A Prayer Guide:

For When You’re Angry

Introduction

Anger is a protective emotion, a secondary emotion. What that means is that often when we are experiencing anger, we are using it to protect ourselves from something. It is useful in giving us information about how to respond in certain situations, but when it becomes a state of being, we can become stuck, unable to move forward, not yet touching on what is really affecting us. 

We can sit in our anger, wishing something wasn’t true, wishing we had more control, wanting life to be different, wanting ourselves to be different. Because we feel powerless to change any of it, and not yet ready to give it to God (because surrender is for the weak in this moment, or at least the less stubborn), we hold onto anger instead. 


The reality is, when we feel angry, we feel strong and often we feel justified. It’s tempting to stay here, because we also feel energized, like we can affect the situation, like we have some control over what is upsetting us. Anger gives us the feeling of agency, even if that agency is simply found in proving the other party is wrong through rumination or arguing. The problem is, these methods are more avoidant and damaging than they are helpful. Our anger coping mechanisms have a false allure of strength and safety.

Wanting to feel strong is a beautiful thing, the strength we long for is found in surrender.

Surrender is inviting God’s will into our life. It’s letting God be God, so that we don’t have to carry the weight of our lives (though I know sometimes we think we can do a much better job). It takes strength to trust something you cannot control, and the beautiful thing about surrender is that we are no longer relying on our own strength to be okay, to find a solution, or to understand. The reality is, if we could fix our lives, if we had the solution to our problems, they would already be resolved.

Often times the way out of difficulty is counter intuitive. Our own solutions often leave us right where we started, if not immediately, eventually. As much as we’d like, we cannot will power ourself into change, that’s why fad diets don’t work long term, and often it takes time to learn true solutions to our anger.

This is the beauty offered in relationship, with others as well as with God. Wise council and outside sources can help us heal, because coping methods we’ve created to navigate life often have an expiration date. Eventually the things we learned to help quell our anger when we were young, now lead to deeper and deeper holes we are standing in. Surrender is accepting the ladder out, admitting we don’t have the answers, and the thing we want to be the answer is likely just furthering the problem.

It’s hard to hear God when we are busy fighting him or fighting circumstance, holding onto our need to justify our anger. Oftentimes, we aren’t fighting reality so much as we are fighting the fear of a lie being true. We are fighting to protect ourselves from a deep belief about ourself (I’m stupid), about God (God doesn’t care about me), or about life (life isn’t supposed to be hard). So we dig our heels in, needing to be right, in the hope of sparing ourselves difficult feelings. If we can instead choose to let our anger quiet, we can again attune ourselves to the voice of God and we can begin to move forward. He can begin to reveal the true root and source of our anger, the thing we are protecting, and potentially begin to light the way forward.

Too often our need to be right blocks us from health, joy, and healing. Surrendering means allowing God to reshape us, to reshape our view of reality, and to walk us into healing and deeper intimacy with him.

Surrender gives God the chance and permission to be God in your life, to change things, to reconstruct your understanding of God, self, and the world. But surrender is entirely reliant on trust, and trust can be hard to give when you’re in fighting mode, or your frustration is aimed at the God you are supposed to be trusting. It’s hard to begin to give someone else authority in your life, to choose to listen to the truths, the wisdom found in the Bible, instead of the loud voices inside of our minds.

This is why knowing God’s character is so important. It’s why getting to know who he is, is the most important part of following Jesus. We need to be able to trust when we are jumping off of a rock we’ve been standing on for a long time, that he is there to catch us, and lead us on a new path. Surrender is entirely predicated on our view of God, and our ability to trust him to be who he says he is.

It’s hard. It takes courage. And he is good.

That’s a promise.

Below is a prayer guide meant to help you in moving through your anger. Take your time going through it, whether it’s an hour straight through, or several days or weeks. Anger cannot always resolve itself immediately. It can take time to allow ourselves to become vulnerable enough to share honestly with God.

My advice however, would be to try to move through all the steps, as each one is meant to move you closer to surrender. While honesty is great, you can only hang out there for so long before you are just being plain stubborn. 

Lastly, be kind and gentle with yourself. Whatever you’re angry about, it is with good reason and trusting God with the most tender parts of yourself is one of the most difficult things you can do. 

Praying for you in this process, friend. 

Prayer Guide

I remain confident of this:

  I will see the goodness of the

LORD

  In the land of the living

Psalm 27:13

  • Meeting Place - Choose a place where you feel comfortable and at home. It could be a favorite camping spot, your morning prayer space, or your childhood home. Imagine yourself sitting there. Now invite Jesus to sit with you. Spend some time simply imagining sitting with him in silence.

    When you’re ready invite him to be a part of your process. Tell him you will follow him in what he speaks to you.

  • Share honestly with him about how you are doing. How have you been feeling? What frustrations have you had? What do you wish was different? How are you feeling about God in this moment?

  • Take some time to wait. Ask Jesus to speak about your circumstance. Imagine you are still in your safe space having this conversation. Ask him to reveal to you a lie you are believing, a memory that is triggered, or a section of scripture to explore.

  • Take some time to explore whatever Jesus brought up. What feelings did this evoke? What defense do you feel against this? What hesitations might you have? Tell him all about it.

    Listen for anything else he may be saying. Pay attention to your intuition in this conversation. Is there anything coming up that is worth listening to? Any next step that is brought to mind?

  • Choose a counterintuitive practice or next step to integrate into your life based on your conversation with Jesus.

    Close by take time to sit in a promise from the Bible. It can be something like God is faithful, even when I can’t see it. This may take some will power, but part of turning our heart towards God and learning to trust him, is choosing to believe the truth about him, even when we don’t feel it. Our trust of who he is, must be bigger than our current experience. God often works slowly, and what grounds us in him is our belief that he is who he says he is.