I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 23rd of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Exodus 39:43:

”Then Moses looked over all the work, and indeed they had done it; as the Lord had commanded, just so they had done it and Moses blessed them.”

They had completed the task. They had done the work of the building of the tabernacle of God in the desert and Moses blessed them.

Then we go to the gospel of Mark 14:16:

”So His disciples went out, and came into the city, and found it just as He had said to them; and they prepared the Passover.”

We’re talking today about doing a good job for the Lord. We’ve got to give the Lord Jesus the best, not the second best, not the leftovers. The Lord sent Peter and John to prepare a place for the last meal that He would have on earth. The Lord Jesus told them where to go and what to do but they did it with excellence, just like they built the tabernacle with excellence. I want to say to you today that you and I must do things for God with an excellent spirit.

Now, I want to tell you a little story. Many years ago, when I was a fairly new preacher, I felt led to go to Cedarville in Kwazulu-Natal, to book the town hall and to have an outreach meeting. A very dear friend of mine said to me, ”There’s only one man who can do that for you. He’s an unbeliever, but he’s an exceptional organiser, and this man will do it, but I’m not sure whether he’ll accept the proposal because he’s not a Christian.” Anyway, miraculously, my friend approached him and he said, ”Yes, I’ll think about it. Where does this guy stay?” That’s me, and he told him the address and where the farm was.

He arrived on the farm in a very big, fancy Mercedes-Benz. He got out of the car, I said, ”Would you like to come and have a cup of coffee? I’ve been expecting you.” He said, "No, thank you, I’m very busy.” He said, ”What’s your name?” I told him who I am, and he said, ”I will organise it for you.” I said, ”Is that all there is to it?” He said, ”I’ll do everything,” and out he drove, and he did an incredible job of preparation and by the way, he gave his life to Christ in the middle of that outreach, and he became a preacher himself, him and his dear wife. They had a little caravan and they drove all over the Eastern Cape, preaching the gospel and I asked him many many years later, ”Mike, why did you accept that invitation when you didn’t even know who I was?” He said, ”Because I drove onto your farm and I saw the fences were straight, the road was nicely prepared, the maise looked fantastic, the cattle were fat and I thought, I will do this job.”

We need to do a good job because it makes a good impression. Don’t give God your second best, and do everything you do as unto Him.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 22nd of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go straight to the Gospel of John 6:42:

”And they said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

What a beautiful statement! “I have come down from heaven”. Oh, my dear friend, I want to tell you something so special and precious this morning. I want to tell you about Jesus. Jesus is God, made flesh. If we look at Matthew 1:23. He is referred to as, “Immanuel”. What does that mean? It’s a Hebrew word which means, “God with us”, and if you look at John 14:9, Jesus Himself said, ”If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” So that is where all the problem came from in that little town of Nazareth, where Jesus said, ”I have come down from heaven.” They couldn’t understand that. They said, ”This is the son of Joseph and Mary, who live up the road.” What they did not realise was that God became flesh and dwelt among us!

Many years ago, I heard a story about somebody who came up to an evangelist and said, ”You know, we all serve and we all believe in the same God.” And this man said, ”No, we don’t.” And he said, ”What do you mean?” And then the evangelist asked this man, ”Does your god have a son?” And the man said, ”No, He does not.” And he said, ”That’s why we don’t serve the same God. You see, the God I serve has a Son. His name is Jesus Christ.”

I want to say to you today, at the end of the day, we can argue as much as we like, but the bottom line for me is this - relationship. I know a Man, a Man who can walk on water, I know a Man who can raise the dead, I know a Man who is coming back very soon! Yes, in my little quiet time room where I’m recording this message, I can tell you, I can feel His presence. Yes, I can feel Him, I can sense Him and I’m telling you that He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother and He wants to be your friend today.

Please speak with Him, He’s waiting to hear from you.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.

Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 21st of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go straight to 2 Corinthians 5:17:

”Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

No regrets about the past. If you’re a new person in Christ, you’ve got to look forward. Remember, I’m the farmer. You can’t plough a straight line if you keep looking behind you. We’ve got to move forward. There is no future in the past. I looked up the Oxford dictionary to find out the literal meaning of the word “regret”. Do you know what regret is, young person? “Aah, I shouldn’t have done that. I wish I hadn’t done that,” and the older people, ”Man, I should have thought more. I should have phoned my friend before he died, but he’s gone now and I won’t get a chance to speak to him again in this life.”

A regret, according to the Oxford dictionary, is “to feel sorry or to be disappointed about something that you have done or something that you should have done.” There’s no point in looking back, we’ve got to move forward. Now, C S Lewis, is one of my favourite authors, a very deep man in the Lord. A man who had a previous life, he was actually an atheist, he had no time at all, he didn’t believe in God, and then he had a beautiful encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is what he says. He says, ”You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

Isn’t that beautiful? I’ll say that once again. I think it’s very pertinent today to somebody who’s trying to come to grips with maybe something terrible that happened in the past. You wish you could rectify it, but you can’t. He says you can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start, that’s today, where you are, and change the ending! Let’s do it, you and I, let’s say:

Lord, we are so sorry for the mess-ups we’ve made in the past, the people that we’ve hurt, the things we should have done and we didn’t do it, but Lord, I want to start today and I want to change the ending of my life.

In Jesus' name, amen.
God bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Thursday morning, the 20th of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go straight to the Gospel of Matthew 6:33. Jesus says:

”But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

What a beautiful scripture! Seek first the kingdom. First thing in the morning, that’s the time, seek the face of the Lord. Get your directions for the day, and then you will have a pleasant, successful and peaceful day.

John Bunyan was the man who wrote the fantastic book called “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. They say it’s maybe the most read book of all time, next to the Bible itself. A beautiful story. He spent most of his life in jail because of his stand for Jesus Christ. Now he says, and I quote, ”He who runs from God in the morning will scarcely find Him the rest of the day.” Basically, if you don’t have a quiet time in the morning, you will never catch up right through the day. Come on, let’s be honest. We need to change those principles now, and we need to put Jesus first every morning and then the rest of the day will go well.

Seek ye first the kingdom of God,
And His righteousness,
And all these things shall be
Added unto you. Halleluh, Hallelujah.

Halleluja, Halleluja,
Halleluja, Halleluh, Halleluja.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 19th of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Gospel of John 6:35 (Amplified Bible):

“Jesus replied to them, “I am the Bread of Life. The one who comes to Me will never be hungry, and the one who believes in Me [as Saviour] will never be thirsty [for that one will be sustained spiritually].”

Jesus Christ is the bread of life. Have you ever been to a bakery very, very, early in the morning, where they make the bread at the back of the bakery and bring it out on trays? It is looking so beautiful, so brown and a delicious aroma. Aah, I love it so much, and then when you cut a slice of that bread, and you take some fresh farm butter and you spread it over liberally, and it starts to melt into that hot bread, I don’t think there’s too much that tastes better than that!

That’s why I get up in the morning at 4 o’clock, because I don’t like to eat stale bread. I don’t like to eat bread that is old. I don’t like to eat bread that is contaminated by the things of the world. We must get the Bread of Life, every single morning before anything else. Before we listen to the world news, before we start phoning other people and getting different opinions of different world events, we must go to the bakery, my dear friend.

Radio Pulpit always says to me when we talk about evangelism, it is one hungry beggar showing another hungry beggar where to find bread. He says where to find the bakery, because that’s where the spiritual Bread of Life is. So, young person, today I want to tell you, get up in the morning and get into your quiet time room, wherever that might be. Open your Bible and read the Word of God, and that word will sustain you for the whole day, but if you don’t go to the bakery early in the morning, you’ll have to put up with stale bread, contaminated bread, which will confuse you.

Get to the Bread of Life. His name is Jesus!

God bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 18th of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Gospel of John 6:27:

“Do not labour (do not work) for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life,…”

This is Jesus speaking. Then we go back to the Old Testament, to the Book of Ecclesiastes 1:14. They say it was written by Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived. He says it is “grasping for the wind”

Are you grasping for the wind today? Are you on the wrong track? Are you spending all your time, all your effort, in building up things which will perish, maybe even before you die, and have no everlasting benefit to anyone or anything? We need to be like Jesus and get our priorities in order. Mark 8:36, the word of God says:

“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

I want to say to you today, be careful that you’re not putting all your effort into something that has no eternal value. Yes, we have to put food on the table for our families, we have to be responsible citizens, but we have to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then all these other things will be added to us.

Today please, listen to what the Lord is saying to us. Stop chasing after the wind and start seeking Jesus Christ, and He will undertake for you in every area of your lives.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Monday morning, 17th November 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Exodus 36:7:

” …for the material they had was sufficient for all the work to be done—indeed too much.”

The people were bringing in the material to build the tabernacle but they brought in so much, eventually Moses had to say, ”Stop, there’s too much.” What a beautiful attitude! I think many of us need to take a good look at ourselves and ask if we are doing that very thing when it comes to the things of God.

Then we go to 2 Corinthians 9:7:

”So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Today we want to speak about giving. When the Children of Israel began contributing to the building of the tabernacle, before the temple was constructed, God provided them with exact specifications. The people brought in the materials, and the artisans constructed the building. Here, I believe God is saying to you and me, we need to check our motive for giving. Why do we give? It’s so sad when I hear some men talking more about money than about anything else. Now it is a fact that you cannot out-bless the Lord. Our Father is a giver by nature. He gave us His only begotten Son so that we might have eternal life through faith in Him, and He gave His Son willingly, but if you are giving to the Lord expecting a return, like an insurance policy, that is not acceptable to God. We give to the Lord because we love Him, and God says He loves a cheerful giver. We give because He’s given us so much.

Zacchaeus, remember the little man up the tree, when Jesus came to his house, and all the other tax collectors, the thieves were together, Zacchaeus said, ”I’m going to give up to 400 per cent of anything I have taken from anyone”. - just in gratitude for the salvation that he has received. You know, it’s not even the amount you give. Look at the widow, she only had a couple of cents. Jesus said she's given more than the man with the bag of gold, who had so much money.

We slaughtered 40 oxen to feed the men at the Mighty Men Conference in 2008, when we had the biggest tent in the world, for one meal folks. I can’t believe it either! We fed them for a whole weekend, but you know something? We never went short, and at the end of that event, everything we gave to the Lord, He gave back to us. We owed nobody a thing.

Today, give with a cheerful heart and the Lord will do the rest,
God bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 16th of November, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Exodus 35:10:

”All who are gifted artisans among you shall come and make all that the Lord has commanded”

- they were building the tabernacle for God.

Then we go to Mark 6:3:

”Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary…”

Who were they speaking about? Jesus Christ. Jesus was an artisan. Jesus was a tradesman. Yes, the Greek word “tektōn” means “carpenter-builder,” so He probably worked with wood and stone. We need to use our gifting to glorify God. We have a widow who stays with us here at Shalom, and she is a very godly woman. She is a quiet woman, she’s not a preacher, but I want to tell you something now, she preaches with a paint brush. Yes, she is a talented artist. Just hanging behind my chair right here in my prayer room is the most beautiful painting that she painted for me, many many years ago of the Holy Nativity and even as we are approaching Christmas, it is very important to me again, to see the little Babe in a manger with His mother and father, literally looking onto Him. She preaches with a paintbrush.

I also have a grandson here at Shalom. I have many grandsons, this one is very young. He is a gifted worker with leather. He’s not shy, but he’s a quiet cowboy. With his hands, he makes leather belts, he makes bridles for his horses, he makes halters to catch his horses in the field, and he expresses his love for Jesus through the gifting that God has given to him. Today, I want to say to mom and dad, let your child express their love for Christ through the gifting that the Holy Spirit has given them, whatever it might be, because through it, God will get the glory.

Do you remember Saint Francis of Assisi? He was a member of a very wealthy family. He gave it all up and went out to live with the poorest of the poor. He built a monastery basically with his bare hands. Now, I don’t know if it is an actual fact or not, but it is attributed to him as having said, “Preach the Gospel at all costs, and if you really have to, use words.” Very interesting!

Today, use what God has given you. We can’t all be evangelists, we can’t all be teachers, we can’t all be ministers, but we can all use the gift that God has given us to glorify His Son.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.