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Dear Congregation,
I want to thank all of you who have prayed and supported the work of the Gospel through the church in 2023 and this first month of 2024. It is a great joy to minister at Westminster Baptist and I love the church here greatly. Through this past year, ther have been heart-wrenching tragedies alongside blessings too. This is often the case in Christian life and yet we are called to keep trusting and believing. We often bear the battle scars of past experience and circumstance, as we live in this sinful world and anticipate heaven. We see Mordecai, mocked and scorned for years in Esther and on the brink of execution, yet he latterly knew blessing from God. The most important thing was he was faithful in serving the Lord. Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful - 1 Corinthians 4:2. This verse especially applies to ministers, church workers, but to all Christians. We are stewards of the oracles of God and to us has the light of the gospel been revealed. We should therefore be striving to be faithful, not popular, faithful. May that be our aim by the grace of God. In the beginning month in recent years we have spent a week praying together on each day for certain things. As a reminder that with continuing faith that prayer is essential. Key to our hope and joy and endurance and love, and with new resolve to make time to pray regularly alone and with your family and with some group of fellow believers. Alongside reading the Scriptures these should be our daily routine. There are various encouragements in the Scriptures to pray: - Pray without ceasing (1 Th. 5:17). - Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; (Ep. 6:18). - Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; (Col. 4.:2). These are a few verses of the many that encourage us to pray and undoubtedly set before us a biblical mandate that we should be concerned to pray. Maybe you have fallen out of the 'habit' or relegated prayer to a part time practice; or you only pray when trouble or danger comes. May these verses challenge us all at the start of this new year to be a people of prayer. To that end I would ask the church to pray, if led, the suggested topics below so we might pray for the same things (roughly speaking) on the same day to encourage us. Let us be prayerful people and realise we too need prayer. To say we are praying for someone should be an expression of concern but an indication of our own action to bring the matter before God, before the throne of Grace through the believers mediator and High Priest, Jesus Christ. Paul even requests prayer for himself and those labouring for the Gospel with him twice in 1 and 2 Thessalonians saying 'brethren pray for us'. May we be a prayerful church and prayerful individuals. Know that we have a prayer hearing and answering God. Pastor Jonathan Arnold. Prayer - Sunday - God thanks to God for His character, perfect, unchangeable, the same yesterday today and forever. - Give thanks to God that we can meet in the church and have fellowship with one another. - Pray the Lord would grant the preaching of his word power and clarity, and there are ready ears to hear and believe it. (2 Thes. 3.1.) - Pray we would be granted faithful ministry and good spiritual food from God's Word. (1 Peter 2.2.) Church Services Sunday morning at 11:00am in church (and also available online via FaceBook) Doctrine Class - in church (after lunch) (and also available online via FaceBook) Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook) Bible Study and Prayer Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook) Lunch Hour Service Thursday afternoon between 1:00pm and 1:30pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook) Outreach/Witnessing Saturday morning at Victoria Street (outside the big Boots store) for 10:30am (across the road from Town Hall - No. 64). Afterwards we go back to church for prayer. Daily Reading Preface - The preacher sheweth that all things here below are vain, because the creatures are restless in their courses, and there is nothing new brought forth, but the old things are forgotten. He sheweth it by his own experience to be so in the studies of wisdom. Ecclesiastes 1 Preface - The office of a bishop is to be esteemed a good work. The qualifications requisitte in a bishop, and in deacons. Why Paul wrote these instructions to Timothy. The important truths of the Christian revelation. 1 Timothy 3 Daily Light - Morning My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. How precious...are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee. - How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth! - Thy love is better than wine. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. - Thou art fairer than the children of men. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. - His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet; yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend. Ps. 63.5-6; Ps. 139.17-18; Ps. 119.103; Song 1.2 Ps. 73.25; Ps. 45.2 Song 2.3-4; Song 5.15-16 Daily Light - Evening Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. - Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backsliding. Behold we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God. - I will hear what God the LORD will speak: for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints: but let them not turn again to folly. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases. - He restoreth my soul. - O LORD, I will praise thee: though thou was angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe. I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. Ps. 51.12; Isa. 57.18 Isa. 1.18; Jer. 3.22; Ps. 85.8 Ps. 103.2-3; Ps. 23.3; Isa. 12.1 Ps. 119.117 Isa. 43.25 A Puritans Catechism Q 38 - What shall be done to the wicked at their death? A - The souls of the wicked shall at their death be cast into the torments of hell, and their bodies lie in their graves till the resurrection and the judgment of the great day. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Of The Holy Scriptures Chapter 1 PARAGRAPH 3 The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon or rule of the Scripture, and, therefore, are of no authority to the church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings.6 6 Luke 24:27,44; Rom. 3:2 Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings Why bread? For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. - 1 Corinthins 2 v 23-24 This day, my friends, I set before you the plainest and simplest picture of the silent sufferings of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. in that night in which He was betrayed, he took bread. Why bread? Firstly, because of its plainness and commonness. He did not take silver or gold or jewels, to represent His body, but bread, plain bread, to show you that when he came to be a surety for sinners, He did not comin in His original glory, with His Father's angels. He took not on Him the nature of angels, he became man. Secondly, he chose bread to show you that He was dumb, and opened not His mouth. When I break the bread it resists not, it complained not, He yielded to the hand of infinite justice. 'He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.'
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