I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 5th of May, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We start in the first book of the Bible, Genesis 4:8: ”Now Cain talked with Abel his brother; and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.” The very first family in the Bible, and two brothers, were in contention. They had a dispute, and one brother killed the other. Then we go straight to Acts 15:39: ”Then the contention became so sharp that they parted from one another.“ Oh, folks, maybe you’ve got contention in your family this morning. Maybe there’s a dispute that you just cannot seem to settle. I want to ask you to really reconsider before you do something that you might regret for the rest of your life. I looked up the word “contention” in the Oxford dictionary. It means a heated disagreement, it means being stroppy with the other, argumentative. Folks, we are talking here about two giants of the faith. We’re talking about a man who actually wrote two-thirds of the New Testament himself. I’m talking about Paul the Apostle, and he fell out, he had a sharp argument with a man, Barnabas, who is regarded in the Bible as “the encourager”, and the two fell out because of an argument over Mark. I want to say to you today, we cannot allow that to happen. We are living in very stressful times, and these heated disagreements must stop. I have seen men lose businesses because they will not settle the argument. They split up and the business fails and goes down. We need each other, we are talking here about relationships. Folks, marriages - it concerns me a lot, the amount of people that are getting divorced, and many times they come to me and I ask them, ”What was the reason? Where did it all start? Is there a third party involved?” “No, no, there’s no one else involved. We just cannot get on.” I want to say to you, it’s not good enough. You need to go back to God and repent. “Yes, but I’ve got my rights, Angus.” No, you don’t have your rights. If you gave your life to Jesus Christ, you surrendered your rights. We can agree to disagree. We don’t have to agree on everything, but we mustn’t allow these trivial things, because that’s what they are, to destroy your future. I’m talking about friendships, pick up the phone and say, ”Sorry man,” say, ”I didn’t mean to say what I said. Please forgive me.” You know it takes two to Tango, as they say, you can’t dance by yourself and when you argue, if you say, ”Listen, I’m not going to go any further, I want to tell you. I want to leave it.” Leave it there, go to the Lord and reconcile with one another quickly. Do it today! Jesus bless you and goodbye.
