I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 9th of June, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Galatians 2:20, and I am reading this verse out of the Amplified Version of the Bible:

“I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

The great paradox! I got hold of the Oxford Dictionary to find out the literal meaning of the word, “paradox”. This is what it says: “A statement that sounds absurd or seems to contradict itself but is in fact, true.” So a paradox is self-contradiction, inconsistency, it’s puzzling, but I want to tell you, it is true. 

I don’t know if you remember, some of the men listening to this message, we had a Mighty Men Conference on Shalom, and we called it, “Dying to Live”. If you want to live, you have to die.  Our biggest enemy today is not the devil. Remember when Jesus died on the Cross? He said, “It is finished.” Our biggest enemy is ourselves. Jim Elliot was a young missionary who went out to the South Americas, to the jungle in the Amazon, and he was murdered for his faith. He was 29 years old. He said, “It is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” We cannot keep our faith, we cannot keep our lives, but we can have eternal life.

“…unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”
John 12:24

People say, “What a waste of a young life.” He left a young wife and a baby girl behind. But folks, I want to tell you that was no waste. They say thousands of students from university went out when they heard about the death of a young missionary, and they went out to preach the Gospel all over the world. 

Today, die to self, live for Christ and then you have a reason to get up in the morning, and have a wonderful day.

Goodbye.