Self-Control

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 27th of May, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We start in Proverbs 16:32: “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, And he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.” Then we go to Romans 7:19, and this is Paul speaking, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” (Verse 24:) “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  Now this is the great apostle, Paul, struggling also with his own feelings and control of himself. You know godliness with contentment is great gain. You will find that in 1 Timothy 6:6. We really need to take control of our emotions. We can blow it so easily, can’t we? We can be really spending time with God, we can be in the presence of God, then get into our motorcar and go to town and somebody cuts in front of you and all of a sudden you are in a rage and shaking your fists at that man, instead of just praying for him. You don’t know why that man cut in front of you. Maybe he is trying to get a sick person to the doctor. We don’t know what it is. We really need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us control over our emotions.One man of God wrote, “More dear in the sight of God and His angels, than any other conquest, is the conquest of self, which each man with the help of Heaven, can secure for himself.” We really need to ask the Lord to take control. Now, I have mentioned to you before, Brother Lawrence, the French monk who lived 300 years ago, wrote that little booklet. He didn’t write it. It was written about him, “Practicing the Presence of God,” when he came to the realisation that it doesn’t matter what you do in life, if you give it to the Lord, He will give you His peace. He was the guy who washed the pots and pans in the monastery, the one who sewed up the sandals of the other brothers whose sandals had broken. And they used to gather around him because they wanted the peace and the self-control that they saw evident in his own life, and it was simply because he handed it over to Jesus. Today, hand over to Jesus everything and let Him control your life. Jesus bless you and goodbye.