I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Sunday morning, the 12th of January, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today. We go to the Book of Habakkuk 2:2-3:

“Then the Lord answered me and said:

“Write the vision
And make it plain on tablets,
That he may run who reads it.
For the vision is yet for an appointed time;
But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
Because it will surely come,
It will not tarry.”

I want to ask you today, have you written down any areas of your life that you want to clean up, that you want to do better for the year 2025? We are right into it already. We are almost halfway through January. Can you believe it? But you know, if you don’t write it down, you have got nothing to aim for. What do they say? If you aim at nothing you are sure to hit it. You have got to get that journal. Write down your vision and make it plain, so that others can run with it as well. I have been looking at a devotional and this is what it said, “Think it over.” Now, I wrote in this devotional, you won’t believe it, in the year 2003, 22 years ago! This is what I wrote: “I intend to read my Bible more, to pray more, to have more Christian fellowship, to become a better husband, to become a better dad, to become a better grandad and to work harder for the Kingdom of God.” That is what I wrote in the year 2003, and I stumbled upon that reading this very morning.

I want to say to you, write down the thing that you are aiming for. 22 years ago that is what I was aiming for and I can tell you from my heart that that is still my vision even today. I am not saying that I achieved it by any means, but that is what I am aiming for. And I want to say to you as well, take a notebook, take a diary and write it down, what you are wanting to do and accomplish and then work towards it, and then the Lord says that we must wait for it, He says because it will speak in due course.

Have a wonderful day.
Jesus bless you and goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Saturday morning, the 11th of January, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in the Gospel of Matthew 15:11. Jesus says:

”Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man.”

You and I have to clean our act up. Yes, we need to check our hearts today because it is more than outward appearances. You see, Jesus and His disciples were eating some food. They hadn’t washed their hands. They had probably been on the road. The pious Pharisees and scribes started pointing fingers. They said, “Look at these men! They don’t even wash their hands before they eat.” But the Pharisees and scribes went through all their rituals, their traditions, and had a special way of washing their hands, of washing their utensils, but inside they were rotten and Jesus saw it.

We must not be hypocrites. As believers, we have got to be an example to the world. Jesus is more interested in the inside of a man or woman than the outside appearance of a man or a woman. Matthew 23:27:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.”

You see, it is hypocrisy that keeps a lot of people from turning to Jesus Christ. Mahatma Gandhi said he would have no problem following this Man, Jesus, but he could not reconcile himself to the followers of Jesus. We’ve really got to start to clean the inside first. I looked up the Oxford Dictionary of the word hypocrisy, and it is really quite scary. It said, “Behaviour in which a person pretends to have a higher standard than what they really have.”

One of the saddest things that happened to me as a new Christian, many years ago - I heard a true story about a pastor. He was a very fine looking man, always well-dressed, well-spoken and he preached a great message. He went away for a couple of weeks and left the key of his postbox with his secretary and his secretary would go and take the post out every week. She went this one week and took the post out and there she found a pornographic magazine that this pastor was subscribing to. You see, he had forgotten that the magazine was coming to his postbox and that destroyed his ministry. After that, he left town. I want to say to you, let us be very careful that we walk the talk.

Jesus bless you and have a wonderful day,
Goodbye.

I greet you in Jesus’ precious name! It is Friday morning, the 10th of January, 2025, and this is your friend, Angus Buchan, with a thought for today.

We start in Psalm 90:17:

“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands.”

Make us successful in everything we do, please Lord Jesus, establishing the work of our hands. You know, some say Moses was the greatest leader who has ever lived, apart from Jesus obviously. He took a whole nation for forty years through the desert. Folks, we are talking about temperatures of over 45 degrees, 50 degrees sometimes during the day, and freezing at night. He fed those people, a whole nation, not for one year but for forty years. Moses was a great man of God, but you see his prayer was, “Make us successful, Lord, for Your glory.”

I want to ask you a question. Are you praying every morning before you start work with your staff? Are you praying and committing the day’s work into the Lord’s hands before you start? Whether you be a farmer, school teacher, businessman, or construction man, are you standing with your staff and praying every morning and reading a scripture verse before you start work? Do you know that the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, every single morning, early in the morning, spent time getting instruction from His Heavenly Father as to what He had to do? If you read Mark 6:46, He departed to the mountain to pray, to be alone with the Lord. I want to encourage you to pray in the mornings before you start. That is what makes you a successful man or woman, by committing everything into God’s hands before you do anything else. I want to pray for you at the start of this year that you will do it, that you will discipline yourself and do it every single day. It just makes the day go so much smoother and there is such a bonding with your people when you start the day in prayer.

Father God,

I pray for my friends today, before they start work every morning, that like the man of God, Moses, they will pray, “Lord establish the work of our hands please”, in Jesus' precious name,

Amen.

God bless you and goodbye.