I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 25th of August, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. 

We go to the Gospel of Mark 8:34,

”When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” 

It’s a costly business, following the Lord Jesus Christ. It requires a change of lifestyle. When I first left school, I worked as an apprentice printer in a daily newspaper. Now, if you are working at a daily newspaper, that means the newspaper must be printed in the evening, so when all my friends went to work early in the morning as the sun was rising, I was going home to sleep, and in the evening as the sun was going down I was going to work and it cost me. It became very lonely. My friends were going out together to parties and to play sport and I was going to work.

The other day, I was talking to some of my grandsons and they said, ”Sometimes it becomes lonely to be a follower of Jesus Christ.” You become excluded from some friends. You are no longer popular because you have made a definite change. Your Christian belief has cost you. What do we always say at Shalom? If it has cost you nothing, it’s worth nothing. There’s always a price to pay for anything worth having in life. If you want to pursue a certain career it’s going cost you. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, with all your heart, it will definitely cost you. 

Oh but my friend, I want to tell you something, it is so very worth it and it will pay off handsomely at the end, so don’t despair, and you are not the only one that is walking tall for the Lord. There are many others, you just need to find them, but the most important thing is that you are prepared to change your lifestyle and to live a life of holiness, in order to achieve what God has in store for you, and He has so much in store for those who will put their total trust and their lifestyle in His hands.

God bless you and have a lovely day, 
Goodbye.