Guide 2: Anger
Seven Deadly Sins
Review the practice so far (10 min)
Let’s begin tonight by taking time to reflect on our practice of confession over this past week by answering these few questions together.
What was our time in confession last week like for you?
How did your personal practice of confession develop this last week—whether praying the Examen or confessing with friends?
Guide overview (3 min)
While society often views “sin” as archaic and outdated, we’ve all come face-to-face with brokenness—ours and others’. Each of us knows the shame, frustration, and sadness that comes in the aftermath of not loving God or others with our whole hearts. And, try as we might, our willpower alone isn’t enough to make our sin go away. Jesus says that “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8v34), which means we need help. In the language of the Scriptures, we need a Savior—someone to deliver us from our sin. The good news is that God has come to our rescue. John tells us that “if we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1v9). The way we partner with God in uprooting the corrosive power of sin in our lives is through the practice of confession: telling the truth about what we’ve done so that we can receive God’s freely-given forgiveness.
During this series, we are exploring seven historically recognized root sins and invite the light of God’s love to shine into our darkness by confessing our sin to him and to one another. While we can fear that confessing may change the way people see, respect, or even love us, hearing another person’s confession and praying God’s forgiveness over them is healing for both people. We need help to uproot sin in our lives—it’s too strong for any one of us to beat alone, and we are not meant to. It’s for this reason that confession needs to be treated with utmost care, which is why we’ve established some ground rules and are using an agreed upon framework each week to ensure safety, build trust, and grow together.
This week, we’re focusing on the sin of anger. While the Bible teaches that anger isn’t always sinful (Ephesians 4v26), it becomes sinful when it moves beyond a momentary emotion into a disordered response that is misdirected or detached from the love of God and neighbor. It is often driven by wounded ego, fear, or frustration, and looks like wanting to punish or diminish someone to relieve our own discomfort—resentment, harsh words, being short-tempered, harboring bitterness, punishing by withdrawing, or justifying cruel thoughts because we felt wronged.
So, tonight, we will continue in our aim to be a community of love and depth in a culture of individualism and superficiality through the practice of Community, by means of the exercise of confession.
Exercise for tonight (30 min)
One of the many reasons corporate confession is important is that it allows us to hold one another in the loving presence of God, preaching the good news of God’s forgiveness to each other that is often difficult to believe for ourselves. That said, it’s important to be on the same page about how we engage in our practice of corporate confession. As we experienced last week, every confession is vulnerable and sacred, so privacy and confidentiality matter as we keep building a sustainable rhythm together. To that end, we will use the same framework every week, beginning with reading our Shared Community Agreements for Safeguarding by talking about our posture, our promise, and our practice.
Our Posture: Every confession is sacred.
It is a privilege to witness the courage it takes to confess sin out loud. When someone confesses, we are witnessing the outpouring of God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness. We are on holy ground together. So each confession will be met with God’s compassion by responding with something like: “Thank you for sharing. God loves you with an everlasting love and joyfully forgives you.”
Our Promise: Every confession stays in this room.
We build trust and safety and maintain each other’s dignity by protecting confidentiality. A sin confessed by someone is released to Jesus and should not be repeated by any of us. If a Community member is absent during a confession, the only person who gets to fill them in—if they choose—is the person confessing. The only caveat to confidentiality is if the confession reveals a threat of harm—in which case the Community Leader will contact a Communities Pastor (if the threat is less urgent) or 911 (if the threat is urgent).
Our Practice: Everyone participates.
We will show our support for each other by all participating in confession. Simply observing doesn’t help create a safely vulnerable environment. Each of us is committing to participate in confession and declaring God’s forgiveness.
Do we all agree to this?
(Leader note: Go around and have everyone agree.)
Thank you all. We will keep reading and committing to each week to build trust together. As you know, our framework for the evening is: a shortened Examen with silent confession, corporate confession, and then communion.
So let’s all find ourselves in a comfortable, open posture of prayer, and then we’ll take 3 minutes to pray the Examen—asking the Spirit to search us and draw our attention to a moment this week where the sin of anger was present in our lives. As God brings something to mind, we’ll silently confess it to him, admitting where we sinned and asking for his forgiveness. And as we confess the fruit of our anger, explore with God the root—where did that anger originate?
A Condensed Examen. Holy Spirit, as we turn our attention now to the week we’ve lived so far, we ask for your help to guide us back through it with special attention to the particular sin of anger. Take us to a time when anger shifted from a signal that something is wrong to a way of protecting ourselves or asserting power over others, and distorting our love and damaging our relationships. Come, Holy Spirit. We yield to you. Guide our minds, memories, and imaginations—not just to how we were angry, but why. As you bring something to mind, we will silently confess it back to you and ask for the forgiveness that you so freely offer.
(Leader note: Set a timer for 3 minutes.)
God, thank you for bringing up our sin so that you can forgive it. Thanks that it is your delight to forgive and restore us back to right relationship with you. Thank you for rescuing us. Amen.
Corporate Confession. Ok, now that we’ve prayed about our sin, we’re going to participate in corporate confession by sharing aloud with one another by going around, one at a time, and confessing out loud in one sentence the sin we just confessed to God in prayer. It just needs to be one sentence.
A confession for tonight might sound like “I confess that I acted out in anger by snapping at my kids this week when I really felt overwhelmed by this season of parenting,” or “I confess that I harbored resentment toward a co-worker when they received praise I felt was undeserved,” or “I confess that I withheld love from a friend by deliberately not responding to their text to punish them for hurting me.” We’ll go around in a circle—starting with me—and each make our confession. After each person confesses, the next person to go will begin by thanking that person for confessing and reminding them that God has forgiven them. This could be as simple as saying, “Thank you for your honesty. God loves you and God forgives you.” And then they will make their own confession.
(Leader note: Begin with your own confession. “I confess…” It’s possible that in the anxiety of the moment, someone may forget to thank the previous person for their confession or remind them of God’s forgiveness. If that happens, don’t interrupt them, but go back once they’ve finished to thank the previous person and remind them of God’s forgiveness. Once everyone has finished, move onto the next section.)
Absolution & Communion. As we have each confessed silently to God and aloud to one another, let’s take a moment in silence to come back to God’s loving presence to us—to the Father who runs to each of us, forgiving us and clothing us in robes of righteousness. Even now, draw your attention to his nearness to you.
(Leader note: Allow everyone about 30 seconds of silence, and then hand out the communion elements and speak these words of absolution before receiving communion together.)
Sisters and brothers, hear the good news: when we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He has removed our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. We have been washed clean of our sins by his love and restored to right relationship with him. Hallelujah! Thanks be to God! Take the body and blood of Christ, who poured out his love for us on the cross to freely forgive and restore us to himself. Let’s eat and drink and remember him.
Exercise for the week ahead (2 min)
Tonight we again tried out a way to practice corporate confession and absolution—of naming our sins before God and others and receiving God’s forgiveness. The exercise for the week ahead is to:
Continue developing a personal rhythm of confession. Keep taking time to intentionally consider what a personal rhythm of confession might look like in your life. Whether it’s praying the Examen each evening (here’s a Guide to help guide you in that) or starting a confession group with some friends, keep moving towards living a life of freedom and forgiveness.
