I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 8th of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Gospel of John 18:5-6:

“They answered Him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am He.” And Judas, who betrayed Him, also stood with them. Now when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.”

Then we go right down to verse 8, the same thing again:

“Jesus answered, “I have told you that I am He. Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way,…”

What an incredible Saviour you and I serve, always standing in the gap, always letting others go and Jesus taking the full brunt of any accusation! Jesus said three times, “I am the One you are looking for.” You and I need to start speaking out. We too need to start saying, “Yes, and also am a follower of Jesus Christ.”

“Are you one of them?”

“Yes, I am.”

Speak it out! Let the people know! There is nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of. Remember what the Lord said in the Bible. He said, “If you are ashamed of Me, I will be ashamed of you when I stand before My Father in Heaven.” There is nothing to be ashamed of. Jesus has never let us down, He has never, ever sinned, He has never, ever hurt a child, or a widow, or an orphan, or an older person. No, He has never committed adultery, He has never stolen. We need to speak it out. We need to become more vocal. When people ask us, we need to speak up and say, “Yes, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. He is my Lord and my Saviour. He is my best Friend, He is the One I meet early, every single morning. He is indeed a friend who sticks closer than a brother.”

I want to say to you today, like never before, you and I need to speak out when people ask us, “And who do you follow?” Then we need to say, “Aah, the Darling of Heaven, the King of kings, the Lord of Lords, the Lion of Judah, the Holy One, the soon-coming Saviour of the world.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful Sunday,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 7th of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Gospel of Matthew 26:36:

“Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane,…”

Gethsemane is a garden. I have been there myself many times. There are olive trees there that they say are thousands of years old, and I sit there often and I think of what the Master went through. Gethsemane actually means, “the oil press”, yes, the place of intense spiritual struggle.

Oh my dear friend, are you there this morning? Are you in an intense spiritual struggle? You see, it is the place where Jesus endured profound agony and emotional pressure. Are you emotionally under pressure at the moment? It was so much for the Lord that he sweated drops of blood when He was praying, but what did He say? He could have said, “Lord, I can’t take this. Please send a legion of angels down to take Me home.” No, if you look at verse 39, while He was praying He said,

“My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless not as I will but as You will.”

So if you are suffering, that does not mean that you are not walking with the Lord. It does not mean that you are backsliding or that you haven’t got any courage. It means that you are in the garden, you are in the time in the oil press, in a time of exceedingly great pressure. Now, what is the answer? Well, the answer is to do exactly what Jesus did. What did He do? He prayed and He prayed, and then God, through the power of His Holy Spirit and His angels, gave Jesus the strength to do what He had to do for you and for me.

Now this morning I want to pray for you. I just sense as I am sitting in my prayer room, that many people are in the garden, in the place called Gethsemane, and you are sorely pressurised on both sides and you don’t know what to do. Well, I am going to pray for you, and I want you also to pray this prayer with me:

Heavenly Father,

In the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of Your Holy Spirit, I bring before Your throne, my problems.

They are many, Lord, I cannot even find a way out, but Lord, I appeal to You now and I ask You to undertake for me.

I pray for strength for the strain. Lord, I know that this time will pass by, but at the moment, it seems like there is no way out.

I ask You in Jesus name to strengthen me Lord, so that I can endure that which has been put before me, and I will give You all the glory, all the praise and all the honour.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

God bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 6th of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Gospel of John 17:21. And this is Jesus speaking to His Father:

”that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

I want to speak to you this morning about relationships, and I want to speak to you about probably the hardest place to keep a relationship. Where is it? It’s at home. Oh yes, I can see you smiling, and some of you aren’t. It’s not easy. The first murder in the Bible after the creation of the earth was between two brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain killed his brother, Abel. Look at the dispute that Abraham had with his nephew, Lot, when they argued about who was going to have the high land and who was going to have the low land. What about Moses and his brother, Aaron and his sister, Miriam? What an argument they had! If God hadn’t intervened there, there would have been big trouble because of family.

What about David and Absalom? David was so blinded by the love that he had for his son, that he couldn’t see that his son was plotting to kill him. If it wasn’t for David’s men, his own son would have killed him. What about Paul, Barnabas, and John Mark? They had a terrible fallout because of John Mark, and Paul said, ”I’m not going with him again. He let us down once before and that’s it.” Barnabas said, ”No, well I am taking him.” And they split up.

Now, this is not a negative message, my dear friend, it’s a challenging message. Jesus says that you and I must love one another in the family so that the world can believe that the Father sent Jesus down to the earth.

“A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love, one for another.”
John 13:34-35

A new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you.
That you love one another as I have loved you.
By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love, one for another.
By this shall all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love, one for another.

Let’s love each other. Let’s sit down after this message and say, ”Dad, I forgive you”; ”Mom, I forgive you”; “Son, I forgive you.”; “ Daughter, I forgive you.”

For Christ’s sake, let’s do it.
Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Thursday morning, the 5th of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Book of Daniel 6:20:

” …the living God…”

Now, who said that? That was the king when he came to the dungeon, where Daniel was put with all those ravenous lions, and they hadn’t touched him all night.

I’ve got a beautiful reading I just want to read you from that wonderful man of God, George Müller, the German who got saved in Bristol, England, in a little Bible study and then proceeded to build one of the biggest orphanages in the world. Something like over ten thousand children went through that orphanage, but you know the amazing thing was, he never asked for a penny. He went into his closet and he prayed and Jesus sent the money. I’ve been to that orphanage, I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s not an orphanage anymore, it’s a technical college but those beautiful buildings are still standing as a legacy that was left by this man of God.

Now this is what he says: "How many times we find this expression in the Scriptures, 'the living God,' and yet it is just this very thing that we are so prone to lose sight of. We know that it is written 'the living God,' but in our daily life there is scarcely anything we practically so much lose sight of as the fact that God is the living God; that He is now whatever He was three or four thousand years ago; that He has the same sovereign power, the same saving love towards those who love and serve Him as ever He had, and that He will do for them now what He did for others two, three, or four thousand years ago, simply because He is the living God, the Unchanging One. Oh, how therefore we should confide in Him and in our darkest moments never lose sight of the fact that He is still and ever will be a living God.”

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Wednesday morning, the 4th of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in 1 Peter 1:16, where God says we must be holy for He is holy:

“Be holy, for I am holy.”

What is holiness? It’s the end-product of obedience. We must become obedient followers of Christ.

Then we go to the Gospel of John 17:19-20:

”And for their sakes (Jesus says) I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word;”

The Lord wants you and me to be holy so that the people we come into contact with will know and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are talking here today about walking the talk. People will believe in Jesus because of the lives and the lifestyle that we live, that is what the Lord is saying.

Now you know, as soon as I tell you this, I go way back, ten years ago, to February, this very month, and I think of that brutal, hellish massacre that took place when twenty Coptic Christians were martyred for their faith. Now all they had to do was to deny Christ and they would have lived, but they would not deny Him and their heads were cut off. But one thing we forget sometimes, there weren’t twenty, no, there were twenty-one. The man who was number twenty-one was not one of them. He was an African. He came from Ghana. He had only been with them a few weeks when ISIS caught them, but within those couple of weeks, these Coptic Christians, by example, by living sanctified lives, won him through for Christ, and he too died the martyr's death with them.

I want to say to you today, it’s not what we say, it’s who we are that will draw people to Christ. Let us be living examples today, like those Christians who are sitting around the throne of God because they are martyrs.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Tuesday morning, the 3rd of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Book of Hebrews 13:8:

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

What a powerful scripture! Do you believe that? I do, and I am going to prove it to you in a minute. If we go to Luke 7, and I want you to read it in your own time, from verse 1 to 10, you will see the Roman officer sent some of his people to Jesus to ask Him to please come and heal his servant who was very sick. Jesus was on His way, but halfway there, the Roman centurion sent a message, “Don’t come to my house. I am not worthy. Just say the word.” If we go to Matthew 8:13:

“And his servant was healed that same hour.”

Jesus was not even there. He said the word because that Roman officer had the faith.

Now, something quite amazing happened to us here at Shalom. Last week, a man came to see me. I will call his name, William (that is not his name). He came and shared a testimony with me that encouraged my faith no-end. He said a few years back, His father was very ill. He was in the ICU, and he was basically dying. He had been there for ninety days, 3 months, and they had said to him, they can’t keep him there much longer, and they had to take some of the machinery off him that was keeping him alive because other people needed it, and in desperation, he came up to the farm.

We prayed for him, that God would heal him. He went back to Durban. He went straight to ICU. He walked straight to his dad’s room, he knew exactly where he was, he had been visiting him daily, and the bed was empty. He called the nurses. He said, “Where is my father?”, thinking that he had passed away. They said, “He is sitting in the garden, eating an ice cream.”

Oh folks, what a Saviour! He was totally healed. But listen to the miracle. He said to his dad, “When did it happen to you, dad?’ He told him the exact time, let's just say, half past ten, and at half past ten, William and all of us were praying for his dad and his dad was healed. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow - a modern day miracle, but a replica of what happened with the Roman officer and his sick servant. Totally healed!

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Monday morning, the 2nd of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Book of Joshua 24:15:

”…choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…”

That’s Joshua speaking to the children of Israel. He says,

”… But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

What a powerful declaration by the leader who took over from Moses! Then we go to the New Testament, Matthew 3:11:

”He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.”

Then lastly, 1 Corinthians 3:11, which says:

”For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.“

- spoken by Paul, when some people who were saying that, ”We are following Apollos,” and some saying they were following Paul. Paul stopped them in their tracks.

I want to say to you today there is only one person who you can follow and be very careful. I’m talking particularly today to ministers and leaders. Be careful that you are not drawing people to yourself rather than leading them to Christ. It’s very easy to happen, especially when people gather around you and they say, ”We love you and we’re going to follow you,” and “you’ve got the answers”. That’s a dangerous place to be.

I remember a long time ago, we had a little coffee bar in Greytown and it was thriving. We had all the denominations there. Up to two, three hundred children on a Friday night. So much so that I couldn’t cope because I was farming at that time, so we got a man to come and join us. A wonderful man and he had an amazing way with children, and he continued the good work. Then one day he got a call from another church in another city, and he had to leave. Before he left, I said to him, “You know, the true worth of your ministry is now going to be tested.” He said. ”How can you say that?” I said, ”If you leave and the children don’t come back to the coffee bar, you have been leading them to yourself, and if they continue to come back, then you know you’ve done your job.” Of course, they did come back. He had done a good job.

Today do not draw people to yourself, draw them to Jesus.

God bless you and have a wonderful day.
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 1st of February, 2026, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for the day.

We go straight to the Book of John 11:9:

”Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day?“

Now I listened to a beautiful little reading from a Scottish preacher who lived in the 1800’s. His name, William Arnot. Now, William Arnot said something profound. He said, ”The very fact of a Christian still being here, and not in heaven, is the proof that some work awaits him.” Yes, if we are not in heaven, then the Lord still has work for you and me to do; otherwise, he would have taken us home. I remember hearing a man of God say that we are immortal until our work on earth is completed. What does that mean, young person? Immortal - it means you can’t die. You cannot die until you have completed the work which God has ordained you to do while you are here, and that’s very encouraging for me.

Now, as a farmer we get up in the morning, we milk the cows, we feed the pigs, we tend the crops and we do it every single day. Oh yes, everyday you’ve got to feed those animals, every day, and do it joyfully as unto the Lord, whatever you do, and enjoy your brief time here on earth. Yes, maybe the person I’m talking to now has only got twelve hours left on this earth, so what must you do? You must be sure that you do not have any unforgiveness in your heart, that you don’t have any unsettled issues you need to deal with someone. Maybe you’ve had an argument, whatever, deal with it while you are still here because when the Lord calls you, you are going home immediately.

For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Paul, the apostle, said that. So let us live today as if it were the last day we had on earth, but let us continue to prepare as if we were going to live here for a thousand years. Most of all let us not waste the precious twelve hours that the Lord has given us today!

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful, fruitful day.
Goodbye.