Daily Reading for Thursday 20th July 2023

Prayer
-Give thanks to God that we are part of a global church made up of true Christians across the world.
-Give thanks to God for the freedoms we have to share the Gospel in England and pray that it may continue.
-Pray for missionaries across the world who are seeking to preach the Gospel and establish a faithful church.
-Pray for those in persecuted countries who have to meet in secret. Even those who are now in prison for their faith. Give thanks to God
  that we are part of a global church made up of true Christians across the world.

Church Services
Sermons
Sunday morning at 11:00am
Sunday evening at 6:30pm
Bible study and prayer
Wednesday evening in church
Lunch hour service
Thursday between 1:00pm and 1:30pm
Outreach / witnessing
Saturday morning at 10:00am in church for prayer - 10:30am at Victoria Street (0pposite Town Hall - outside the big Boots store).

Daily Readings
Preface - The nations which were left to prove Israel. By intercourse with them the Israelites are seduced into idolatry. They are sold into the hand of Chushan-rishathaim, but delivered by Othniel; and into the hand of Eglon king of Moab, but delivered by Ehud. Shamgar slayeth six hundred Philistines with an ox goad, and delivereth Israel.
Judges 3
Preface - Stephen, called upon to answer the charge against him, relateth how God called Abraham, and gave him and his seed the land of Canaan by promise; how Joseph was sold by his brethren, and Jacob with his family went down into Egypt: how; when they were oppressed by the Egyptians, Moses was born, and sent to deliver Israel out of Egypts; that this same Moses witnessed of Christ, received the law. and experienced the disobedience and idolatry of their forefathers; who had the tabernacle of witness, till Solomon built the temple, he reproacheth his hearers with imitating their fathers' rebellion against God, and persecution of his prophets, by having themselves murdered Christ, and transgressed the law they had received. Stung with the reproach, they stone him, looking up with faith unto God, and calling upon Jesus to receive his soul, and forgive his persecutors.
Acts 7

A Puritans Catechism
Q23-How does Christ execute the office of a prophet?
A-Christ executes the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.

Robeert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Christ's garden
My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. Song of Soloman 6v2
When God mad man at the first, He planted a garden east ward in Eden; and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food - the tree of life also, in the midst of the garden. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress and to keep it. That garden was a sweet type of the delight of Adam's soul; and there, day by day, he heard the voice of God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day. When Adam fell, God drove him out of the garden into this bleak world, covered with thorns and thistles, to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. Man no more walked with God in a garden of delights.
But when a sinner is brought to Christ, he is brought into Christ's garden: 'We who believe, do enter into rest.' He says: 'I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.' He becomes one that dwells in the gardens. True, he is one coming up from the wilderness. This world is a wilderness to the believer - full of pain, sickness, sighing, death - a world that crucified his Lord, and persecutes him - a cold, unbelieving, ungodly world. Still the soul dwells in the gardens; 'His soul shall dwell at ease.' True, a believer has his times of desertion, and clouds, and doubts, and deep waters. At such times, his cry is: 'O wretched man!' Still when his eye rests on Jesus, his soul dwells in a garden of delights.