I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 1st of April, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Romans 3:23:

”for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,…”

All of us! You see we are faced with temptation. I want to say to you that the sin is not temptation. No, no. Jesus Himself was tempted in the desert, remember? He came up against the devil with the word of God - “It is written…” Temptation is not sin but when you look at somebody first maybe a beautiful young girl, maybe a very handsome man, the first time you see them they are very beautiful. We are created to appreciate beauty but if you turn around and you look at them a second time, as it were, then lust starts to come in and sin, that seed is born.

King David who was the apple of the Lord’s eye, a man after God’s own heart, stood on the verandah that one evening and looked down and saw Bathsheba, a very, very beautiful woman. She was bathing. Now he could have turned around and walked away, but he didn’t and he looked the second time, he lusted after her and that was the beginning of the end of his wonderful career because that sin, that temptation, caused him to commit adultery and then murder and we know the end of the sad story. We need to be so careful.

I can hear a young man or a young lady say, “No, no, I can handle this!” I want to say to you that human willpower will only last for a certain time, and then after that, it will crumble. We need Jesus Christ to help us. You know that even one of the giants of our faith, Paul, the Apostle, says in the Book of Romans 7:19, he says:

“…for the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.”

Then we go down to verse 24:

“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Now, here is the key - he says in verse 25:

“I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

We can only do it through the power of the Holy Spirit in us. You don’t just wake up one morning and decide, "Today I am going to steal some money” or “Today I am going to have an affair with my secretary in the office.” No, it starts off with a thought and then you start to feed that thought, it germinates and it grows into a tree until you can’t contain it and then you fall. Yes, God will forgive us, nobody knows that better than me, that is what grace is about - undeserved loving kindness. We have been saved by grace by faith and not of ourselves - but the scar remains. Please don’t do it. Stop it today. Cancel that text. Say “no more!” and look to the Helper, the Holy Spirit (John 16:7) and He will help you overcome.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.