I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Thursday morning, the 19th of December, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start off in the Gospel of Matthew 16:24:

”Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

Then we go to the Gospel of John 3:3:

”Jesus answered and said to him (to Nicodemus) ”Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 

What are we talking about today?  We are talking about dying to self; we are talking about denying ourselves. You see the symbol of the Christian is the cross. I love to see young ladies with beautiful crosses hanging around their necks. It looks beautiful, but I wonder if many of them know what it actually stands for. It stands for dying to self and following Jesus. Jesus never promised you or me a bed of roses. No, but He did promise that He would walk with us, right through all our trials and our hardships.

The other day I was listening to a song, a beautiful country and western song. I love country music, oh yes, I am a cowboy, and I really love American Country Western music. I heard this song and some of the lyrics go like this: “Everyone wants to go to heaven but no-one wants to die”. Wow, what does that mean? Well, it means you can’t have your cake and eat it. It means is you want to follow Jesus Christ you have to walk the Christian road. It means you cannot live like the devil and expect to go to heaven, it doesn’t work like that. If you’ve given your life to Christ, Jesus says you must be born again and if you do not give your life to Christ you are not going to heaven. It’s very simple.

Now, I want to say to you today, we need to check ourselves and we need to say, “Lord,” like Paul said, ”For me to live is Christ and to die is but gain.”

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day, 
Goodbye.