What to Do When Loosing Your Cool

Have you ever found yourself venting about people who get under your skin, about people who are insensitive, rude and sometimes just wicked?   Do you ever find yourself loosing your joy because there is so much evil in the world today? Well, if you’ve ever felt this way, then God’s Word ought to be an encouragement to you today. Because loosing your cool is never God’s way of dealing with people who are difficult, hurtful or even evil to us. That’s what David addressed when he wrote Psalm 37 – A Psalm he wrote after He almost lost it with one of the more evil men of the Bible: Nabal.

His encounter with Nabal is recorded for us in 1 Samuel 25. At this time David and his men were living in the wilderness of Paran protecting shepherds from the wild tribes who would try to steal their flocks and plunder their villages. One of the flocks David was protecting were the sheep of Nabal. Now Nabal was quite wealthy. So when shearing time came, David sent some of his men to collect a little compensation for their help. But the Bible also tells us that Nabal was a mean and surly man. So when David’s men came to him, he treated them with contempt and refused to give them anything. When word got back to David of Nabal’s ingratitude this is how David responded: “It has been useless – all my watching over this fellow’s property in the wilderness so that nothing of his was missing. He has paid me back evil for good. May God deal with David, be it ever so severely, if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him.” 1 Samuel 25:21-22

David was coming unraveled and was ready to go on a murderous rampage. But God intervened by sending Abigail (Nabal’s wife) to David. She had just come from giving David’s men all they needed and now she came to David and interceded for her husband. And God used her to turn David’s anger away. Ten days latter, God took matters into His own hands and struck Nabal dead and Abigail then became David’s wife. Out of that encounter David comes these words recorded for us Psalm 37:1-9

What did David learn from his encounter with this evil man?

Don’t Loose Your Cool – That’s what David is saying to us in his Psalm: Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong; Ps 37:1 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it only leads to evil. Psalm 37:8

What David is telling us is that there will always be evil people in our world: people who are difficult, hurtful, mean and wicked. There will be people who abuse their wealth to take advantage of the weak. There will be people who are so corrupted by their sin that that they will say things that will offend you and do things that will wrong you. But we are to not fret. We are to not to get angry, not to get even… because that’s just not God’s way. God’s way is to overcome evil with good. We are to have nothing to do with anger in the face of evil people, “Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” James 1:20 So don’t loose your cool. Keep your anger in check. There’s another way to deal with evil people. And what is that? Don’t loose your cool…

But Trust in the Lord – Psalm 37:3-7 Now I don’t know about you, but that seems like a Sunday School answer. “My neighbor is making life difficult for me, what should I do?” Trust in the Lord. “My children are being selfish and only want me for what they can get from me; what should I do?” Trust in the Lord. “My husband is emotionally abusive to me; what should I do?” Trust in the Lord. “Fine, you tell me to trust in the Lord. But how do I do that?” This is the beauty of David’s Psalm. He now spells out four ways how we can trust in the Lord. How we can stop obsessing over wrongs and start turning the table by putting our trust in God. And the first way to do that is…

By Letting Him Work Through You Verse 3 says, Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. If you’re trusting in the Lord, you’re not just sitting on your hands waiting. Your going to live by faith, a faith that says, “I will do things God’s way, not the way of the world.” “I’m going to overcome evil with good.”

Doing good is central to who God is. In fact, the name David uses of God in this Psalm is Yahweh. It’s His covenantal name. Yahweh means: God exists for the good of those He Loves. God brings us into relationship with Him so He can do good to us. How? Well, one way we He does good to us is by forgiving us of our sin. His forgiveness then provides reconciliation – He makes us friends. So one way we can do good… one way we can let God work through us is by making friends. What makes someone a friend? A friend is someone you share life with, share a meal with, share your heart with. Friends welcome you into their life. Friends listen. Friends don’t judge. Friends have your back.

Think about it, everyone needs friends. When you are busy making a friend its pretty easy to forget the bad person who is making your life miserable. When’s the last time you opened up your life and welcomed a new friend? It’s risky but it’s definitely good. Think what God might do if this is how we trusted Him? By making friends! The next time you’re feeling vexed by the evil in this world, stop letting it get to you and start looking at how you can be a blessing to a neighbor. That’s one way we can trust the Lord. By doing good. By letting Him work through us. Here’s another way:

By Letting Him Satisfy Your Heart Verse 4 says, Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Take delight in God. Enjoy God. To some of you this might seem to be a strange command. But if you start to think about it, taking delight in God may be the most natural thing for us to do. Think about the things we delight in: We take delight in our children, our grandchildren. When Becky and I were on vacation one of the first things we took delight in was enjoying Salmon Fish & Chips together in Cannon Beach. We took delight in walking on the beach. We took delight in holding hands and just being together. Taking delight is at the core of what it means to be human. Some of you take delight in creating things like pottery or photography or woodworking. Some of you take delight in traveling or reading or just laughing with friends. We all delight in taking delight. That’s how God made us. So, if you think about it, if God made us to experience delight and God gave us all this great stuff to delight in, then maybe He’s worth taking delight in!

Listen to how John Piper explains this for us: “Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendships and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel… but not God. He was an idea – even a good one and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure of delight. Then something miraculous happened. It was like the eyes of the blind opened during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then a shock and terror that we had actually loved the darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that this is the soul’s end. The quest is over. We would give anything if we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever.” (John Piper)

This world leaves us empty and wanting. It fails to satisfy. Only God can satisfy the longings of our heart. Do you believe this? This is how we can trust in God. We can let the maker of hearts satisfy our hearts. This is what David says: Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. You see, we waste far too much energy and life obsessing on evil. Yes, our world is broken. Yes, there is much injustice and suffering in our world.   But God doesn’t want evil to steal our joy. So, maybe its time we made God our obsession. Spend time with the One who loves you with an everlasting love and take delight in Him. Learn to praise Him. Learn to Love Him. Take delight in Him. Taste and see that He is good. That’s how we are to trust in the Lord.  Let Him satisfy your heart. After all your heart was made for Him.

Now, so far David has given us two ways we can trust in the Lord. First, to let him work through us by doing good, and second, by taking delight in Him. And if that isn’t enough, David gives us a third way to trust in the Lord. How?

By Letting Him Carry Your Stuff Verse 5 says, Commit your way to the Lord   Now, to commit your way to Him literally means to “roll your burdens off your backs on to Him.” Let God carry your burdens. That’s what 1 Peter 5:7 says, “Cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you.” Sounds easy doesn’t it? But its not that easy. Why? Because we are just too eager to carry our own burdens. We have a saying, “Carry your own weight.” This is especially true for us guys. If a guy doesn’t carry his own weight, we look down on him. He’s not really being a man. But this kind of thinking keeps us from trusting in God, because it focuses on trusting in ourselves.

And when we trust in ourselves rather than in God to carry our stuff, we are never really free. In fact, this little phrase “Commit your way to the Lord” actually speaks to all of life. Your way speaks to everything we carry on our own: including all our negative feelings, our nagging questions, and the concerns we carry about our country, our children, our health, our future – everything.

The idea here is that God expects his children to be children and to put ourselves completely under his Fatherly care. And when we do, we are putting everything in our lives into His hands – and we are trusting in Him to work. And when we do that, we are free. You see we have a big, great, loving God that cares about all our needs. He doesn’t want us to worry, He doesn’t want us to fret, He doesn’t want us to fear. He simply wants us to hand everything over to him.

I learned this one years ago, and I do a little exercise in prayer that helps me to do this. Whatever I am worried about, whatever I am dreading, fearing, or anything that’s beyond my control… I’ve simple learned to open my hands in prayer and give it to him. And sometimes that’s not easy to do. Sometimes it takes giving whatever stuff I’m carrying to Him, and doing it over and over and over again… until I’m no longer taking it back. What about you? What stuff are you carrying? What stuff are you holding onto? Let it go, let it roll off your shoulders into God’s mighty hands. That’s how to trust God.

And of course there’s one final way. Trust in the Lord By Letting Him Quiet Your Soul In verse 7, David says it this way: Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him

This final way of trusting in the Lord may be the hardest for us. It is hard for us to be still, to be silent in God’s presence. In fact, the command here is literally “quiet yourself” before the Lord. The picture that comes best to mind for me of this quietness in God’s presence is of an infant snuggled in the arms of her mother. She is content, she is warm and safe and secure in her arms. She has no fears and no wants. She looks with love into her mother’s eyes and smiles. And her mother smiles at her. This is what trust looks like in its simplest and finest form.   When one is resting in his Father’s arms, there are no worries, there is no fretting, only peace: The sheer contentment of being loved and knowing that God’s got everything under control. Sometimes I think, of all the ways we can trust God, this is the one way God wants most. For when we are quiet before Him, there is only Him… and us. For when we cease from all our striving, when we stop fretting and are finally still, we can be with God and know His smile.

I think today, this is precisely what we need. We don’t need to do anything for God. We don’t need to right the wrongs of the world. We don’t need to sing His praises. We don’t need tell him all our burdens. We just need to be still and rest in the power and love of God.

So that’s how I want to end this talk today. In the quietness of His presence. Let us trust in the Lord, for He is mighty. Let us trust in the Lord for His is Good. Let us be still and rest in the comfort of His loving arms. Be still and wait patiently for Him.

Can we do that? Will you do that with me now.