Thought For Today

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Monday morning, the 26th of August, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Book of Acts 6:15:

“And all who sat in the council, looking steadfastly at him (that was Stephen), saw his face as the face of an angel.” 

You and I need to tell our story. Stephen was waiting on the tables. He wasn’t one of the apostles and yet he told his story. That story led to his death actually. They eventually stoned him, but the man who orchestrated the stoning - yes, Saul of Tarsus, because of that testimony, became the greatest of all the apostles when his eyes were open and he realised what he had done. We need to tell our story. When was the last time you told somebody about how you met Jesus Christ? Yes, it could make you very unpopular, it cost Stephen his life, but I want to tell you, there is no power greater than personal testimony. We need to tell our story.

Now, Fanny Crosby lived 100 years ago plus, and at 6 weeks old she went blind, but she became one of the greatest of all hymn writers, and probably her most famous hymn was the one, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine”. I want you and I to sing it together this morning and then maybe we could go out today and tell somebody our story. You say, “But I am not a preacher.” No, Stephen wasn’t either! He was a waiter, he waited on the tables. It goes like this:

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Saviour am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Saviour all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Saviour all the day long.

Go out today and tell your story, 
Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We go to the Gospel of Mark 8:34,

”When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” 

It’s a costly business, following the Lord Jesus Christ. It requires a change of lifestyle. When I first left school, I worked as an apprentice printer in a daily newspaper. Now, if you are working at a daily newspaper, that means the newspaper must be printed in the evening, so when all my friends went to work early in the morning as the sun was rising, I was going home to sleep, and in the evening as the sun was going down I was going to work and it cost me. It became very lonely. My friends were going out together to parties and to play sport and I was going to work.

The other day, I was talking to some of my grandsons and they said, ”Sometimes it becomes lonely to be a follower of Jesus Christ.” You become excluded from some friends. You are no longer popular because you have made a definite change. Your Christian belief has cost you. What do we always say at Shalom? If it has cost you nothing, it’s worth nothing. There’s always a price to pay for anything worth having in life. If you want to pursue a certain career it’s going cost you. If you want to be a follower of Jesus Christ, with all your heart, it will definitely cost you. 

Oh but my friend, I want to tell you something, it is so very worth it and it will pay off handsomely at the end, so don’t despair, and you are not the only one that is walking tall for the Lord. There are many others, you just need to find them, but the most important thing is that you are prepared to change your lifestyle and to live a life of holiness, in order to achieve what God has in store for you, and He has so much in store for those who will put their total trust and their lifestyle in His hands.

God bless you and have a lovely day, 
Goodbye.

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

We start in the Gospel of John 15:14. Jesus says:

”You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”

Then we go to Matthew 12:50:

”For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”

Remember, Jesus was teaching the disciples and a person came in and said, “Your mom and your brothers are waiting for you outside.” Jesus said, ”Who are my mother and my brothers but those who do the will of My Father.” 

We need to understand who our family are. You know that the Lord has no grandchildren. What does that mean? Well, if you love the Lord your God but your children are in the far country, there is no guarantee they will get to heaven. Each and every one of us needs to meet the Lord personally, and by the way, it’s not how long we have known Him that counts but rather how closely we have walked with Him that counts.

Even the devil himself knows Jesus, make no mistake about that but he’s not going to heaven, I can tell you that, not him or any of his demons. Now, we see the thief on the cross, he had known the Lord Jesus only for moments, but intimately, and yet Jesus said to him, ”Today, you will be with me in paradise,” because the thief acknowledged and believed that Jesus Christ was the Messiah and the Son of God. You’ll find that in Luke 23:43.

I’ve got people that I’ve known for 40 years. I know them casually just to greet them in the street but I don’t know them personally. Then there are other men and women that I meet and I’ve only known them for a short while, maybe when I’m overseas, maybe in Australia, in the USA, in Britain, and I feel that I have known them all my life. How is that? Well, it can only be through the Holy Spirit. There is the Holy Spirit who unites us together, and even though we’ve only met each other for half an hour at the airport we become firm brothers and sisters in Christ forever.

So today spend time with Jesus. Spend quality time and spend quantity time because indeed, He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. 

Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We start in the Book of Psalms 19:14:

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.”

Then we go straight to the New Testament to the Gospel of Matthew 12:37:

”For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Oh, we need to make sure that our words are sweet, as the saying goes, because someday we might have to eat them. If you’ve got nothing good to say about someone rather say nothing at all. Remember, people who live in glass houses don’t throw stones.

You know, before preaching at any meeting, whether it’s a large one or whether it’s a small one, I first kneel, I humble myself before the Lord and then I pray aloud the verse that I’ve just read to you:

”Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart 
Be acceptable in Your sight, 
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” 

Then I start speaking words of life to a dying world. In Proverbs 10:19, the Bible tells us that:

”In the multitude of words sin is not lacking, But he who restrains his lips is wise.” 

We need to be so careful that we don’t talk too much. You see, it’s not how much we say that makes an impact but it’s about timing and it’s about sincerity of words that count. Like the lady who got up one morning and she was so down, she said, ”Lord, I really need a word from You today, otherwise Lord, I’m not going back to church anymore.” She came to a church that I happened to be preaching at, a very large church in Durban, South Africa, and it was a packed out house. This little lady came all by herself, it wasn’t her home church, and she sat there and participated in the service. Remember she said, ”Lord, if You don’t give me a word, that’s it, I’m not going back anymore.” Right at the end to the service, I think in order to avoid the traffic, she started to slip out of the back of the church and when I preach, my eyes go all over the place and I shouted, I don’t know why I did it, obviously it was the Lord and I said to the lady, just trying to quietly get out of the church, ”lady!” And she turned around and I said,” Can you please come up to the platform.” She was very shy. She came up to the platform and I told her something very simple like God loves you, and that was it. Then she wrote me a letter a week later and said, ”My life has been transformed because Jesus (not me), spoke to me directly out of a crowd of a few thousand people.”

Speak the word of life and God will do the rest.

Have a wonderful day
Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We start in the Gospel of Mark 8:29:

“He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered and said to Him, “You are the Christ.”

A beautiful scripture! Remember, we always say on this programme, good people don’t go to Heaven, only believers go to Heaven. I get into trouble, I know that - some people say, “You cannot say that.” Well, that is what the Bible says. Like never before we need to start to know what we believe in. Who is Jesus? He is the Son of God. How are we going to get to Heaven? By faith in Him alone.

Last night Jill and I watched an old movie. I am sure you have watched it. If you haven’t you need to get hold of it. It is called, “God is not dead.” The story is very simple, a young student is going to university and he goes into a lecture hall where there is a professor who is not only an atheist but an angry atheist. He puts out a piece of paper for all the students to sign which says, “God is dead.” When this young man gets the paper, he can’t believe it. He says to the professor, “I cannot sign this paper,” and the professor humiliates him in front of the whole class. He then said, “Okay, then explain yourself.” The story goes on, he was really humiliated, his own girlfriend left him, “Why don’t you just sign the form and carry on with your studies?” He said, “I can’t because I believe in Jesus Christ.” It is a wonderful story with a wonderful end. In the end, the 80 students who had all signed that form repented and acknowledged that Jesus was the Lord. 

When I was a young boy, I was taught to learn the Apostles’ Creed by heart. Now folks, I want to say to you, you need to know Who you believe in. There is so much compromise out there, there are so many stories to tell you how to get to Heaven but we need to know the basics. I want to read the Apostles’ Creed to you. This is how it goes:

I believe in God, the Father, Almighty,
The Creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, 
Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, 
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
Was crucified, died and was buried. 
He descended into the dead.
On the third day, he rose again,
He ascended into Heaven and is seated at the righthand of the Father
And will come again to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy universal church, the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, amen.

We need to know it, Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We go to James 5:16 in the New Testament,

The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Today the Lord has just impressed upon me that He doesn’t answer prayer - no, He answers the prayer of faith! There is no use in you and me wasting God’s time and praying for things we don’t believe are going to happen. It’s a waste of time.

Now, if you remember, Elijah was just an ordinary man like you and me, and yet he prayed, and there was no rain for three years and six months, and then he prayed again, and it rained, and the ground produced its fruit. God answers the prayer of faith. If we go to 2 Kings 2:21-22, we see that the people came to Elisha and said that the water in this town, was bad, it was causing a lot of sickness and so what happened? Elisha came and took some salt and put the salt in the water and he prayed and said:

“Thus says the Lord: ‘I have healed this water; from it there shall be no more death or barrenness.’” 

Verse 22 says: ”So the water remains healed to this day, according to the word of Elisha which he spoke.” Folks, I’ve been to the town of Jericho. I’ve seen that spring. Oh yes and it is bubbling out with beautiful fresh water. Now this account took place years before Jesus was even born. 

I remember getting a phone call a few years back, from a farmer by the name of Job, that was his name. He said, ”My farm is in a terrible state, there’s no rain.” He said, ”I have to sell my herd of dairy cows if we don’t get any rain.” I felt the Lord say, “Go and take salt with you”, and I took a bag of salt, maybe five kilos and I went to the farm. We flew up, right up in the North West of our beloved South Africa. I said, ”Where is your borehole where the water comes from?” He took me to a big windmill. I said,” I’m going to pour this salt into the borehole, into the spring. I did that, we prayed, we left, and we got some photographs a few weeks later that there was literally a flood on his farm. Folks, the road was washed away, he wasn’t complaining!

Today, pray the prayer of faith and God will answer you.
Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We go to the Book of Isaiah 42:3:

”A bruised reed He will not break, And smoking flax He will not quench;…”

We’re talking about gentle Jesus. He is so gentle that He will not even break a bent reed or extinguish a smouldering reed.

We go to Matthew 19:14:

”But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

You see, the disciples were trying to protect the Lord. He had been preaching all day long, and He was exhausted. He was sitting underneath a tree, probably trying to have a rest, and the parents were bringing their children to the Master because they wanted Him to bless their children. The disciples rebuked the parents and said, “Don’t bring your children here, the Lord is tired. He needs to have a rest.”  What did He do? He said to the disciples,” Don’t do that, bring them to me.” And He laid his hands upon them and He blessed them. I want to say to you today, we need to be gentle, our Master is gentle. We need to have patience with children and with the old people, and with those who are not prominent, and not just chase after people that can help us.  Our Lord is very gentle and He is very kind. The Bible says He won’t break a bent reed or extinguish a smouldering reed.

When I was a young man farming, I would often come in and have a cup of tea with Jill. I would be sitting in the kitchen and a visiting fertiliser representative or herbicide representative would come to visit to get some business. I would be sitting, having my cup of tea, looking through the kitchen door, and I would see him get out of the car, and I watched the way he treated my little children who were playing in the garden. Some of them would come in and not even see the children, they were so busy trying to get business. They would walk right past them and ignore them, and then my dog would come up, and he would push the dog away, not interested, and then he would come and knock on the door and with a big smile, he would say, “Good morning Mr Buchan, can we have a chat?” The answer was normally, “No, not today. I am too busy.”

Then another representative would arrive on the farm, much later, and he would get out of the pick-up and he would walk in through the back gate, and I would be sitting there having my tea, and he would see the children in the garden and he would stop and walk over and get on his knees and have a little chat to them, find out what their name was, and “How are you? Is your dad here?” And the little one would take him by the hand and bring him to me, but as he was walking past, he would stop and pat the dog and say, “That’s a nice dog you have got!” And then knock on the door and say, “Mr Buchan, I would like to speak to you about some business,” and I would probably say, “Come in and have a cup of tea and let’s do the deal.”

Folks, we need to be so careful how we live. We need to be like Jesus, gentle and loving.

God bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

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

We start in the Book of Psalms 51:10-12:

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, 
And renew a steadfast spirit within me. 
Do not cast me away from Your presence, 
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. 
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, 
And uphold me by Your generous Spirit."

How is your first love for the Lord? Do you remember what it was like the day you first gave your life to Christ? It was a romance, wasn't it? It was incredible. You could never get up early enough in the morning to spend time with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You scrambled to get into your poustinia. What is a poustinia? It's a little house at the end of the garden where the Russians spend time alone with God. 

This morning, how is it with you? It's so easy to get sidetracked in this day and age. What kind of company are we keeping, you and I? What do we talk about mostly these days? We've got to get back into the gym. We've got to get back into training, not only physically but more importantly, spiritually. Maybe you and I have forsaken our first love. You say to me, "Please don't say that". No, I'm very serious because this scripture was written by God's very, very special man. His name was David. He used to sit on the hills with his harp, watching his father's sheep, singing to the Lord, praying to the Lord, and then he fell, didn't he, into adultery? He says, "Give me a clean heart, Lord, please don't cast me away from Your presence."

In 2003 I was up in the Mkuzi Game Reserve, in the Northern part of our beloved Kwazulu-Natal, having my quiet time, working as hard as I could, planning my next year of appointments all over the world, and this is the scripture which the Lord gave me, which absolutely flattened me, and I want to share it with you. It's in Revelation 2:4. The Lord says:

"Nevertheless…" meaning, you've done all these things but" I have this against you, that you have left your first love."

We must repent today and get back to our first love. If we lose that, we've lost everything. The Amplified version says: "But I have this [charge] against you, that you have left your first love [you have lost the depth of love that you first had for Me]."

Oh, my dear friend, both you and I today, let us repent before the Lord and say, "Lord, I'm so terribly sorry that I have forsaken my first love. Please renew a right spirit in me."

God bless you and have a wonderful day, 
Goodbye.

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

We go to the Gospel of Matthew 11:4-5:

Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” 

Now remember, John the Baptist was in jail. He sent two of his disciples to enquire, “Is this the one that is coming or do we look for another?” Jesus didn’t answer with an explanation. He just said, “Go and tell John what I am doing.” I want to say to you today that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. That’s an old saying that is so true. A cake can look beautiful but until you taste it you won’t really appreciate it. Jesus sent back this message to John and this proof that He, Jesus, was undoubtedly the Son of God, made flesh. It was not because of the sermons He preached but by the miracles that He did. 

Here at Shalom, we have a saying, “One genuine miracle equals a thousand sermons,” and remember, according to Hebrews 13:8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forevermore. We have experienced many miracles here at Shalom, many, over many years. I really believe with all my heart, that the tools of the trade of the evangelist are signs and wonders and miracles, just as the Master did. But we need faith, we need faith to believe for it. 

Today, I am feeling in my heart very strongly, that there might be a young lady who is unable to fall pregnant and desperately desires a child. Her and her husband are waiting for the miracle. I can tell you, I have evidence of many, many parents who have children that could not have babies, but when we prayed for them, the prayer of faith, God honoured that prayer. I want to pray for you this morning as I have been praying for some time. Lord, I believe in miracles. Please let us see another one being born today. 

Father, 

I pray for that lady listening to this message now, who is unable to fall pregnant. I pray for her and her husband, that as this message goes into their hearts, that they will be reminded that Jesus Christ is the Miracle-Worker and He is also present with us right now. In Jesus name, receive your miracle, and we thank You for a baby that will be born in 9 months time.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

God bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

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

1 Samuel 15:22 - obedience is better than sacrifice. In other words, to do, is better than saying sorry all the time. Then we go to Mathew 5:24:

”… leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

You know, disobedience brings a lot of pain. Obedience brings peace of mind, satisfaction, joy, and progress. Disobedience, on the other hand, brings disaster, fear, restlessness, and, most of all, unhappiness. Let’s stop always saying sorry and let’s start obeying the word of God. For example, pay your income tax, apologise when you hurt somebody or you do something wrong, keep a clear account, owe no man anything, and then we will start to live victoriously. Just do what the Bible says and obey it, and then we will have life abundantly. (John 10:10).

The other night, I went bed and I knew there was something I had to put right. I knew in my heart that the Lord was prompting me to sort out a situation but I thought, “Agh, I’ll just leave it, I’ll leave it till tomorrow morning.” Have you been there? Yes, you have! And I tossed and I turned and I turned this way and I turned that way, and I couldn’t sleep. Eventually I got up out of bed, I went through to my prayer room, I sat down and I wrote that letter and I dealt with that situation. You know that I came back, I got into bed and I went sound asleep and I had a beautiful sleep that night.

Just obey what the Holy Spirit is telling you to do, at that very moment, and you will be surprised at how well things will go for you.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.