I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 7th of June, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go straight to the Gospel of Mark 8:36:

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his family? We need to be very careful here today, because charity, which is another word for “love”, begins at home. I read a little quotation that was quite sad by an anonymous writer, and basically, it goes like this: “Be very careful, that in order to reach the roses, we do not trample down the daisies.” 

You see, we have to put God first, and straight after God, we put our family, and then after our family, we do the work of the Lord. You know, something that is very tragic for me is when I speak to a young person and I say to them, “Why are you so “anti” the Lord? Why are you not interested in following Jesus? And then, with big tears in their eyes they say, “We don’t want to follow Jesus because Jesus took our daddy away from us.” How sad! I am talking about children of a full-time worker for the Lord.

We need to get our priorities in order. When travelling overseas, I meet new people. The first question they ask me, it’s not, “What degree do you have in theology, or what Bible College did you go to?” Just as well, because I didn’t go to any of them. The first question they ask me is, “How is your wife?” The second question is, “How are your children?” And then, “How are things back at the farm?” When I answer those questions correctly, then they say, “Can you please now tell us about your message and what has brought you across here to our country?” 

We need to be brutally honest with ourselves today. I am talking to men and women. Why are we doing this? I remember as a young man, before I met Jesus, I was working 18 hours a day and I would come home when it was dark, and Jill would say to me, “Where have you been?” And I would say, “I have been working, Jill, to put food on the table for you and the children.” In the morning, I would leave before the children got up. They never saw me, and then I realised, when I came to know the Lord, that I wasn’t working for Jill and for the children, but for my own ego, for my own ambition, for my own vision. We can’t do that. We need to sit down and we need to take an account, because you and I are going to have to tell the Lord one day, why we really did it.

Let’s do it for the Lord, but never at the cost of our loved ones.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.