Thought For Today

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 4th of July, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We go to 1 Samuel 15:22: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”
Now, every single time the Israelites disobeyed God, they had to bring a sacrifice, an offering to ask God to forgive them, but now the man of God, Samuel, a wonderful prophet of God, said it is better to obey rather than keep on saying sorry, to keep on making a sacrifice, taking the fat of rams, which was very choice, and using it as an offering.
I want to say to you three things: True faith in God (number 1) brings obedience, (number 2) and the obedience eventually brings blessing. What do I mean by that? Well, many, many years ago we had a big campaign in King’s Park Rugby Stadium in Durban, South Africa. When I was preaching my heart out in my Scottish kilt, they had said on the radio that El Niño, that horrible, horrific drought, was coming to South Africa. The rural small-time farmers must not plant any crops because it will be a failure. I said clearly, “To hell with El Niño, I am going home. I am going to plant a crop of potatoes. Now, I had never grown potatoes in my life, and I had no form of watering them, no irrigation. I was going to do it on dry land. Even my neighbour came over and said, “Angus, are you committing suicide? You can never reap anything out of that, and El Niño is coming. I said, “I am going to do it by faith.” So, by faith, I went home and planted my first crop of potatoes, and, of course, the rest is history.
What a blessing! Oh yes, they did grow in spite of what all the naysayers said, and I reaped a crop of potatoes, and that was the beginning of an abundant blessing that God has given to me, because I wrote a book called “Faith like Potatoes.” Do you know, that book is in 17 different languages? Do you know there is a movie? And it is still available to this day. Sony, the big picture movie giants have signed us up for another 15 years. Why is that? It is because obedience brings blessing.
Today, I don’t know what it is that you are struggling with. Hear clearly from God, then by faith, do it. Sometimes it won’t even make sense. By faith do it, so that God will receive all the glory. May the Lord bless you as you step out into the unknown by faith, with your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters, Jesus Christ.
God bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 3rd of July, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We go to the Book of Acts 26:28:
”Then Agrippa said to Paul, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”
We want to talk today about the power of personal testimony.
The Lord saved my wife, Gill and me through a lay witness mission. What does that mean? A group of ordinary people, like you and me, coming into a church and just getting up one after another and giving testimony of the change in their lives through what Jesus Christ had done for them. Simple, yet absolutely profound, honest stories from the lives of just the man in the street, that is what changed my life. It was no fancy preaching. It wasn’t a fancy sermon. It wasn’t an intellectual lecture. No, it was a simple story told by a simple housewife, a simple farmer, a simple student - just real stories. Now, Paul, the apostle, did exactly that. He just told Agrippa how Jesus Christ had met him on the road to Damascus and his life was instantly changed.
Well, these people came up, I’ll never forget it as long as I live, one by one, and they gave short stories. These stories lasted maybe two minutes, three minutes at most. They were saying,” I was caught up in alcoholism. I could not stop drinking. I hated myself for it, then I came before the Lord and I asked Him to help me, and supernaturally He delivered me from the curse of alcoholism.” Then the next person would come up and say, ”My marriage was in a total mess.” He would come up with his wife. The two of them would stand there. ”We couldn’t get on. We decided we were going to get divorced, then we thought about the children and we thought we’d give it another go and then we met Jesus Christ. Now we are more in love with each other than we were when we first met each other.” Powerful stories! Successful businessmen who were really in a bad way, their businesses all of a sudden took a downward turn and everything that they had been working for was lost. Then they turned to Christ and He restored them a hundred-fold.
I want to say to you today, do not be scared to tell people how the Lord has impacted your life and you might say, ”Well I don’t have much of a story.” You will be surprised, my dear friend, the simpler the story, the more profound. Just keep telling people what Jesus Christ has done in your life. That is the most powerful story you will ever tell.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Thursday morning, the 2nd of July, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We start in the Old Testament in the Book of Deuteronomy 16:1. The Lord says:
“Observe the month of Abib, and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night.”
Then we go to John 3:3:
“Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Then we go down a little bit further to verse 7, Jesus says again: “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.” A conscious decision to make the greatest decision of your entire life, and we cannot afford to forget that time. I know some of you listening to this message can honestly say, “I don’t remember the exact day. I don’t remember the exact month, but I know that God has changed my life. That is wonderful and I rejoice with you but there must be a time in your life where you have drawn a line in the sand and said, “Devil, this far and no further.”
I did it on the 18th of February, 1979, in the little Methodist Church in the Main Street of our town, Greytown, and I will never ever forget it. No, I didn’t see any bolts of lightning, I didn’t hear any thunder - no, I made a conscious decision that I was going to follow Jesus Christ and Him, alone.
That is why the Jewish people are so strong in their roots, because they do not forget the time that the Lord took them out of Egypt, 400 years of slavery, took them out by night - miraculous - and they will not forget that. I have been to Israel many, many times. I have had the privilege of speaking at the Feast of Tabernacles, where they rejoice in the Lord and tell their children about what happened and how they came out of slavery in Egypt. I want to tell you now, even today, I want to pray with you if you have never, ever made a conscious decision to follow Jesus Christ with all of your heart. Please pray this prayer after me, and I am going to pray it slowly:
Dear Lord Jesus,
I repent of my sin, and I ask you to be the Saviour of my life today, on the 2nd of July, Thursday morning, 2026. I will serve no other gods but You.
Thank You for dying for me, a sinner, on the Cross at Calvary, but Lord, through Your death I have been set free from the slavery of the system in this world.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Wonderful! Congratulations! Go and tell 3 people what you have just done. Until next time, Jesus bless you!
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 1st of July, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We start in the Book of Matthew 25:21:
“His lord said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.”
I want to ask you a question today. Are you being obedient to what the Lord called you to? Whenever I think of an obedient servant, I think of Job, the farmer. Job didn’t always have it going well for him. We know that. If you look at Job 13:15, he said
“Though He slay me, yet will I (still) trust Him.”
That is unconditional surrender, that is being a faithful servant whether the going is good or whether the going is not so good. Where do you stand today?
I want to pray for you in a moment because I read something this morning that really stirred me up. A famous man of God said, “God holds us responsible, not for what we have but for what we might have had, not for what we are but for what we might have been.” I want to say to you today, there is no future in the past but this is a directive that I believe we need to look at. The Lord is saying, “But I told you to do that and you didn’t do it, now you haven’t got anything. I gave you an opportunity to go through that door, but you were scared. I gave you an opportunity but now you have lost it.” But we thank God that He is a merciful God and if we cry out to Him, He will give us another opportunity to put things right. So I want to pray for you:
Heavenly Father,
I pray for my dear friend listening to this message today, that he will repent, say sorry, for things in his life he knows he should have done and yet he didn’t do them. Give him an opportunity, Lord, to rectify that situation by opening another door for him, that he might go through in faith, and then Lord, he will become the man, the woman, that you meant them to be.
I pray this prayer over myself as well, Lord. Please forgive me for pushing aside so many opportunities because of fear, because of unsureness, because of a lack of faith and maybe because of sin in my life. Today, I say sorry, I repent, I dust myself off and I am going to go ahead and take that new opportunity that, by faith, You are going to give me. I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
God bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 30th of June, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.
We start in the Book of Luke 12:12:
“For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”
Now that is a beautiful scripture. I am thinking particularly this morning of young students at university or at school; I am thinking of CEO’s of large companies who have to deliver a critical speech. I am thinking of employers who have to come up with the right answer for their employees today.
From that Scripture, we go straight to the Book of Acts 24:1:
“Now after five days Ananias the high priest came down with the elders and a certain orator (that is a specialised speaker) named Tertullus. These gave evidence to the governor against Paul.”
So they brought in the professionals to accuse Paul of something, of course, which he did not do. Then the last Scripture, I want to share with you today, found in the Book of Psalms 81:10:
“Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.”
It doesn’t matter who is standing against you. Paul defended himself. He never got a defence counsel. He spoke up himself. When you speak the truth, when you speak the word of God, no one can stand against it because the Holy Spirit is speaking through you, the truth. When you speak the truth, no one will contest the truth. Lies never hold any water. When you make your defence, keep it simple and let the Holy Spirit speak through you.
Many a time, when I am about to get on the platform to speak to a large crowd, I will be walking up the steps, it’s quite a frightening thing, by the way, and as I am walking up, the Lord will say to me, in my heart, “I do not want you to speak about this subject. I want you to speak about marriages.” Now, I haven’t prepared a thing, but God gives me a Scripture, and when I am obedient, and by the grace of God, I do exactly what He said, because I am too afraid to do anything else, we hit the bullseye.
Today, it doesn’t matter what you are doing, what court you are going into, remember, if Christ is for you, there is no man that will stand against you.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.