April 20th, 2024

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, there 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. 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 expressio 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 fo rthe Gospel with him twice in 1 and 2 Thessalonians saying 'brethren pray for us'. May we be a prayerful church and prayerful individuals, knowing that we have a prayer hearing and answering God.

Pastor Jonathan Arnold


Daily 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 - True wisdom inspireth modesty. Kings are to be respected, man's ignorance of futurity; his inability in the day of death. The common abuse of God's forbearance. Good and bad men will surely meet with their deserts in the end, though it fall out otherwise for a time. Cheerful enjoyment of present good commended. God's work is unsearchable.
Ecclesiastes 8
Preface - Paul giveth Timothy a solemn charge to do his duty with all care and diligence; certifieth him of his approaching end, and of the glorious prospect he had in view. He desireth him to hasten his coming, and to bring Mark with him, and certain other things: warneth him to beware of Alexander: informeth him what had befallen him at his first apology: and concludeth with salutations, and a benediction.
2 TImothy 4


Daily Light - Morning
Stand fast in the Lord.

My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.

The LORD loveth judment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever. - The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.

The just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are nto of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul. - If they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed. - He that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. - Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. - Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. - He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life.
Phil. 4.1; Job 23.11
Ps. 37.28; Ps. 121.7
He. 10.38-39; 1 Jn. 2.19
Jn. 8.31; Mt. 24.13; 1 Co. 16.13; Rev. 3.11; Rev. 3.5



Daily Light - Evening
Enoch walked with God.

Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

Having made peace through the blood of his cross... You, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight. - In Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.

If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.
Ge. 5.22; Am. 3.3
Col. 1.20-22; Eph. 2.13
Ro. 5.10-11
1 Jn. 1.3
2 Co. 13.14



A Puritans Catechism
Q 44 - Which is the second commandment?
A - The second commandment is, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for i th eLord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of The Holy Scriptures
Chapter 1
PARAGRAPH 9
The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which are not many, but one), it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly.20

20 2 Pet. 1:20–21; Acts 15:15–16



Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Only one sin
For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. - Roman 5 v 19
Only one sin. Some of you see little eveil in one sin, or in a hundred sins; but here you see one sin cast Adam and all his children out of paradise. God did not wait till it was repeated. It appeared a small sin. The outward action was small - only stretching out the hand and taking an inviting fruit. Some of you think little of sins that make no great noise; such as breaking the Sabbath, drinking too much, speaking what is false, sitting down Christless at the Lord's table; but see here, one small sin brought a world under the curse of God. God would rather a world should perish than one small sin go unpunished.