I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Monday morning, the 27th of January, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We go to the Gospel of Mark 9:5:

”Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”

That was the Mount of Transfiguration when the Lord spoke to His Heavenly Father and also to Moses and Elijah. Peter, James and John must have stood there with their mouths wide open, not believing what they were seeing. It was so amazing that they did not want to go back down into the valley, where all the trouble is, and the pain and all the suffering and the misunderstanding. Have you ever had a mountain-top experience? Oh yes, I have as well, and you just don’t want to come back down, do you? You just want to stay up there. You know, I am a mountain man, I love the mountains. My dear wife, Jill, loves the sea, and often we have a little giggle together. I say, “Jill, I love the mountains”, and she says, “Oh, but I love the sea.” And then I say, “Jill, Jesus never went down to the sea to pray!” But we cannot live on top of the mountain. We have got to go back down to the valley. We have got to roll up our sleeves. We have got to deal with things in our home, in our workplace. We have got to get involved.

Moses went up the mountain, that’s right, he went to Mount Sinai and he got orders from the Lord. He got the Ten Commandments and then he came back down again into the valley to deliver Jesus’ message to the people. That mountain doesn’t literally have to be a physical mountain. It’s your closet, it is your quiet time place, it is where you spend time with Jesus every day.

There is a thing called “extempore preaching”. I looked up the Oxford Dictionary. The word “extempore” means done without preparation, and to extemporise means to make something up as you go along. Now I am not arguing with the Oxford Dictionary but the great preachers would preach extempore preaching. In other words, they would take one verse out of the Bible, like Romans 1:17: “The just shall live by faith” - and they would preach on that for up to an hour and even longer. The young people would admire them and think they could do the same but what they didn’t realise was that these great preachers had spent hours in their quiet time room getting the message into their spirit man and then simply go out into the open and deliver it to the people.

Today, spend time up the mountain and then you will not make so many mistakes when you have to buy that new motorcar, or you have to sell that house, or you have to go to university, or go to trade school, or get married. Spend time on the mountain first.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 26th of January, 2025 and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We go to the Gospel of Luke 9:26. This is Jesus speaking:

“For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels.”

Are you ashamed to tell people that you are a Christian? Well, the Lord says very clearly, “If you are ashamed of Me, I will be ashamed of you.” You see, when Jesus died on the Cross of Calvary for your sins and my sins, He hung on that tree, He was naked but He was not ashamed to die for you, young lady. Why are you so secretive of the One that you love? It is time for us to speak out about our faith. He has never made you ashamed of Him, He has never done anything to bring any disrespect to you. He is the only one who is pure, without spot or blemish, has never, ever sinned for the whole time He walked on this earth, for 33 years.

Many years ago, I was privileged to go to that beautiful Emerald Isle. Yes, I am talking about Ireland, and my dear friend, Andy, took me to a maximum security prison. These are very sad places. There were men who were put into that jail for life, and they called the prisoners out into an open area. I remember it was tarmac and I had plenty of room to speak to them. They were standing on the one side of this huge wall and I was standing in the middle, and after I had finished preaching, I said, “I want to give you the opportunity and the privilege of acknowledging Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour publicly, not secretively. I want you to walk across this wall, (it was about maybe 20 or 30 metres) and I want you to come across here and get on your knees, and repent before God. And I don’t want anybody to close their eyes or slip their finger up, acknowledging the Lord.”

I waited and waited and then they started coming. Some of these were tough, hardened men, some of them weeping, and they knelt on that tarmac floor and they gave their lives to Christ openly. But what shook me more than anything, there was a man there. I don’t know if he was a resident pastor, a man of the cloth, a clergyman. He had been to university and studied theology. He started to walk on his own, right across that floor, and got on his knees and repented before God. He said to me afterwards, when I said, “I was so impressed by what you did”, he said, “That was the first time in my life that I made a public confession of my faith in front of everybody. Thank you.”

Go out today and tell three people that you are not ashamed of Jesus Christ.

God bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday, the 25th of January, 2025 and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start off in the Book of Hosea 8:14:

“For Israel has forgotten his Maker,…”

Then we go straight to the Book of Ephesians 2:10:

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

God does not make junk! No, He doesn’t. It does not matter what you feel about yourself today. You might feel that you are no good, you are not going to make it, you messed up and that is over - not at all! God made you, Himself. That is what He says. He says that you are His handiwork. He has created you and I beforehand, that we should walk in that. We really need to understand something - we are not created by ourselves. God created us. Colossians 1:27:

“…Christ in you, (and in me) the hope of glory.”

It is Christ in us - that is why we can say Philippians 4:13 says:

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Now, I can hear what you are saying. You are saying, “No, but I made a mistake and I am done.” No, not at all. If you look at the history in the Bible, you will see that God had a habit of using men and women who blew it, who messed up, but what they did was, they repented, they said sorry and got back into the fight.

I am talking about Moses. Moses was a murderer. He killed the slave-driver in Egypt. King David, he did the same thing. He messed up, he took another man’s wife. He was an adulterer and then he murdered her husband to try and cover his tracks. He wasn’t a good man. Peter, the big fisherman, he was a foul-mouthed man, he was arrogant. God used him and God uses ordinary people right through history to do His work for Him. God loves you and He wants to use you.

Now, stand up, dust yourself off and say sorry and get back into the fight.

Jesus bless you and goodbye.