Daily Readings for Sunday 13th April 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


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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.)

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Daily Reading Plan - First Year
Preface - The blood of all slain beasts must be offered to the Lord at the door of the tabernacle, and no sacrifices made to devils. All eating of blood is forbidden, and of that which dieth of itself, or is torn.
Leviticus 17
Psalms 20 Preface - The church prayeth for the king's good success in the day of trouble, and expresseth a confidence in God's succour.
Psalms 21 Preface  - A thanksgiving for victory, with confidence of further success.

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Daily Reading - Morning
Honour the LORD with thy substance.
and with the firstfruits of all thine increase.

He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully. - Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.

God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister.

I beseech you....brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. - The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. - Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.
Pro. 3.9; 2 Co. 9.6; 1 Co. 16.2
He. 6.10
Ro. 12.1; 2 Co. 5.14-15; 1 Co. 10.31



Daily Reading - Evening
There shall be no night there.

The LORD shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.

The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. - They need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light.

Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. - Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son. - Ye were sometimes darkness but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.

We are not of the night, nor of darkness.

The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
Rev. 21.25; Isa. 60.19
Rev. 21.23; Rev. 22.5
1 Pe. 2.9; Col. 1.12-13; Eph. 5.8
1 Th. 5.5
​Pro. 4.18

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A Puritans Catechism
Q 72 - How is the Word made effectual to salvation?
A - The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of convicting and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith to salvation.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Christ the Mediator
Chapter 8
PARAGRAPH 1
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It pleased God, in His eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, according to the covenant made between them both, to be the mediator between God and man;  (1)  the prophet,  (2)  priest,  (3)  and king;  (4)  head and savior of the church,  (5)  the heir of all things,  (6)  and judge of the world;  (7)  unto whom He did from all eternity give a people to be His seed and to be by Him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.  (8)
(1)-Isa. 42.1; 1 Pet. 1.19-20  (2)-Acts 3.22  (3)-Heb. 5.5-6  (4)-Ps. 2.6; Luke 1.33  (5)-Eph. 1.22-23  (6)-Heb. 1.2  (7)-Acts 17.31  (8)  Isa. 53.10, John 17.6; Rom. 8.30

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
It was good
When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.
John 11 v 6

Had Christ come at the first and healed their brother, we never would have known the love that showed itself at the grave of Lazarus, we never would have known the power of the great Redeemer in raising from the grave. These bright forth-shinings of the glory of Christ would have been lost to the Church and to the world. Therefore it was good that He stayed away for two days. Thus the honour of His name was spread far and wide. The Son of God was glorified. 'This people have I formed for myself; they shall show forth my praise.' This is God's great end in all His dealings with His people - that He may be seen. For this reason He destroyed the Egyptians: 'That the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.'