Series: The Sermon on the Mount
May 23, 2021 - Kurt Cotter

You guys know what today is? It’s Pentecost Sunday! Woo! It’s the day that we remember when the Spirit of God was poured out upon the Church and everything changed. So, when David asked me to speak on my anger story, I thought, How am I going to tie that into Pentecost Sunday? I will do it!

One of the things I want to say is, David talked about last week, he said that the way we really experience change is we walk in the Spirit. In Galatians 5 it says “Walk in step with the Holy Spirit.”

The way I look at it is, I like to think of Jesus introduced the Holy Spirit in John 14, 15 and 16, and he called him our helper. He called him our comforter, our counselor, our teacher. And he invited us into a relationship with God the Holy Spirit. So I want you to know that what I’m going to share today, it didn’t happen by might or by my power, but by the Spirit of God. He’s our helper.

So I hope you guys will learn how to work with the Holy Spirit and let him give you the power to fulfill what the scripture says. So let’s pray as we open up in Matthew 5:21.

Father, we thank you for your presence that’s here. We celebrate the coming of your Holy Spirit, and we invite you into this room, that you would work in our lives, that you would show forth Jesus through us. And we ask it in your name. Amen.

Okay. Matthew 5:21 through 24 is the scripture I’m going to focus on today.

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

We all know that God looks at the heart. Man looks at the outward appearance. But when he sees inside of a heart of a person anger, it’s a serious issue with God. We can tell by what we were just reading. Here Jesus says, “Yes, you’ve heard it said if you murder someone you’re subject to judgment. But I say if you’re angry with a brother or sister you’re subject to judgment. In fact, if you call them a fool you’re also in danger of judgment.”

Now, I know firsthand about the damage that can happen in relationship because of destructive anger. And the things I spoke out of my mouth to those that I love, especially. I think everyone agrees that, when you first give your life to Christ, you become a new creature. Old things are passed away. All things have become new. And you change, right? But a lot of people don’t realize that even after thirty years of walking with Jesus, he still wants to change us and he wants to transform us into his likeness.

So, how can we change? Jesus is changing us from glory to glory. It says this in 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NKJV), which is not in front of you. But you all know this one.

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

So we are being changed as we gaze upon the face of Jesus and behold his glory. He’s changing us from glory to glory. Anybody know what’s in between the glories? A whole lot of painful things to change your life. That’s what I’m going to talk about.

Also, the other verse that’s very familiar to you is Romans 12:2 (NKJV). It says:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

So, as we surrender our lives to Jesus every single day, he’s renewing us and transforming us by the renewing of our minds. Our minds need to change. They need to be renewed.

So, today I want to share a practical side of what it means to walk in the Spirit, what it means to see a change by the grace of God, the power of God’s word, as God changed me from having a horrible anger problem.

I’m originally from West Covina, California. I’m one of seven kids. I’m number five and I have a twin brother who doesn’t even look like my brother. He’s four minutes older than me. We’re fraternal twins.

My dad was a World War II vet. He was a marine raider and a gunner in the South Pacific. He went in when he was sixteen. I still have his uniform. He came out and he had PTSD. They called it being shell shocked in those days. One of the issues that a person with PTSD struggles with is a lot of anger. And so I saw it growing up very much.

So, at the age of sixteen, I was the first one in my family to ask Jesus Christ to be the Lord of my life and my Savior. It was during the Jesus People Movement — especially in SouthernCalifornia it was really rocking.

My mom and dad didn’t really like the changes they saw in me. My life changed so radically they thought I was involved in a cult. So my dad actually found, he looked in a law book to see if he could find a law that, if you can’t control your minor, then you can turn them over to the police, to the juvenile authorities. He found one and took me to the police station and he made me promise I wouldn’t go back to church until I was eighteen.

The police officer dropped his jaw on the ground and was like, “What? You don’t want your son to go to church?” He said, “Well, doesn’t this law say this?” And he said, “Yes, Mr. Cotter, it does.”

So I had to promise I wouldn’t go back to church. So during that time I remember the guy who discipled me, Andre Jackson, he stayed in touch with me and prayed for me. Then one day I took a loving stand and I just came down and said, “Mom and Dad, I love you, but I love Jesus more and I want to go back to church.”

So, to make a long story short, my mom beat me. She said, “How would you like a beating for Jesus?” I said, “Go for it.” So she just slapped me. After that, she came with me to church. She found out that it wasn’t a cult. She almost came to Christ that day.

For me, it was like this was real. I saw light and darkness. I knew what it was like to just really give it all to Jesus. So I continued to serve Jesus and ended up feeling a call to ministry. So straight out of high school in 1976 I moved out here to go to Bible college. It was called Sweetwater Bible College and it was part of Sweetwater Church. A couple of years after that, I met my beautiful wife, Faith, who plays the keyboards. You guys know her. The week after I graduated from Bible college, we got married. It was May 30, 1980, which we’re celebrating our anniversary next week.

Fast forward to 1993. We came to Living Streams and I was a youth pastor, believe it or not, here, with our little family. A little after I came on staff here, Faith and my two older kids, Melody and Jason, they were trying to help me see a blind spot. Anybody have blind spots? It got so bad, my anger problem was so bad that Faith was considering leaving me if I didn’t change. So she fasted and prayed and she and my two oldest kids lovingly confronted me on one Saturday.

They said, “You have an anger problem.” I remember I had a bigger problem called denial. It’s not a river in Egypt. It’s a reality and it was in my life. I would say, “You think this is anger? I’m a puppy dog compared to my dad!”

I have this funny thing. I like to talk to the Lord and he talks to me when I mow the lawn. So, on Saturday — I love mowing the lawn. I still do. I did it yesterday. — So I’m out there mowing the lawn after I just lived in denial.

By the way, you guys. We all know the verses that say, “Be anger and sin not.” And we go and say, “Well, Jesus made a whip and drove out the money changers in the temple.” I knew all of that and I used to use it in my denial.

Anyway, I asked the Lord, I said, “Lord, do I have an anger problem?” And I’m over there mowing the lawn. And he said, “Either those you love most are wrong again and you’re right again, or it’s the other way around.” And I go, “Oh, wow! You’re saying I have an anger problem.”

I remember coming into the house and just breaking and crying. I said, “I know I’ve said I’m sorry a hundred times, but this time I want to change.” And I said, “Please, help me.” So I asked them for their forgiveness. This time I knew I had to repent if I was ever going to really, really change. So I camped out in Psalm 51. You guys know the Psalm where David is repenting from his sin with Bathsheba? It’s a place of humility. It’s a place of being broken at the foot of the cross.

So then I asked my family, I said, “So help me understand what I do.” They would let me know that, not only was it my words, but my body language. They said, “You scream at us with your eyes and you get this vein popping out on your neck.” It was also my tone, a condescending tone, angry tone. Fifty-five percent of communication is body language, you guys. Thirty-seven percent is tone. So you’re going to have to work on those parts, too.

One of the things I learned about repentance is that I couldn’t blame anybody. I had to stop being defensive and stop blaming people for it and making excuses. I needed to come to a place where I owned how I made them feel, how my yelling hurt them, the ones that I loved the most.

So Jesus took me on a journey and he started to show me the roots of my anger. One of the roots that he showed me was that I would feel frustrated and I would get pictures in my mind. I would feel like a dog that’s being cornered, that would growl. I remember saying many times, “What do you want me to do?” When I was frustrated. And I couldn’t show frustration with out showing anger. I didn’t know how. That was one of my roots. I had to deal with the frustration in my life.

The second root was what I call the pressure cooker. I would let all the things, the stressful things people said or did, just build up and build up and build up. Sometimes it was passive aggressive. You know? You just hold it in, thinking, Oh, I’ll be fine. Then, when you least expect it, with those you love most, you explode. And that’s what was happening all the time in my life. And I didn’t like it.

Then, the third root was when I felt disrespected. I think we as men, I think women do too, we like to be respected. Even Ephesians 5 says, “Husbands love your wife as Christ loved the Church, wives respect your husband.”

I was doing all the wrong things to get respect. So there was this thing the Lord began to show me. There’s this principles that, if you believe a lie you get into bondage. But if you believe the truth the truth shall set you free. Right? So the Holy Spirit began to show me the lies I was believing. I know there were many of them.

But one of them happened on one of the Saturdays, I remember, with my two older kids. I don’t know. To me it’s chore day. Right? I’m still old school. So I was like, not only I’m doing chores, but I said to my older kids, “You need to clean your room.” So I told them, “Please clean your room.” Then, an hour later, I went over and checked the rooms and nothing happened in both rooms. So I went back to them and I said, and I turned the volume up the next time, and then I waited another hour and then I checked both rooms. Nothing was done. So this time, I went ballistic and just began to scream at them until I saw them actually go into the rooms.

In my mind I started believing this lie. See? It works! They respect me when I yell at them. But when I came to my senses, I go, “How many angry people do I respect?” Did I respect my dad when he was angry? I became fearful of him. So I was destroying my relationship with my kids, thinking I was getting respect from them.

So I really started to believe, when I came to my senses, that really what kids respect is when they see you with a humble heart lead by example, be honest about your faults, and don’t just sit there and use your anger. That doesn’t get respect.

After that, I started to go through this thing of being accountable to my family. I don’t know why Saturdays, but I decided to ask them to give me a grade. I would say, “How am I doing, guys?” And I remember, Jason, my oldest son, he goes, “I’ll give you a C+.” And I’m like, “Aw. What do I need to do?”

You know, one of the things that really helped me was asking them, because I have this cluelessness. Anybody ever struggle with cluelessness and insensitivity? I didn’t know how I came across to them. So my grade my started getting up to A’s. And God began to work in me.

The other thing was, when I talk to couples, I like to talk about environment in your home. So my relationship with my kids and my wife, at that time, I had walls come between us and I had a picture of egg shells everywhere. It was like, when dad comes home everybody just kind of goes in their room. “Mister Grump’s home again.” So I needed to learn how to sweep up the egg shells, tear down the walls and build an environment that’s like a well-watered garden.

One of the things that I wanted to learn to do is to develop a communication with my family where it was safe for them to open up, even about things that they’re having a struggle with me. I encourage you guys. Provide a safe environment where they can talk about anything that’s maybe bothering them about you.

I learned how to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to get angry.

I mentioned that my dad and the anger I saw in him growing up. I realized I needed to own my anger and I couldn’t blame my dad for my anger problem. But I did realize that I needed to forgive my dad and I needed to honor him that it may go well with me and my days will be long on the earth. Isn’t that the promise of God?

So I asked the Lord and the Lord had me write out a letter to my dad. He had me go on what I call a gold mining trip. I started to remember all the camping trips my dad took me on, and all the fishing trips he took me on, the way he gave one of his kidneys to one of my sisters at UCLA Medical Center when her kidney failed. And he stayed with my mom fifty years. And I wrote it all out to thank him. And you know what happened? I began to have all this unforgiveness go out the door. I was no longer offended.

So the next point is, stay unoffended. The last part of this verse that we just read was telling us that, if we remember someone that has something against us, leave your gift at the altar and go be reconciled to him. So part of my freedom was learning to forgive quickly and be unoffended. You know, when Jesus taught us to pray “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” so, even on a daily basis I take inventory and I say, “Lord, is there anybody I need to forgive? I release forgiveness right now. Open the cage and let them go free. You forgave me a great debt. So I forgive them.”

I found out my dad carried that letter with him until it became a little rag. Then something happened and my mom got Alzheimers later. Soon after that she died. My dad was still in the same house that were raised in in West Covina. He became very feeble and he needed my help. I became the pastor of the family. So I kept going back and forth. It was during that process that we became so close, we were like best friends. And I can tell you my dad gave his heart to Jesus right before he died. It’s so beautiful what the Lord did.

I’m here to tell you — my daughter over there, that’s why I’m crying. Rachel is 22 and she said, “Daddy, I’ve never seen your anger.” God changed me, you guys. I’m here to give you hope. If he can change a grouchy old man like me, he can change you, too.

But if I was to pick the most important thing about my lesson that I learned after being a Christian for many, many years and even a pastor, I needed to repent in order to change. So I would say repentance is a process. There’s a godly sorrow that’s works repentance. And there’s a change of mind. That’s what the word repent means. It means to change your mind and then you turn and the word of God renews your mind and you become a different person.

Bringing you back to the Day of Pentecost — I told you I would bring it back to Pentecost Sunday — when Peter preached the gospel, he focused on the resurrection of Jesus. At the end, with these 3,000 people, they said, “What must we do to be saved?” He said, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

Then, in Acts 3:19 (NKJV), it says this in another sermon that Peter preached:

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord,

You know what the word refreshing means in the Greek? Revival. When you repent and you turn your heart, you just surrender. The Holy Spirit begins to bring times of refreshing and a personal revival. May you experience a personal revival in your life today.

God bless you.

DAVID:

All right. Well, again, we came into this understanding that, as we speak about some very specific issues, I mean, our world wants us to focus on lots of different issues of what is making America or making society not great. It’s got our attention all over the place. But Jesus is trying to drill in to some weighty, weighty matters within humanity.

We knew that, as we would do this, it would probably stir up some stuff in our hearts, especially anger. Anger is not a 3%, 10%, 15% of the population type thing, but we probably all have a story whether our own anger produced something that is ugly, painful, or someone else’s anger that has done that to us.

We knew we were going to be doing this, so we wanted to create this time at the end. A little differently, a little more thorough than we usually do. And just ask the Spirit to come and minister his word deep into our souls in a supernatural way. So, Kurt and I, as we prayed and as Kurt prepared and even this morning as I was praying, there are a few things that came to mind that I feel like our people who are listening on line — just because you’re online don’t think you’re escaping this — and people in this room that the Spirit of God really wants to talk to right now. Wants to do something with this message besides just leave you hanging or unsure. Wants to come close. Like I said, we’re moving from a classroom to a hospital at this moment.

If you can hang in there, and if you can kind of try and fight off the birds of pride and the birds of fear that wants to come and nest in your soul, and allow the Spirit of God to come. I know it’s tempting to kind of just shut off and ignore when the Spirit pricks our hearts, to just run. But this is the time to really allow the Lord to come close and see what he has for us.

The first thing that I wrote down was somebody that basically just, in light of last year, they don’t have PTSD, they have PPSD. Post Pandemic Stress Disorder in some ways. The amount of beating they took, kind of like what Kurt was saying, the frustration, the pressure cooker of last year. It could be all of the little things, or it could be some big things like divorce or loss of certain relationships or family dynamics. And you just have found yourself now where, your skin is so thin and you don’t know how to get back to a place where you’re not so frustrated, you’re not so upset, you’re not so easily angered all the time.

What I felt the Spirit said was, that person, if they’ll acknowledge that, if they can receive that, then I’m supposed to minister to them the verse that Jesus said, “Come to me all that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” The Greek word for rest there is anapauō. It says “to cause or permit one to cease from any movement or striving in order to recover and collect their strength.” If we’ll figure out how to, instead of trying to figure it out more or try harder or strive more, if we’ll learn to quiet ourselves and really kind of practice silence and solitude, to try and get away with the Spirit of God like Jesus often did, that, what will happen is we’ll find that refreshing, that restoring, that replenishing. The gathering of strength, the collecting of strength will happen and we won’t be so quickly and easily angered.

The second person, was someone that really, when Kurt was talking about feeling disrespected. This is the person, whether you did it subconsciously or cognitively, you’ve really come now to the place where you are using anger as a tool to get love, to get respect, but it is a lesser and a counterfeit love that is never going to satisfy you. It might scratch an itch, but that’s it. You’ve been relying on anger to produce this and you’ve been using it to think, Maybe I have the power and authority. And it makes you feel better about yourself. But really you’re creating some sort of slavery, not some loving relationship.

In the face of that, I really felt like you were creating — when Kurt said that in this service, it really resonated in my heart — this egg shell environment for the people who you really love. You might not realize it because you don’t walk on egg shells, but everybody around you is, and can’t wait for the day to be away from you.

What’s so beautiful about Kurt’s story is he woke up before his wife decided, “I can’t be here anymore.” By God’s grace he woke up before his kids said, “Forget it. I’m done with this guy. I’m sick and tired of the egg shells he’s created.”

That was beautiful and wonderful and Kurt was able to repent. And Kurt has now, through the help of his kids, but really the Spirit, he gets to that place where, whenever he feels like he needs to act out in anger in order to get the thing done, to get the feeling that he wants, he now stops himself and says, “Okay, God, I’m giving you control. I’m letting you come in.” And when we give control to the Spirit, what happens is he gives us self-control. It’s one of the fruits of the Spirit.

The third thing is there’s someone out there who’s been holding on to offense and unforgiveness. They basically keep drinking that poison helping it will kill the person that they hate. It’s totally foolish. And it’s hard, because sometimes we really do get hurt. Injustice does happen in this life, in this fallen world.

And what Jesus is saying to you is you need to repent and you need to forgive. Not forgive once they sorry in the right way. But forgive because of what Jesus Christ has forgiven you. And to go ahead and write that note. Remember how he just started going on a treasure hunt and wrote down the things his dad did that were good, and all of those things, and trying to see past the other things. Because that’s what Christ has done for us. And that forgiveness slowly but surely took root in his heart and overcame the unforgiveness and bitterness. And that’s a word for you.

Another one is, as I thought of this one I started to weep a little bit, because there are people, again online or in here, that are just stuck. The damage has been done. They didn’t wake up before the wife left and the kids wrote them off. And now they’re alone and they’re angry. And they don’t really believe that anything good can change them. They’re too broken, too shattered.

In 1 Corinthians 12 we’re told that one of the gifts that the Spirit gives us is a gift of faith. I felt like the Spirit was telling me right there as we were singing these songs and I was listening to Kurt, that he wants to give the gift of faith to someone who’s in this situation. That without the Spirit actually quickening their soul in some supernatural way, there is no way that they could actually start hoping again and believing that they can be restored with their family.

But God is speaking to you. The Spirit is drawing near to you. The Spirit is quickening in your soul even now and he’s telling you, “Hey, it’s time to start believing. It’s time to start walking with Jesus, staying close to him and, in time, you will get to see redemption. That which was lost becoming found. That which was broken becoming whole. The years that the locust have eaten being restored to you in some sort of supernatural way.”

As you try and receive this, all of the fear of disappointment, all of the walls that you’ve put up, everything in you is just raging against this gift of faith that the Spirit wants to bring you. Yet, if you let it in, that faith will help you see mountains moved.

And the last thing was new for this service. The skeptic. There are people in here, again, you’ve heard it but you don’t believe it, that God intervenes. What I wrote down was: You don’t know if God intervenes, but you do know that anger controls you.

And God is meeting you here in this moment and he is saying, “Hey, you want to see what I can do? Walk with me and you will see your anger gone. It will not rule you anymore if you surrender your life to Jesus.”

Let’s pray:

Jesus, this was a lot. I don’t know where people are at in light of these specific things, but I pray that you would bring clarity and, Lord, that you would intervene. I pray specifically for that skeptic who’s listening. Whether it’s in this moment today or somehow they hear this later on on the internet, whatever it is, Lord, I pray that they would know that you’re speaking to them and they would trust you, they would surrender to you, and you would steal their anger away and you’d replace it with your peace. Thank you, Lord.
Lord, we pray that we really would receive everything you want. We want the greater righteousness, Lord, even though it scares us. But thank you for giving us your Spirit that can lead us there. Amen.

Will you guys stand with me as we kind of close with a song here. We have some people up front that would love to pray with you.

One last thing before we go, we have this text number that we’re going to pop up on the screen. We’re going to have this up throughout the next part of this series because we know this stuff can be a little personal and a little intense. We don’t anyone to go alone. We don’t want anyone to feel they have to do this stuff alone. So if you text this number you can stay anonymous or not, but we’re going to connect you with a pastor. And we’re going to connect you with something that will really help walk with you as you go through this journey. Because we want to see the full freedom coming. 602-932-1520

Watch

Unless otherwise marked, scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Biblica.