Thought For Today

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

We go to the Gospel of Luke 9:33.

”Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

First the mountain, and then the ministry. Jesus took the three men, the three disciples, Peter, James and John, up the Mount of Transfiguration, and they had an incredible encounter with the Living God and two of the greatest characters in the Bible, yes - Moses and Elijah. They were so overwhelmed when they heard our Heavenly Father speaking to His Son, Jesus Christ, and saying, “This is My Beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased” that they just wanted to stay on top of the mountain.

Now, have you ever been in that situation? Of course you have! So have I. To have an encounter with the Living God, whether it be in a meeting where someone brings an incredible word of God, whether you are in a situation where it is absolutely peaceful and tranquil, and you can feel the presence of the Lord, and you don’t want to leave, you don’t want to go back into the rat-race of life, you just want to stay apart. Now, that is how the disciples felt. “Lord, we don’t want to go back down there. We want to stay up here with You. You see, folks, the people who are lost, the people who are sick, the people that are lonely, the people that are fearful, they are living in the valley. We have got to go down from the mountain, back down into the valley, roll up our sleeves and get stuck in and help them. We have got to pass on those precious truths that the Lord has given to us, to those who are desperately seeking. We have got to tell people the experiences that we have had on the mountain with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can’t stay up there forever. We have got to go down into the valley where the great need is.

We also need to pass the baton to the new Christians - not always easy. You say, “No, they can’t do it, they are too young.” Yes they can and they will and when you pass on the baton, they in turn will tell others and that is how the ministry grows. As soon as a man holds that precious thing to himself and he won’t share it, it dies in his hands. Dad, pass it on to your son. “Oh, but he is not old enough yet!” Yes, he is! “But he is not responsible enough” Give him a chance. Mother, pass it on to your daughter. Give her an opportunity, “Yes, but she is not ready for it.” Yes, she is. Give her an opportunity to show you what she can do when you start to trust her, because that is what the Lord wants us to do. First, the mountain then the ministry.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,

Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 24th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in 1 Samuel 13:11-13. And Samuel said to Saul, “What have you done?” And then right at the bottom of verse 12, Saul replied, “Therefore I felt compelled, and offered a burnt offering.”  Now, what happened here, Saul was supposed to wait for the prophet, Samuel to come and offer up a sacrifice to the Lord so that the Israelites would have the strength to win the battle, but Saul would not wait and he went ahead and did it himself. Samuel said to him,

“You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you.”  He said, “now your kingdom shall not continue.”

We need to wait for the promise of God. Folks, so often we rush ahead of God, and this is a strong word today for some people. We need to wait for the promise of God. I read a beautiful little saying from an anonymous person which said, “Tarry (which means wait) at a promise till God meets you there. He always returns by way of His promises."

So if He has promised you that He will find the right husband for you, young lady, wait for the Lord and He will honour His promise. Don’t go ahead and do something that you might regret for the rest of your life by marrying the wrong man. The same thing applies young man. Wait for the Lord. Be patient. “Ja, but I will never get this degree!” Yes, you will. If God has given you that promise, give Him an opportunity. He will walk with you right through it. God will help you. I want to say to a farmer who thinks, “I have to sell my cattle now because the prices are so poor, they are never going to pick up again and I am going to lose whatever I have got left." Wait, the prices will change and you can sell the cattle for the correct amount of money. Don’t rush ahead of God!  I have seen it happen too many times. Being impulsive, not waiting on the Lord and then the thing goes completely haywire and you lose out. The Lord has promised you that He will come back. He will come back by the way of His promise. He will not come back another way and He will fulfil the promise He gave you.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day. Be patient!
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Monday morning, the 23rd of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to 1 Corinthians 1:28:

”…and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen…”

I looked up the Oxford dictionary to find out the literal meaning of the word, “base”. It means “a low social class”. The Lord Jesus used twelve uneducated, unknown men, to change the whole world but working together, those twelve men changed the world forever, and that’s one thing I want to say to you today. Maybe you are feeling, "I am worthless, nobody cares about me. I can do nothing for anybody”.  Don’t believe it. It’s a lie from the pit of hell! I’ve studied all the great men of God and just about every one of them started from a very low position. I think of Dr David Livingstone. He worked in a cotton mill as a young boy and educated himself. He came to Africa and he was instrumental in being one of the men that stopped the horrific trade in human flesh. Yes, I’m talking about slavery. 

What about James Hudson Taylor? He took the Gospel to China, and he went on his own, nobody sent him. He was studying to be a pharmacist. He didn’t even qualify and yet he was responsible in sending or leading a thousand families to China to take the Good News to those people, and I want to tell you something, that not one of them was sponsored. They went by faith and the greatest revival in the world today is taking place in the underground church in China.

What about D L Moody? He was a shoe salesman. That man became one of the greatest evangelists the world has ever seen. He took the Gospel all over the world. What about William Carey? He was a cobbler, not even a shoemaker. When somebody was taking the mickey out of him, he said, ”No, I’m not a shoemaker,  I’m a cobbler. I can only repair shoes.” We must not look down on base things.

I read this beautiful reading this morning by a man of God and it says this:

“In some of the great halls of Europe may be seen pictures, not painted with a brush but mosaics, which are made up of small pieces of stone, glass or other material. The artist takes these little pieces and polishing and arranging them, he forms them into the grand and beautiful picture. Each individual part of the picture may be a little worthless piece of glass or marble or shell but with each in it’s place, the whole constitutes the masterpiece of art. So I think it will be with humanity in the hands of the great artist. God is picking up the little worthless pieces of stone and brass that might be trodden underfoot unnoticed, and is making of them His great masterpiece.” 

Jesus bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 22nd of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Gospel of Matthew 16:23:

“…for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”

That is what Jesus said to Peter, the apostle. What will people say? How will this relationship I have with Jesus Christ affect my hard-earned reputation? We are talking about the fear of man as opposed to the fear of God. Just a bit further on in Matthew 26:75, a very, very sad scripture, the Bible tells us that Peter went out and wept bitterly after he had denied the Lord three times.

There is a price to pay for you and I, my dear friend, when we want to truly follow the Master, but I want to tell you, it is so very worthwhile, as Peter, the big fisherman, eventually found out. After being baptised in the Holy Spirit of God, he went out into the streets totally fearless, putting an end to self-preservation. Peter preached his first sermon in the streets, and three thousand souls were brought to salvation. 

Your biggest enemy and my biggest enemy is not the devil. He had his neck broken on the Cross of Calvary when Jesus said, “It is finished!” Our biggest enemy is ourselves. Now if you look at Peter, he is one of the faith’s greatest heroes. What happened? Well, the fear of man was put to death and the love of Christ and his fellowman took first place. How many people do you know…I sat here in my prayer room thinking about this…how many people do you know who have the name, Peter? I have got very, very dear brothers in Christ, many of them who are called Peter. 

Some of the greatest buildings are named after Peter. Yes, of course they are built for the glory of God, but they are given the name of Peter because of how he ended up, the very one who denied the Lord three times, the very one who rebuked the Lord, and the Lord took him aside and said to him, “Peter, you are more concerned about the things of men than you are about the things of God.” If we want to live a life of purpose and a life of significance, we have got to look up to the Lord, put Him first in our lives, and I tell you what - you are going to have the most exciting life you could have ever dreamed of.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 21st of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to 2 Corinthians 10:5:

”…bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,…”  

We need to watch out for what we are thinking. You know, we talk a lot about the heart and that’s wonderful, but what about the mind? We really need to pay attention. My wife Jill sent me a little saying which I thought was so special. It goes like this: “The thoughts that we water every day become the garden that we live in.” We need to take every single thought captive to the Lordship of Jesus.

Now when you look around you, what do you see? You see violence. I know a lot of young people love gaming but a lot of those games are violent, and then you see young people maybe not even twenty years old, trying to assassinate the former President of the United States of America - something wrong with the mind! Pornography is a serious thing, not just among men, among women as well, and your mind eventually becomes like a cesspool if you don’t deal with it immediately. Things like hatred, envy, racialism, and blatant rebellion against everything are seeds that the devil puts into our minds, and if we water them, we have to live in that garden, full of thistles and weeds and rocks and absolute death itself. We need to concentrate on good and pure things. We need to concentrate on the things of our precious Lord Jesus. We need to look at films that are heroic with heroes in them. We need to spend time reading godly books. We need to read about success stories, people that started from nothing, people that looked at the Lord Jesus Christ and then reconstructed their lives through what they thought. Be very, very careful.

When I go into somebody’s house and I look at their library, if they’ve got one, straight away that tells me all about them.  I have one look at the books that they are reading or maybe the DVD’s on a shelf - it tells you the whole story, the magazines that they are reading. We really need to guard our minds very, very carefully and that is what the Lord is saying - bringing every idle thought into captivity so that it cannot run wild and cause us to do things that we would never normally do - and the way to do that is to spend lots of time reading the Bible, praying, listening to Christian music, spending time in the presence of God. 

Jesus bless you and have a good day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 20th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go straight to the Book of Luke 21:29-30:

“Then He spoke to them a parable: “Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. When they are already budding, you see and know for yourselves that summer is now near.” 

Just outside my prayer room, I have a beautiful little fig tree that was given to me for my birthday by my young daughter. I planted it and when I went out a couple of days ago, a beautiful big green leaf has come out the top of the tree, beautiful indeed! Now, I know for a fact, because I am a farmer, that when the fig tree starts to push new leaves, we know that summer is here. The Lord says the shepherd knows - he gets up in the morning, and he sees that the sky is red and he knows that the weather is going to be quite hectic today, maybe rain, maybe a cold front, and so he prepares his flock in the case of a storm, especially when the sheep are lambing down. But that same shepherd, when he sees a red sky in the evening, he knows there will be no rain. It will be a lovely day tomorrow. The Lord says, we can discern the weather, but why can we not see the signs of the times and the coming of the Lord?

He is telling you and me, very clearly this morning, to get prepared because He is coming back for us like a thief in the night. Now, a thief never tells you when he is coming, he comes secretly and he comes immediately. The Lord is going to come the same way. There will be no more warnings, He has given us many warnings. When we look around us and we see what is happening in this tired old world of ours, we know. I have heard many old christians say to me, “How much worse must it get before the Lord comes?” We see immorality like we have never seen before, people sticking their tongue out at the Lord and saying, “What are you going to do about it, Lord?” No fear of God! We see what is happening in the weather, we see the economy, we see the politics, and all we say as believers is, “Come Lord Jesus”, just like John said at the end of the Book of Revelation.

Now, I have told you this before, I have written something right at the back of my Bible, next to the last verse in the last book in the Bible, “Keep short accounts with God and short accounts with man.” Be ready when the trumpet blows because we will be leaving immediately. Now, that is not scary, that’s exciting. It’s scary if you are not ready but if you are ready, all we can say is, “Come Lord Jesus, come!”

Have a wonderful day and remember, the fig tree has already pushed out it’s first leaf.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Thursday morning, the 19th of September, 2024 and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. 

We start in the Book of Matthew 15:37:

”So they all ate and were filled,…”

Our Lord Jesus Christ never sends anyone away hungry. He always feeds His people. Father God fed the children of Israel in the wilderness for forty years, every single day, with manna from heaven. Now what does the word, “manna” mean? It literally means, “what is it?” That is the actual meaning of the word, “manna” - “what is it?” Well, according to Exodus 16:14, it was small, round substance as fine as frost on the ground.

You and I must get up early in the morning and He will feed us every single day with spiritual food. You see, when the sun came up and started to shine and it got hot, that manna literally melted, and they tried to keep enough for the second day but it didn’t work, it just went rotten. They had to get it every single morning, and by the way, it was delicious. Exodus 16:31 tells us it was like white coriander seed and the taste was like wafers made with honey. Wow, every single morning! 

Now, you and I also need to get up early in the morning and receive our spiritual manna from the Lord. We need to do it before the cares and worries of this world melt the food. You see, it doesn’t really work when we are trying to wing it. Driving to work, getting the children ready for school, we start thinking about other things, and that is why many of us are suffering from spiritual malnutrition. We are spiritually dying because we are not receiving that manna every morning. It’s no good trying to get it once a week, it won’t sustain you. The Lord gives us enough for every single day.  As we close, I want to pray for you today.

Heavenly Father,

I pray for my dear friends who are suffering from spiritual malnutrition. They are starving to death spiritually. I pray that as of today, Lord, they will start to get up every single morning and they will receive that beautiful white coriander seed with a taste like wafers made with honey every day, and that will strengthen them Lord, to face every challenge in this life. I ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. 

God bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 18th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. 

We start in the Gospel of Matthew 15:31:

“So the multitude marveled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel.”

Oh folks, it is amazing when you see a miracle take place! It really does something to your faith, doesn’t it? It lifts it right up. I remember many years ago, holding a huge campaign on the north coast of Kwa-Zulu Natal at a place called Salt Rock. We were bringing in crowds of people every single night in buses. The one night, the tent was packed full, there was a presence of the Holy Spirit, there was an expectation of miracles, signs and wonders, and a man came up onto the platform. He was actually one of the bus drivers, he had a turban on his head, he was of the Sikh faith and he came up with his father, and his father said, “My son is mute, he cannot speak.”  Well, we anointed him with oil, we prayed the prayer of faith, I took the mic, I put it to his mouth and I said, “Say “Jesus,” and he opened his mouth wide and he said, “Jesus!” Well, the tent went wild. It was an incredible night!

Jesus Christ is the Miracle-worker! He is the same yesterday, and today and forevermore. I want to say to you that there is nothing that is too hard for the Lord. The Lord is the same yesterday, He is the same today and He is the same forever. (Hebrews 13:8). I really want to say to you today, trust the Lord because He is alive and because He is alive, we can face tomorrow. Do you remember that old song, “Because He lives I can face tomorrow”? Let’s sing it together: 

God sent His son, they called Him Jesus
He came to love, heal, and forgive.
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Saviour lives.

And because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because He lives, All fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
And life is worth the living just because He lives.

So go out today and trust the Lord for your miracle. That is all we have to do, we have to believe, and then let the Lord work through our lives. Receive your healing today in Jesus name.

God bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 17th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start off in the Book of Deuteronomy 16:13:

“You shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your winepress.” 

The Feast of Tabernacles (it is also called Sukkot), is the time when the Israeli people celebrate what God has done in their lives. They build a little booth, which they call a sukkot, and that is where they spend time talking about the goodness of God. They decorate it with grapes, figs, olives and dates. They hang them in bunches all around this little building, and then for seven days, they go during the day and they sit in that little place, and they remember how God delivered them from Pharaoh, from Egypt, took them through the wilderness for forty years, and brought them into the Land of Milk and Honey, when they crossed the Jordan River. They sit and they tell their children, and they tell their grandchildren those stories, how God has protected them. They build up their faith. I believe that the strength of the Israeli nation is found in the fact that they continue to remember their past.

If you have written a book, I have written a few, and you have no before-time and you just start writing, it doesn’t make sense. You have got to tell the people where you are coming from. The dictionary says that the word, “prologue” means “introductory scene to a play” or in my case, to a story - what happened before. And that is the strength of the Israeli nation. They continue to tell their children and their children’s children how God has undertaken for them. 

I want to tell you, I have got a story, and it started on the 18th of February, 1979 at about 10 a.m., in a little Methodist church in the Main Street of Greytown, our little town that is 15 kilometres away. That day, I met Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour, and as they say, the rest after that is history, but it started many, many years before, and we have been through many hardships since. Yes, we have experienced droughts, fires, floods, disease, hardship, and personal tragedy, but Jesus Christ has been the Golden Thread that has held us together for 45 years on this farm, Shalom. 

You need to tell your story to your children. You need to tell them how you met Christ. You need to tell your friends at school how you have come into a relationship with God. That is what it is all about. Don’t forget the Feast of Tabernacles, seven days when the whole of Israel comes to a standstill and they remember where God has brought them from. You do the same!

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Monday morning, the 16th of September, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

I am reading out of the Amplified Version this morning.

“For what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world [with all its pleasures], and forfeit his soul?“
Mark 8:36

Folks, this morning I want to speak to you about family. We can add to that scripture, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his family?”  -  because your soul is tied up with your family.  The first family ever on earth was the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Remember, charity - love, begins at home. It is so precious to the Lord Jesus Christ, the family unit, and the devil knows that, and he knows the only way he can hurt the Lord is to hurt the family. We must never forget, the devil hates God and that is why the devil hates you, because he sees God in you. We need to protect our families with our very lives. 

Some of us are locking up the front door to make sure the devil doesn’t come in and the devil is walking straight in through the back door. We need to be so protective over our loved ones. Our priorities must remain in order: First, God, then your wife or your husband, then your children, and then everything else. Be sure that things are okay back at the ranch. It’s no good if the wheels are coming off at the ranch and you are out there, preaching the Gospel to the whole world. We need to start at home base. Let’s be honest with each other, sometimes the hardest place to be a Christian is in your own home. Isn’t that right? You can ask mom. She knows exactly what dad is really like when he is at home. 

I will never forget, one of the saddest things for me. When I was a young farmer up in Central Africa, we used to have a mixed farm. We had watermelons, pigs and cattle, and at that time, they were building a railroad from Dar-Es-Salaam on the Indian Ocean, right into the centre of Africa, where we were farming in Zambia. The Chinese would come in with their trucks, convoys of them, to buy all our watermelons, one time, all our pigs - and these men would come in and they all had the same grey uniforms on, and they would stop often and just sit and watch our little children (our children were very young at that stage), playing together in the garden, and then they would come to me, very, very sad and with sign language, they would tell me that back home in China, they would also have wives and children. I have never forgotten that. 

We need to spend more time together and we need to appreciate each other much more. 

Jesus bless you and goodbye.