Daily Readings for Sunday 12th January 2025

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 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, 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.)


Daily Reading Plan - First Year
Preface - Abram and Lot return out of Egypt. On a strife between their servants they agree to part. Lot goeth to Sodom. God reneweth his promise to Abram. He removeth to Hebron, and there buildeth an altar.
Genesis 13
Preface - Christ bringeth evidence of scripture in excuse of his disciples, whom the Pharisees charged with breaking the sabbath. He appealeth to reason, and healeth the withered hand on the sabbath day. The Pharisees seek to destroy him: a prophecy of  Esaias fulfilled in him. He healeth one possessed of a dervil, who was blind and dumb; and showeth that blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is as unpardonable sin, and that every idle word must be accounted for: he rebuketh those that sought of him a sign, and showeth whom he regardeth as his nearest relations.
Matthew 12


Daily Reading - Morning
The only wise God our Saviour.

Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. - Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell, what canst thou know?

We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory. - The mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. - The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
Jude 25; 1 Co. 1.30; Job 11.7-8
1 Co. 2.7; Eph. 3.9-10
Jas. 1.5; Jas. 3.17


Daily Reading - Evening
When shall I arise, and the night be gone?
Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, the morning cometh.

Yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. - He shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds.

I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also...Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you.

:et all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. - Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

There shall be no night there.
Job 7.4; Isa. 21.11-12
He. 10.37; 2 Sa. 23.4
Jn. 14.2-3,27-28
Judg. 5.31; 1 Th. 5.5
Rev. 21.25


A Puritans Catechism
Q 63 - Which is the tenth commandment?
A - The tenth commandment is , Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Lawful Oaths and Vows
Chapter 23
PARAGRAPH 3
​
Whosoever takes an oath warranted by the word of God, ought duly to consider the weightiness of so solemn an act, and therein to avouch nothing but what he knows to be truth; for that by rash, false, and vain oaths, the Lord is provoked, and for them this land mourns. (6)  
(3) Lev. 19:12; Jer. 23:10
​


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
When the soul faints
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
Hebrews 12 vs 5 & 6

Ah! it is a sad thing when the soul faints under the rebukes of God. They were intended to lead you deeper into Christ, into a fuller enjoyment of God. Faint not when thou art rebuked of Him. When a soul comes to Christ, he expects to be led to heaven in a green, soft pathway, without a thorn. On the contrary, he is led into darkness. Poverty stares him in the face, or bereavement writes him childless, or persecutions embitter his life; and now his soul remembers the wormwood and that gall. He forgets the love and wisdom that are dealing with him; he says: "I am the man that hath seen affliction. The Lord Hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me."