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

We start in the Book of Jeremiah 4:3:

“Break up your fallow ground, And do not sow among thorns.”

Then we go straight across to the Gospel of Mathew 13:7:

”And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.”

We have to prepare our hearts just like the good farmer prepares the land that he will plant his precious crop into. A lazy farmer does not take pride in his land preparation and he doesn’t do a fine job. It is rough, it is unkempt, and from the start the seed is going to struggle. We must be very careful that we don’t try and cut corners because if we do we are wasting our time. The thorns and the weeds and the thistles will grow up and strangle those precious little plants as they emerge from the ground.

If we look at verse 22, we see that the word of God tells us that the distractions, the worries of this world cause the plants not to grow because of the competition on the land. Compromise, pleasures, delights and the riches of this world choke the word of God and it yields no fruit.

I remember a farmer came into our area many, many years ago. He came from a different part of the country. Here we have very fertile land and it rains beautifully in this area. This man came from a marginal area where the land was quite dry. He did most of his weed control by mechanical means, cultivating his rows of maize with a tractor and a cultivator. We said to him, ”You need to spray all your weeds because they are getting out of control.” He said, ”No, no, I’ll just let them grow and then I will come in on a nice hot day and I will cultivate them out of the ground.” Well, of course that dry hot day never came. It just rained and rained and rained and eventually his whole crop was strangled by the weeds. We couldn’t even see the little plants. After a couple of years that man left this district because he couldn’t farm here anymore.

We need to cultivate our walk with the Lord. My dear friends, sometimes the most dangerous thing is when you go on holiday and you don’t get up in the morning and don’t have a good quiet time with the Lord every day. You don’t read your Bible, you don’t pray because you say you’re having a rest, but that is when the weeds come in and strangle your relationship with the Lord. When on holiday you need to be spending more time with the Lord and reading His word and praying. Cultivate your land and God will give you a mighty crop.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We start in the Book of Revelation 19:1:

“After these things I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honour and power belong to the Lord our God!“

A victory shout, a singing in Heaven, the devil has been defeated, his demons will never rule again! I want to say to you today, you might be feeling a little bit sad, you might be feeling a bit angry actually and you might be saying, “How is it that evil people seem to get the victory?” and “Where is the justice? How do these people just carry on doing their own thing and nobody apprehends them?”

My dear friend, I want to tell you that vengeance belongs to the Lord. Leave it, put them in prayer before the Lord, and you and I need to start praising God for the victory He has given us already in Christ Jesus. You see that Babylon has fallen, the powers of darkness will never, ever overcome the Lord. That is good news, that is worth singing about, isn’t it? It is worth singing about because the end of the story is not yet written. It is still coming, and I want to tell you, every unrighteous deed will be dealt with, and every person who feels they have been short-changed, will be dealt with by the Lord. He will overcome, He has overcome, and the victory is ours!

Do you remember that old song, that beautiful worship song? I am sitting in my prayer room here, it is still dark outside, and I just wanted to sing with you. Remember that chorus, Alleluia? Let’s sing it together:

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia,
Thank You, Jesus,
Oh thank You, Jesus,
Thank You Jesus,
Thank You Jesus,
And we thank You, Jesus,
Thank You, Jesus,
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Go out today and thank Him because you have got the victory in Him, and nothing else will overcome you.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

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

We start in the Book of Psalm 145:8:

“The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy.”

Isn’t that beautiful to know? Then we go to Psalm 85:2:

“You have forgiven the iniquity of Your people; You have covered all their sin.”

Praise God that you and I serve a merciful saviour! Peter asked the Lord Jesus, “How many times must I forgive my brother? Seven times?” And remember what Jesus said to Peter? “Seven times seventy.” Wow! I thank God that our Lord is slow to anger and He is quick to forgive. He is a merciful God.

I want to tell you a little story about when I was looking for forgiveness, mercy, and grace from my neighbours. Many years ago, I was burning firebreaks on our farm. We have a huge wetland right on the boundary of our farm. It is the sponge which supplies the water to the Umvoti River, which goes all the way down to the Indian Ocean. I was burning away there. Fortunately, I had contacted everybody and all of a sudden, a gust of wind came up and took the fire straight into the huge swamp. Now, inside that swamp are 12-foot-high reeds; it is like an ocean inside there, and the most massive fire got going, where the clouds were black and literally covering the sun. I felt so terribly embarrassed. I had to get on my radio on my pick-up and radio all my neighbours who were on the boundary of this massive wetland on the other side. This was in the middle of winter, when those those reeds were snow white. Fortunately none of the farms were affected, but that day I needed mercy and grace and you know, my neighbours were so kind, they were more understanding and gracious to me than I could ever have imagined.

Today, remember, Jesus Christ loves you, He is not here to condemn you. He is not here to cast you away. No - He wants you to grow. Sometimes we have to be chastised a little bit, we have to be disciplined through the mistakes we make but He is always quick to pick us up, dust us off and say, “Come on now, you can do this.”

Jesus bless you today as you are also understanding and forgiving to others.

Goodbye.

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

We go to the Book of Proverbs 30:8-9:

“Give me neither poverty nor riches—
Feed me with the food allotted to me;
Lest I be full and deny You,
And say, “Who is the Lord?”
Or lest I be poor and steal,
And profane the name of my God.”

To be full and to be hungry, to be successful and sometimes to fail. I think it is harder to deal with success than it is to deal with failure. When you are successful, you can start to think that you don’t need God, and that is a terrible place to be in, and when you are on your knees, you can’t fall any further, can you? When you are on that pedestal you can get knocked off so easily. We need to pray for those who succeed, whether it be in sport, whether it be in business, whether it be at university, we need to understand one thing, when we are conscious of our Lord Jesus Christ then things go well, but when we get so busy because we become so successful, the tendency is to say, “No, I can handle this myself.” How the mighty fall!

Remember The Titanic ship? They said it was unsinkable and yet on it’s maiden voyage, because people didn’t take note of God, it hit an iceberg and went down to the bottom of the sea within a few minutes, with thousands of people dying in the process. We need to keep humble, we need to thank God for everything that we have and we need to walk very carefully before God and before our fellowman, especially when the Lord is blessing us.

Today, remember, if you are going through a hard time, stick close to the Lord. He will teach you lessons in those hard times that you will never learn in times of prosperity and success. If I look back on my life, the highlights of my life have been when I have said, “Lord, I just can’t do it anymore, You have to do it for me”, and He has brought me through. Do not be afraid of success, do not be afraid of failure, just walk humbly before your God.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.

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

We go straight to the Gospel of Matthew 5:16:

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”

It is not so much what we say but rather who we are that makes an impact on the world. Isn’t that true? It is like that beautiful lighthouse standing on top of that cliff, with all the dangerous rocks behind it. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great preacher, said, “The lighthouse makes no noise, it makes no song and it is silent, but on a stormy night it shines through the noise of the waves that are crashing on the seashore, it helps that desperate sea captain, when he is trying to navigate his ship, with waves that are 3 metres high and he can’t see where he is going, and then all of a sudden he sees a little light in the distance, just a spark, that’s all he sees, and it speaks louder than a thousand choirs singing because now he knows where the danger is.”

Many, many years ago, I had the privilege of going to speak at a men’s conference in the northern part of our beloved South Africa. I got letter in the post before I left, to say that “There is an old gentleman who would like to meet with you.” Well, I want to be honest with you, at the time I felt I didn’t have time to go and see him, but I felt the Holy Spirit say, “You must go and visit this old man on the way up to the conference”, which I duly did. As I walked into his house, I sensed the presence of God there. I saw a huge photograph on the wall of an old lady and an old man. I looked at that old man and I couldn’t believe it. It was a photo of the Yorkshire Plumber, Smith Wigglesworth, a man who had been used by God, mightily. In fact, something like 13 people had been raised from the dead through his ministry.

I said to the old gentleman, Mr Harold Berry, “Sir, is this a friend of yours?” He said, ‘It is one of my relatives. It is my wife's grandfather.” I was amazed. I got on my knees, on the carpet, and I asked him to please anoint me. I said, “I want your mantle, Sir.” This old gentleman had started many churches up in the Congo. He was ninety years old. He walked into his room, got a bottle of healing oil and anointed my head with oil. Then he started praying undiluted scripture over me. It was impressive, very impressive, but the part that I remember, only one part, he said, “It won’t be so much what he says but who he is, that will make the impact,” And I have never forgotten that. It is not what you say, it is not how loud you can sing, it is how well you can shine for the Lord.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

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

We start in the Book of Jeremiah 2:13:

“For My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

“Understanding is a wellspring of life to him who has it.”
Proverbs 16:22

Exchanging a fountain of water for a broken cistern is short-sighted and short-lived. But why do we do that? We disregard the blessings of the Lord so often. A spring is a fountain that comes out of the ground. The Lord says we must guard our hearts because it is the wellspring of life. We must be careful that we don’t pollute and muddy the living water that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ, in our hearts.

We tend to build massive dams for holding huge volumes of water, and that is fine as long as it rains and the rain fills the dam, but when there is a dry cycle and a drought, the water in the dam dries up, it evaporates, but that little spring which draws it’s water from deep down in the ground, just keeps coming up. The springs from deep down in the earth never dry up. We need to guard our hearts, my dear friend, with everything we have. Do not allow the pollution of this world to muddy the waters of our hearts.

In the Jordan River in Israel, if that river dried up, there would be no Israel. It is one river that runs from the top to the bottom of Israel. It starts in a spring, right up in the mountains in the northern part of Israel. Yes, we do have Mount Herman and it is covered with snow, and the snow melts and also fills the river, but it is the spring that comes out of the ground which is the life of Israel. No Jordan River, no Israel! The same thing in South Africa - we have a spring in a place called Kuruman, on the west side of our nation. I have been there; it is something to behold. Everything around is dry and desert-like but this spring just bubbles up out of the ground with beautiful crystal clear water.

Today, the Lord is saying, “Do not fill your life and your purpose with broken cisterns, but rather draw on the fountain, the spring, the wellspring of life, which is Jesus Christ.”

The Lord bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

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

We start in 1 Samuel 1:27-28:

"For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore I also have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the Lord."

This is Hannah, the woman who could not have a child and who wept in the temple, so much so that the High Priest, Eli, thought she was drunk. God heard her prayers and gave her the most beautiful little baby, Samuel, who some say was the greatest of all the prophets in the Bible, but she had to give him back, and she asked her husband, "Let me just nurse him until he is weaned." In those days, they would suckle a baby, probably until it was three years old. And then that little baby, that little boy, was given back to the temple, to the Lord, and he served the Lord all his life.

Now, she used to go up every year, it brings a tear to my eye, I tell you what, and make a robe for the little boy and give it to him every year. Maybe you are struggling with something in your life today. The Lord gave you something and now the Lord wants it back. It might be your career, it might be a member of your family, it might be some vision, some expectation that you had, something that you were looking forward to, and the Lord says, "I want it back now." It's a very, very hard thing to do, but do you know something? Samuel's mommy, that's right, I am talking about Hannah, she gave her little boy, her only child, that she had waited for so long, back to the Lord. She said, "I lent him back to the Lord."

But my dear friend, that is not the end of the story. If you go on a little bit further in the Bible to 1 Samuel 2:21, you will see that after she had done that, the Lord blessed her with three more sons and two more daughters! What a lovely awesome story - so she gave what she had back to the Lord and He blessed her with 5 more children.

Do not be despondent today. Do not feel that the Lord has been unfair. Do not feel that you have been let down - not at all, my dear friend! Rather rejoice. You cannot out-give Jesus. Jesus is a giver by nature. He loves to give, so today, give freely and He will freely give back to you.

Have a wonderful day,
Jesus bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 15th of May, 2024, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Revelation 14:13:

“‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labours, and their works follow them.”

We need to run our race, and once we get close to the end, there is sheer joy in knowing that we have completed our task here on earth. Paul, the great Apostle, in 2 Timothy 4:7 said:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

You see, it is not about all the trophies, it's not about all the goals that we achieve, no - its about finishing strong. Just recently, I have met a number of people who are dying, who are coming to the end of their race. They know it, they have told me, and the amazing thing is that they are looking forward to home time. I haven’t met one yet, I am talking about strong Christian men and women, who are fearful of dying. Some of them have accomplished great awards, great trophies. They have achieved the goals that they set before them, but you know, the funny thing is, not one of them speaks to me about their achievements here on earth. No, they speak about home time, they speak about having finished their race, completed their task, and now they are looking forward to going home.

I want to say to you today, yes - we need to live the life that God has called us to, we need to be an example to others, especially unbelievers, but we must focus on the finish line.

“No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

We need to plough the field, we need to complete the task, and then we need to look forward to home time. The older I am getting, the more I am looking forward to meeting the Lord one day, face to face, and the more I am walking on this road, the things of this world are becoming less interesting to me and less desirable. I am looking forward to eternity, to spending the time with my beloved Jesus. You should be the same. We are not here forever; we are simply passing through, but we need to live the day that God has given us; we need to live it to the full, but our eyes must always be on the finish line.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day, Goodbye.