Thought For Today

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 12th of April, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We go straight to the Book of Acts 10:15:
”And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.”
What God has made clean, you cannot call unclean. I looked up The Message translation, and it says, ”… If God says it’s okay, then it’s okay.”
You know folks, we’ve got the situation here where Peter had that dream, vision or trance on top of the roof of Simon the Tanner’s house, and he saw a sheet coming down from heaven and all kinds of creatures and birds of the air were there, and the Lord said to him: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Now Peter said, “No Lord! I have never eaten anything common or unclean in my life.” Then the Lord spoke to him again a second time and said to him, ”What God has cleansed, you may not call un-cleansed.”
People are more important than traditions, and the Holy Spirit revealed to Peter in a dream that whatever God has cleansed is clean, and we need to know that. I’ve got a dear friend who goes with me when I travel overseas and up into central Africa. I have told him and we’ve had a good talk about it, (he’s a very special friend to me. He’s very particular about what he eats. He keeps himself very fit and very trim), I said to him, ”When you go with me and we go into a house, you will eat whatever is put in front of you, otherwise you’re not coming.”
Folks, I can preach the Gospel, and I can see people respond to the Gospel and they are deeply touched, sometimes to tears, and then we’ll go back to their homes. Some people live in very simple homes, and the food that they give us is very simple and sometimes is not maybe not what you and I would regard as good food, but that woman has slaved over a stove to make a meal for us, and it has cost her plenty. Now, if we turn our noses up, as it were, and don’t partake heartily of what she has prepared, it is a great insult to her, but if you eat that food, that will make an impact on her like maybe the Gospel doesn’t even make an impact sometimes, because we are doing what God has called us to do.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 11th of April, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We start in the Book of Numbers 30:2:
“If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.”
Wow! That is quite a statement. Then we go to the Gospel of Luke 22:61-62:
“Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” So Peter went out and wept bitterly.”
A vow is a serious thing. According to the Oxford Dictionary, it is a solemn promise, a pledge, an oath, and a commitment. Now we know the sad story about Peter, the big fisherman who said to the Lord, “I will never deny You, Lord.” But he denied Him three times. Oh, my dear friend, we cannot break a promise that we make to God. It almost destroyed Peter completely. In fact, if the Lord Jesus Christ Himself had not told the disciples to tell Peter that “He will see him in Galilee” after the resurrection, there would have been no hope for him.
I made a vow myself, to the Lord Jesus Christ, many years ago. I was going through an extreme drought on the farm. The maize crop was failing and I was facing absolute bankruptcy. I cried out to the Lord. I will never forget it. I said, “Lord, if You pull me through this drought, I make a vow that I will preach Your Gospel for the rest of my life.
Well, He pulled me out of the drought. We had a miraculous crop, and now I am preaching the Gospel. Folks, keep your vow to the Lord. Don’t break it.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 10th of April, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We go to 1 Timothy 6:6:
“Now godliness with contentment is great gain.”
Then we read it out of the Amplified Version:
“But godliness actually is a source of great gain when accompanied by contentment [that contentment which comes from a sense of inner confidence based on the sufficiency of God].”
If God is our sufficiency, then we are content, but many of us are not. Some of the poorest people I know are the most content. They have nothing to worry about because no one can steal anything from them because they don’t have anything. And some of the wealthiest people I know are unhappy because they have a large amount of money or possessions that they have to watch over and they are continually worried about losing their money.
Contentment! That bus driver, all he is concerned about is getting his salary at the end of the month. The cattleman who looks after the cattle on the farmer’s property, he just needs to know that those cattle are in good condition. The waitress in the restaurant, she is happy because she has got a job and she is serving her customers with lots of joy. The usher - I am talking about the usher in the church, he is the one who welcomes you into the church. Often, he has more impact than the preacher. Discontentment is a terrible thing.
When you are a multi-millionaire, you have a great responsibility, and everybody wants to get rich, but once you have all that money, you have to manage it. I think about the sad story of Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley said sometimes when he was on the platform, “he feels like he is in a prison and he can’t get away because of the commitments on his life.” That is what he said. I have been to his home in America, and it was a very sad place for me. He died, he was only 40 years old. Contentment is very important.
You know, we have got a little dog. In Afrikaans, they call him a “worsie,” which is a sausage dog, and this little dog is very happy. We have been away for a while. We were in Central Africa. We got back last night, and that little dog was so happy to see us and so content. She jumped up on my lap, put her head down on my knee and she was totally content.
Jesus Christ is all we need. If you have got Him, then you have got contentment and a reason to live.
Have a wonderful day today and be grateful for what you have got.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Thursday morning, the 9th of April, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We start in that very well-known scripture found in Philippians 3:10:
“…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death,…”
Then the other one, Colossians 1:27:
“…which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
We are talking this morning about our lifestyle, a way of life. Being a Christian is not like belonging to a certain club or organisation. No, it’s a relationship with Jesus Christ, the practice of the presence of God, twenty-four/seven, night and day. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more time we get to know Him.
William Duma was a Zulu pastor from the Umkomaas Valley in KwaZulu-Natal. A small little man, but what an incredible servant of the Lord! He prayed for the sick, he preached the Gospel without any kind of fear, and people used to flock to his services. But he had an intimate relationship with Jesus. Once there was an organisation that invited him to go to Israel as a gift for all his hard work, not only him, but a few other ministers as well. All of them accepted immediately, but he said, “Can I let you know tomorrow morning? I just want to ask my Lord if I can go.” Of course, he did go. That is the relationship that you and I need with Jesus.
That Yorkshire plumber, Smith Wigglesworth, the evangelist, he said, “I never pray for half an hour, but I never let half an hour go by without praying” - a man who had a relationship with God. You see, it is a lifestyle. When we fall down, we say sorry, we repent, and we get up and we keep going again. We need to keep on keeping on. This is a lifetime to achieve. Matthew 6:33:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
In closing, we need to stop trying to please God and start to be a child of God. We need to seek the Lord and then the peace and the contentment follow.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day as you walk with Him today.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 8th April, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We are still thinking today and meditating on the Easter week that has gone by, and we realise again the tremendous price that our beloved Saviour paid for you and me. I want to say to you today, it’s the garden, or it is the Cross. We need to make that decision. Jesus did. If we look at Matthew 26:39, the Bible says:
“He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”
The hard part is to make the decision. Now the Lord Jesus Christ could have said at the end, “No, I can’t do this Lord, Father God, I can’t go through with this because I know what is going to happen.” He already knew about the forthcoming crucifixion and He sweated blood in the garden, trying to make the decision - is He going to go through with it or is He going to pull out? We can see that in the Gospel of Luke 22:44:
“Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
I have heard doctors say that when a person is totally stressed out, it can be that actual blood comes through the pores of his skin. That is extreme stress, agony, anxiety and everything else that goes with it. You see, although Jesus was God, He was also very much man. He went through everything that you and I are going through at the moment.
I want to say to you today, God is calling you to make a decision. You cannot sit on the fence, either you are going to go through with it or you are going to call it off, but you cannot stay in the middle. I remember it like yesterday, when I got a word from God to hire the biggest tent in the world. It was built in Britain, it was extended in Germany and then it was shipped out here for the World Earth Summit in Johannesburg and by faith, I had a mere R500.00 in my pocket, that’s not even $50 and by faith I went through with it and the rest is history. We ended up with thirty thousand men in that tent and thirty thousand men outside the tent. It was probably the biggest miracle I experienced up until that time, but I had to make the decision. If I had not made the decision, it would never have happened.
Now you go to the Lord, you go to the mountain, go into the closet and pray that God will tell you what to do. If you must marry that person or not, whether you must complete that degree or not, whether you must change your job, whether you must emigrate, or whether you must stay here. He will tell you, but you need to ask Him and pray and wait.
Jesus said at the end, ”Not my will but thy will be done.”
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.