are our mentors our parents teach us how to deal with anger and if they dealt with it right right if they didn't well too bad so my family is welsh okay my name is evans uh my mother's my name is wells all of my family is welsh and they're very stoic people and stoic just means when you get mad you get quiet and so in my family when you got you knew someone was mad at you because they wouldn't look at you no they never said anything to you that they weren't yellers or anything like that but everybody got quiet so you knew when somebody wouldn't look at you that they were mad at you and when they started looking at you again they were over it is that not the most dysfunctional it's terrible but i just thought that was normal and so then i met karen and her family they were crazy her family was just crazy they were nuts so i would be over at karen's house hanging out and they would start screaming at each other and the other yeah and then ten minutes later they're all hugging each other and telling each other they loved each other i said you're crazy you need to learn to be normal and just don't look at each other be like my family be normal and so then we got married the two dysfunctions married each other okay so we were dating and the theme of our early relationship was me i golfed all the time so we were dating and karen had an apartment she was working at a bank and she said hey i want a cookie dinner tonight uh can you come over i want to cook you there and i said yeah and so i love meatloaf mashed potatoes green beans those kind of things she said i'm making meatloaf mashed potatoes green beans and karen's a good cook and i said great so i was playing golf with my buddies that afternoon and uh so karen said be here at six i'm gonna have dinner ready six don't be late i said oh great that won't so um i was golfing it was five o'clock and i was 30 miles away from karen's house and so uh i said hey guys i've got to go i've got to be over karen's at six for dinner well they started you know telling me that karen was controlling me all really bad stuff i don't want to tell you exactly what i said it was just really bad stuff and they were demeaning me and you know and so being the young male that i was i thought well karen doesn't control me i don't have to be over there at six o'clock i'll get over there anytime i want to get over there so i finished the golf match and i got my car about six 30 miles away so i got karen's house 6 30 6 40 and walked in well it was cool and so i walked in the door she wouldn't look at me she was furious uh dinner was ready at six o'clock so now dinner was cold all kind of stuff and so i walk in and uh i don't say anything and i walk in i'm all sweaty and yucky from playing golf all afternoon and i walk in and karen kind of glances at me and looks away and i walk in she had this little dinner table in her kitchen and i sat down at this little dinner table and didn't say anything so she got dinner ready she got my plate ready and she got her plate ready so she set my plate down in front of me and so she sat down with her plate we hadn't talked and i sat there on the other side of the table and uh being an 18 year old idiot 19 years however all i was and so i broke the silence by saying what's your problem well well well uh never said i was a genius never so karen took her plate and dumped it over the top of my head now let me say the yeah well all the women are like yes karen well let me say the part that hit my mouth was delicious okay so karen had a little volkswagen beetle if you remember those things she had a little red velvet wagon beetle so she ran out got in her volkswagen beetle i had her blocked in the driveway so she throw through the fence in the backyard to get out welcome to jimmy evans jeremy jimmy and karen evans so we were just completely dysfunctional now we have some friends that have a marriage ministry now they've got the worst testimony i've ever heard in my life about how dysfunctional they were he was a builder um and they fought all the time and so one day they had this huge fight and he went out and got in his truck his building truck and he got his nail gun and nailed her in the house he nailed every door and window closed so she could not get out of the house and now they have a marriage ministry he teaches men how to nail their wives in the house and she teaches them how to get out it's a wonderful ministry that you need to look into so i want to talk about anger you know processing we all get angry okay so i want to talk about the four don'ts of dealing with anger then i want to talk to you about conflict of resolution four dots of dealing with anger and this comes from the apostle paul ephesians 4 be angry do not sin do not let the sun go down on your wrath nor give place to the devil so that's where that comes from be angry but don't sin don't let the sun go down in your wrath nor give place to the devil okay so here's the first don't of dealing with anger don't deny your anger did you know that god gets angry there's nothing wrong with anger okay now yesterday's anger is a problem i'll talk about that just a minute but anger is normal you'll you will never be so spiritual that you don't get angry okay anger is just and it's a healthy emotion it's a necessary emotion okay so we need anger not saying our anger is always right but it's a very important emotion dysfunctional families will not embrace anger or they embrace it in the wrong way and they excuse destructive behavior but in a functional family the mantra of a functional family is it's okay to be angry we're not ashamed of our emotions and we're not afraid of anger now if you come out of a home if you're a child of divorce you're probably terrified of anger there's a book called the unexpected legacy of divorce by judith wallerstein and sandra blaxley and they talk about the effects of divorce on children and let me read an excerpt now from their book because children of divorce don't know how to negotiate conflict well many reach for the worst solutions when trouble strikes for example some will sit on their feelings not mentioning complaints or differences until their suppressed anger blows sky high others burst into tears and are immobilized or retreat into themselves or the next room and close the door but the most common tendency is to run away at the first serious disagreement and wrestle with unconscious demons this is because from the perspective of a child of divorce any argument can be the first step in an inevitable chain of conflict destroys marriages and i want to say this to parents you're training your children whether you know it or not you're training you're training your children on how we deal with anger and i say i grew up in a home never saw anger dealt with properly one single time but when parents divorce what it does to a child is to say anger can destroy the relationship so we want to avoid anger you can't avoid anger you can avoid the big anger by learning the skills of marriage you can avoid the destructive type of anger by learning to deal with your anger but you're going to get angry we're just human beings and we have good days and we have bad days you're gonna have anger okay and so the first thing is don't deny your anger okay so let me talk about two aspects of not denying your anger one is don't feel guilty about your anger don't let anyone make you feel guilty because you're angry listen to me i'm not saying my anger is right i'm just saying that it's real okay there are many reasons that we get angry first is legitimate violation you violated me you crossed the boundary you didn't do something you did something you shouldn't have done and so i'm angry okay but there's also anger because of ignorance or misunderstanding okay so i married karen beautiful woman uh we first got married i thought she's the most beautiful woman i've ever seen and she's the strangest being on the planet she is so and the reason she was strange is because she wasn't like me you know i don't know if you've noticed but i'm normal i'm the epicenter of normal and anyone not like me they're just not normal so karen wouldn't like me so she wasn't normal she was a very normal woman but i didn't understand women and so i got angry at her because i was an ignorant young man sometimes we get angry have you ever have you ever tried to put a child's toy together so who in the world knows how to put those things together hardest thing in the whole world but we get angry because we like that immaturity we get angry because we're immature we get angry because of unrealistic expectations there's a lot of reasons that we get angry so i'm not saying that my anger is right but i am saying it's real and i would like to talk about it and i'm talking about how to do that just a minute but if you don't deal with anger it causes health problems intestinal problems skin problems those kinds of things not anger is a very high consumer of our emotions and it will wear you out physically emotionally mentally emotional and mental problems depression the clinical definition of depression is anger turned inward when you don't deal with anger and you turn that inside of you it wears you out emotionally and one day you wake up and your emotions say we're not getting up today you've worn us out we don't have anything left and the only thing wrong is you just the anger inside of you that you didn't deal with just wore your emotions out by the way explosive anger that you see a person with explosive anger the reason they have explosive anger is they've been storing up gunpowder for many years little anger here little anger there little anger here and all of a sudden every time they get angry they explode they don't have a problem with anger they have a problem with unforgiveness and bitterness they have a problem because they haven't learned to resolve the anger of their past so if you have that kind of anger you can be over it in a very short period of time if you just learn to process the emotions that you have it also causes in marriage passive aggressive behavior passive aggressive behavior means i'm going to do what i know you don't want me to do and i'm not going to do what i know you want me to do so i'm going to eat chips in bed get some on your side i'm going to squeeze the toothpaste from the end put the toilet paper on backwards i'm going to do everything that i know drives you crazy that's passive aggressive and so i'm not going to deal with my anger in an overt proper manner i'm just going to emote all the time and drive you crazy so don't make people feel guilty don't feel guilty about the fact you're angry number two cultivate an atmosphere of honesty okay so you go to your spouse i went to a men's conference one time and this guy was speaking nutty guy and he said every man needs to sit down with his wife with a cup of coffee and say to your wife tell me what's wrong with me and i won't defend myself i thought you're a nut if i ask karen that she'll she'll tell me and i don't want to know because i wasn't a good husband i didn't i didn't i didn't live to please karen i really didn't i didn't really want to know her complaints so in a good store there is a customer relations counter now whether you know it or not if you're married you have a customer relations counter you have a customer relationship counter period but in the good stores the best stores have the best customer relations counters and if you have a problem and you go onto those stores you know it's a pleasant experience so there's a clothing store that i like to shop in and 15 years ago i bought a leather jacket in there and uh about three years later the shoulder blew out on the on the jacket and i took it back in there laid it on the counter and this young lady was behind the counter i said i would like to get this fixed if i could and she said did you buy this here yeah i bought this here a couple two three years ago i said it's not a warranty i said if you guys would just get it fixed i'll pay for it i don't mind she said that jacket shouldn't have done that mr evans i said yeah that's great i said but if you just fix it that's great she said well why don't you go there and get another one and i said i don't want to buy another one she said no no just go over there and get one and i said like for free she said go there's the leather jackets right over there just walk over there and get you one and bring it back up here and i said you're gonna give me another jacket for free she said mr evans just go right over there and get you a jacket and i went over there and i thought wow and i got this jacket but it was more expensive than the other one and i took it back over there and i laid it on the counter and i said this is more expensive than the other one i said but i like this one i'll take this one and i started reaching for my wallet she took her little wand there and she waved it over the the tag and she said thank you mr evans you're good i thought well i love you i love this store you just feel so safe they weren't threatened you know i said what are you talking about my jacket's bad you know they she wasn't upset with me she just treated me so politely but let me tell you about another story so uh i bought someone gave me a gift it was a shirt somebody gave me a gift and so karen you know i had the gift and i opened it it was a shirt and a shirt and so i said hey karen karen was ironing at the time and i said karen would you mind pressing this shirt because i think i'll go ahead and wear it so she pressed it and i put it on but it didn't fit because it was an italian cut so i put it back in the box and took it back to the store where the person bought it okay and i took it i took it in and i put it up on the counter and i said hey um i need to exchange this shirt if i could it's the wrong size and the guy behind the counter took the shirt out it had been pressed he said well this shirt's been worn we don't take my huge merchandise so no it actually hadn't been worn my wife pressed it but i couldn't wear it because it doesn't fit i said but i just want to get another one if i could he said the shirt's used it's been worn we don't take back he was merchandise and i said no dad he said yeah it has i said no it hadn't he's he has no idea so we just kind of locked that and so finally he got his manager so the manager came over and his manager so the manager never looked at me he never made eye contact with me so the manager walks up and the guy says to the manager this guy wants to exchange this shirt but it's been worn i said no it hadn't manager never looked at me so the manager took the shirt out of the box and started holding it up into the light and then he smelled the armpits and threw the shirt down and said give him another one walked off and i thought i don't want your stinking shirt sit here and call me a liar you need to be thankful i know jesus i mean you just feel so welcome to marriage i need to complain i need to complain you're not a perfect store i'm not a perfect store i need to complain okay so we all have a complaint counter and so in a good marriage it's like this baby i want to be your department store of love i want you to come shop here and i want you to know you got any problems you come right up here i'm going to give you another one with a smile because i'm here to serve you and please you and the number one way that i serve jesus on this earth is by serving you and if you're not happy i'm not doing my job now after you've been married for 48 years you have code language okay and so i was had a terrible marriage i didn't want karen to complain with me when she did i just shamed her i had a terrible customer relations counter but here's the way our marriage is today i'll say to karen are you okay that's all i have to say and here's what that means if there's anything in your life not right i will crawl through cut glass to make sure it's right because there's nothing more important in my life than you are you okay and karen will say yeah i'm good that's how i know i'm a good husband and karen will say are you okay i say yeah and if we need to talk about anything that's how we talk about it but there's one of two ways that you're going to deal with anger if you don't have an atmosphere of honesty in your home your spouse is going to complain and you're going to shame them you're going to attack them you're going to reject them you're going to ignore them because you don't have a good customer relations counter but if you invite them say to your spouse if i'm doing anything that's not see we can't meet our own needs if i could if i could meet my own needs i wouldn't get married so when i get married i'm at your i'm your mercy okay because i'm also sworn to fidelity with you i can't shop in other stores i have to shop in your store and if there's something wrong with your store i can't go somewhere else so i have to complain to you and if you're not meeting my needs and i can't complain i'm stuck would you please let me complain without being threatened because i love you very very much i think your store is mostly really wonderful but you got a couple of aisles that aren't that good so don't deny your anger okay number one number two don't justify sin because you're angry be angry don't sin okay so it just means trust god the only way you can defeat a spirit is with the opposite spirit and jesus said love your enemies pray for those who spitefully use you when you do it the bible says god is going to honor you the other part is this an outburst of anger according to galatians 5 is a deed of the flesh it's what our fallen flesh does and it says but the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control the holy spirit is the oil the engine of your emotions was designed to run on and without the holy spirit in your emotions you're going to constantly be heating up okay you go in a car if your car has oil in it it is amazing what a car can do that's well lubricated but you take the best car in this parking lot and you take the oil out it's going to heat up and lock down without the holy spirit in your life every day you're going to live angry you're going to fly off the handle be angry but don't sin don't justify bad behavior regardless of what another person is doing you trust god and you invite the holy spirit into your emotions number three don't go to bed on your anger this is a big one don't go to bed on your anger this is what paul says don't let the sun go down your anger when you go to bed on anger it destroys feelings of intimacy passion and optimism this is how a couple goes from being madly in love in front of a preacher to hating each other in front of a judge one drop of unresolved anger at a time it creates a habit pattern in us and an iniquity for our children you're teaching your children whether you realize it or not it builds an intensity for the future today's anger is no problem yesterday's anger is a big problem and it opens the door for the devil here's number four uh don't and that is um don't let the devil in your marriage okay so the word here for devil it says be angry don't sin don't let the sun go down in your wrath nor give place to diabolos it's the word for devil in the greek it means slanderer don't give a place for the slander okay and so when the when the devil comes in let me talk about stealth for just a minute so um when the devil comes into your marriage it's because many times it's because you have unresolved anger and that opens the door for him so the devil is stealthy in the garden of eden satan took the form of a serpent why do you take the form of a serpent because serpents aren't seen they're stealthy they bite you before you know it because they're there and you didn't know they were there the devil does not present himself it would be so wonderful if the devil would just knock on our front door you go to the front door there's a guy with a red suit on horns bifurcated tail pitchfork i'm satanist devil could i come in and destroy your life nope wouldn't that be wonderful but that's not what he does he slithers in like a snake he's he's stealthy and he comes and goes and you get deviled and you don't even know it that's what makes him so dangerous and so he's a deceiver he convinces you that a wrong response will bring right results he convinces you that obedience to god's word and a response of faith will not produce results and he's an accuser and he begins to accuse your spouse to you so um karen and i went to bed angry well i went to bed angry at karen hundreds of times in the first three years of marriage remember i told you my family didn't we didn't know how to talk about anger and so uh the way i would deal with anger is i would give karen the silent treatment and i would just stop talking okay and and so i laid in bed you know you you fight you're fighting and you go to bed angry and you're laying back to back not breathing because you don't want to give your spouse the benefit that you're still alive and we had friends of ours and i went to bed angry and they were laying back to back not not talking you know like that and he she had the covers on her he didn't have any covers on him so he started shivering and he was too proud to grab for the cover so finally she just went off crying out loud threw the covers over you're laying there and all these thoughts are racing through your head did you know a lot of those thoughts aren't your thoughts did you know that diablos is slandering your spouse to you while you're angry how do i know that's what happened to me i went to bed if you have if you have gone to bed on anger regularly you have been counseled by the devil and you're not aware of it if you have gone to bed on anger regularly towards your spouse or anyone else you have deeply held beliefs about them that are wrong and they're from the devil now here's how i know so karen and i fought all the time and you know i've worked all the time golfed all the time horrible husband and karen would complain never listened to her complaints we were on the brink of divorce one night or one morning i woke up and i read my bible every day i was a jerk but i was a sanctified jerk and i i read my bible every day and so i woke up and it was uh james or john 16 where jesus said when the holy spirit comes he'll lead you into all the truth went to work that day went to play golf came home karen was complaining she was a sweet woman and she was just saying jimmy can't you come home and be with me and julie and do you have to golf all the time and i said get out because i was just being a particular idiot that day get out go pack your bags go home i don't care where you go get out of the house i'm tired of you complaining and so karen ran down the hallway into the bedroom crying i'm in the living room and i'm thinking to myself i don't i don't want her leave but i don't know how to i don't know i don't know what to do if she stays i don't know what to do she goes i mean i just i feel trapped in this relationship and i'm thinking to myself i know i'm right she's married to mr wonderful she just doesn't appreciate it that's the problem so i had two thoughts in my mind very very strongly in my mind she's the problem i married the wrong woman that's what i thought and she's in the bedroom crying and i'm just thinking what is she is so weird she what is wrong with her and i'm in the i'm in the living room and i remember the scripture from that morning when the holy spirit comes he'll lead you into all truth so i'm sitting there and i said to the holy spirit holy spirit teach me how to be a husband i don't know how that's the first time i'd ever admitted that i didn't know something teach me how to be a husband i don't know how at that moment something fell off of my eyes something dropped off of my eyes and for the first time in now the minute before that i thought to myself i am mr wonderful i just accidentally married the devil's ex-wife who knew i didn't know i wouldn't have done it okay the second after that i'm thinking i'm married to the most wonderful woman in the world and i'm the biggest idiot in the world i had been looking at karen through the devil's eyes for years because i went to bed on anger and he slandered her to me every single night and i had deeply held beliefs about karen that were from the devil and i tried to enforce that on her she's the problem i married the wrong woman you know how many people have divorced because of that right there and we're sitting there on the brink of divorce i went to the bedroom that night and i said karen i'm sorry i'm so sorry for what i've done to you i'm so sorry for the way i've treated you that is the night that our marriage was saved and i'm telling you if you go to bed on anger you're inviting the devil into your marriage so what do you do you devil proof your you devil proof your marriage here's what i found out you just make a decision we're not going to go to bed on anger okay in our marriage we're making a decision we're not going to give each other the silent treatment go to bed mad and do that kind of a thing it's going to destroy our marriage and here's what i found over the years the later it gets the more humble i become six or seven let's fight sister i can go all night eight or nine i'm still good i'm all right 10 or 11. let's talk midnight i may be i may be wrong one or two i know it's my fault i repent forgive me but we're not going to be mad and you say well what if my spouse won't talk to me about it you can devil proof your heart by forgiving them before you go to bed even if they won't forget they won't talk about it you can forgive them keep satan out of your heart he's a slanderer and he hates your marriage and unresolved anger gives him the legal right to enter into your life to slither in and to leave lies about your spouse and slither out you don't know it came from him you think he came from you you think you're enlightened you're deceived okay okay let me talk about let me talk about conflict resolution real quick here are the four steps to conflict resolution number one confront in a loving and positive manner always begin confrontation with love proverbs 15 1 a soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger so a conversation according to the university of washington they've done decades of marriage research a conversation never rises above the level of the first three minutes so if you come at your spouse blazing and you're coming straight about saying i'm sick and tired of you and i've got one hour divorce.com on my computer and if you don't say what i want you to say i'm going to hit enter not going to go well those kind of conversations are not going to go anywhere don't start a conversation like that start it like this i'm upset but i love you very much and i'm glad we're married and we're going to work this thing out but and i'm committed to our relationship but i am upset and i'd like to talk okay so start start in a loving and positive manner number two complain and don't criticize you can't criticize but you can complain well what's the difference complaining is about me criticizing is about you here's two times so karen says something to me that upsets me and i go up to karen and i say to her hey karen this morning in the kitchen you said something to me and it upset me i don't i know you probably didn't mean anything about it can i tell you how it made me feel uh it made me feel like you were getting back at me for yesterday i know you probably aren't but that's it made me feel that way okay so would you mind talking to me about that that's complaining it's about me i'm not accusing you of anything this is about me i would just like to talk okay so you don't feel threat this is criticizing you know karen we had that conversation in the kitchen this morning and i know i know exactly what you're trying to do you haven't forgiven me for yesterday because you never do you never do and so you said that to just kind of go to me and get to me because you still hadn't forgive me and and you know something i'm sick of it i'm sick of the way you treat me and all this kind of stuff and the judge and jury have met and we've decided you're guilty and if you'll go ahead and confess we'll go easy on you everybody hates that you're you're accusing me of something that i didn't do you're you're telling me how i feel you you're telling me what my motives are and all i can do is confess and everybody hates that that's called criticism if you come at your spouse harshly and you begin to criticize them see the bible says that we enter in god's gates with thanksgiving and enter into his courts with praise listen god doesn't ever let a negative person into his heart we enter into his courts with praise we're made in the image of god if you come at me negatively i'm going to shut my gates to you you can talk to my ears my heart will not listen my heart is too sensitive to let a negative person come in with guns blazing so when you come to me complaining saying this is how i feel i'm not accusing you would you talk about this absolutely yeah absolutely you come criticizing me all the guard goes up you cannot solve a problem until you do it on the heart level if you want intimacy in your marriage you have to deal with issues on a heart level and you cannot deal with issues on a heart level when you're critical of each other and you're coming at each other harshly here's here's number three listen to your spouse and believe them okay this is this is first corinthians 13 love suffers long and is kind love does not envy love does not parade itself is not puffed up does not behave rudely does not seek its own is not provoked thinks no evil does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth bears all things listen believes all things hopes all things endure all things well why do i say that there because if you've gone to bed on anger you have deeply held beliefs about your spouse that aren't true and you'll go to them and you'll say this and this and this and they'll respond to you and you'll say i don't believe you of course you don't you're seeing them through the devil's eyes the devil has slandered your spouse to you night after night after night and the only thing that you will believe is something consistent with what he told you you need to understand if you've gone to bed angry you've got a lot of information in you that's wrong and you're seeing your spouse wrong so when you say to them this this this and they respond say i believe you i believe great thank you here's number four forgive and let it go you have you have to forgive okay so how do you forgive um you forgive i mean you just forgive them and you want now if you keep bringing it up and if you pay them back if you withhold affection from them or you pay them back you haven't forgiven so be forgiving means i'm not going to bring it up again unless the issue comes up again and you will not pay a price i'm not going to withhold from you i'm not going to be mean to you anything like that i'm going to continue to love you like i would now some people say well i keep forgiving them but nothing changes in my heart jesus said bless those who curse you and praise for those who respectfully use you i'm not a hater but i have hated a couple of people real good and one of them was when i first became a pastor 40 years ago and this guy tried to do me a lot of harm and i just hated his guts i had a little torture chamber down in my heart i drug him down there often just beat the fool out of him all the time and really enjoyed it and one day karen said to me jimmy your personality is changing it was i felt depression coming because of this anger i i didn't know what to do about it and i was praying one day and i said lord i don't know what to do about this way that i feel about this man and the lord said i want you to bless him and i thought you know lord if i if i pray for you to bless him and you bless him i'll be real mad at you i don't want that man blessed and he's and you know the lord never says well you're right jimmy and so um i started blessing this guy didn't mean it had my fingers crossed didn't mean it started blessing him and the lord said i want you to pray for him what you pray for you and i thought he's he deserves death i'm a wonderful person why would you want me to pray for him and he said you pray for him we pray for you i did it for about 10 days and one day about 10 days later i was praying and i saw a vision of a boy about 10 years old standing in a field it was like on a ranch or something and this boy was standing out by a house in a field and i knew that something very very bad had happened to this boy didn't know what it was but it was horrible and then i realized that boy was the man i hated and the lord said this to me jimmy you see that man for what he did to you i see him for what happened to him and my hatred turned to compassion i never hated him again i never had a negative thought about him again when you bless it forces forgiveness out of your head into your heart and if you cannot bless you haven't forgiven you need to pray blessing over your spouse every single day do not let anger we all get angry there's nothing wrong with angry be angry don't justify bad behavior don't go to bed on it or you'll give an open door for the devil learn learn to deal with anger in a functional way you may be terrible at it we were awful at it karen and i were terrible about it but when you keep dealing with it in a biblical way you get better and better and better and the wonderful thing about that is you have a great marriage where anger is not an issue it's not a danger and you raise children that are trained to deal with anger okay i want you to bow your heads in fact i want you to stand with me if you would let me pray for you just bow your heads if you would now lord we come and all of us have made mistakes in this area this is something there's not a perfect person in this room related to anger lord we don't want to give the devil the ability to destroy our marriages or our lives or our health through unresolved anger lord we bind in jesus name every lie that diabolos has told us about our spouse or any other person we repent for going to bed on anger and not forgiving and allowing these thoughts to come into our mind holy spirit just as you took the blinders off my eyes related to karen i pray lord right now take the blinders off of our eyes for every relationship where we're seeing people through the devil's eyes the diabolos has slandered them or take those take those glasses off and give us the ability to see people through your eyes we forgive our spouse we forgive our parents we forgive anyone in our lives that we're angry at and we bless them we're committed to blessing them lord until our heart is healed until our heart is pure holy spirit we need you in our lives to be the oil of the engine of our heart that we can live our lives in peace and not be destroyed by anger lord i pray right now holy spirit free us fill us do a supernatural work in those couples and those people right now they're really struggling and they're really angry supernaturally intervene in their lives and in their marriages in jesus name amen god bless you guys [Applause]