“A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger” (Prov. 15:1 KJV).

Yesterday I was interviewed by some students for a government class at Cass Tech High School. They asked some seriously intelligent questions. They were some very intelligent young people.

They asked me a question about homosexuality. And my response to it was this. I said, “I love the people….” They looked at me and said, “What?!” I said, “I love the people, but hate the sin.”

You have to divorce the actions of people from the people.

God hates the things we do sometimes, but He never stops loving us. He has always been longsuffering with us.

The Bible said in Romans that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. In other words, God said, “I’m going to keep on waiting. And even though they are speaking against me after all that I have done for them, I still love them.”

People we think we have done the most for are the ones who hurt us the most. In the 20 years that I’ve been pastoring, I can think of people that I have helped.

I’ve pulled them out of jail, paid their bills, got their kids out of jail; took hours, weeks and months helping them; got the whole family together. Then after everything is finally together, they leave church. But you just have to have longsuffering. You have to go on. Just say, “Praise God. Bless you.”

The pattern that we establish by operating in the fruit of longsuffering overwhelms the law of sin and death. It takes two to fight. In marriage, for example, if you refuse to fight the argument won’t happen.

They might go on for a minute. When they are raising their voice, and you respond with, “Well that’s ok baby, I love you.” They can’t fight with that.

If you retaliate with harsh words, the stakes get bigger. Before you know it, somebody has really said something now that set the stage for some serious consequences. Then you get retaliation – tit for tat.

I’ve been a marriage counselor for over 20 years. I’ve seen it. Somebody has to break the cycle of pain. Somebody has to decide, “I’m going to be longsuffering. I might be injured right now. But I’m going to be longsuffering. I’m going to be like Jesus was.”

Scripture Reference: Heb. 10:24; Eph. 4:2