Daily Readings for Sunday 15th December 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 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
Preface - The vision of an angel sent to measure Jerusalem, and its flourishing state under God's protection foretold. The people wanted to quit Babylon before its fall. The promise of God's presence.
Zechariah 2
Preface - Christ cureth an impotent man at the pool of Bethesda on the sabbath day: the Jews raise petty objections, and persecute him for it; he justifieth himself by the example of God his Father: and asserteth the power and judgment committed unto him by the Father: he appealeth to the testimony of John, of the Father, and of the scriptures: he sheweth that his humility caused their rejection of him; but that in disbelieving him they disbelieved Moses also.
John 5


Daily Light - Morning
Bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfil the law of Christ. -
The reproaches of them that reproached thee
are fallen upon me.

Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who...took upon him the form of a servant. - Even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. - He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.

When Jesus...saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled. - Jesus wept. - Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing; but contrariwise blessings; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.
Ga. 6.2; Ps. 69.9; Phil. 2.4-6.7; Mk. 10.45; 2 Co. 5.15
Jn. 11.33; Jn. 11.35; Ro. 12.15
1 Pe. 3.8-9


Daily Light - Evening
Son, go work to day in my vineyard.

Thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

Reckon ye...yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. - As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. - Sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.
Mt. 21.28; Ga. 4.7
Ro. 6.11-13; 1 Pe. 1.14-15; 2 Tim. 2.21
1 Co. 15.58


A Puritans Catechism
​Q 35 - What are the benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification?
A - The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification are assurance of God's love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Perseverance of the Saints
Chapter 17
PARAGRAPH 1
​
​Those whom God has accepted in the beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, and given the precious faith of his elect unto, can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved, seeing the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, from which source he still begets and nourishes in them faith, repentance, love, joy, hope, and all the graces of the Spirit unto immortality;1 and though many storms and floods arise and beat against them, yet they shall never be able to take them off that foundation and rock which by faith they are fastened upon; notwithstanding, through unbelief and the temptations of Satan, the sensible sight of the light and love of God may for a time be clouded and obscured from them,2 yet he is still the same, and they shall be sure to be kept by the power of God unto salvation, where they shall enjoy their purchased possession, they being engraved upon the palm of his hands, and their names having been written in the book of life from all eternity.3
1 John 10:28,29; Phil. 1:6; 2 Tim. 2:19; 1 John 2:19
2 Ps. 89:31–32; 1 Cor. 11:32
3 Mal. 3:6


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Sinking saints
But, when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
Matthew 14 v 30

Once Peter 'walked on the water, to go to Jesus, But when he saw the wind boisterous he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?' Christ has an almighty arm for sinking disciples to cling to. Once two disciples were walking towards a village north of Jerusalem. They talked earnestly together to beguile the way, and they were sad. A stranger drew near, and went with them. And as he went he expounded to them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Jesus; in breaking of bread He was revealed to them, and left them exclaiming, 'Did not our hearts burn within us!' So Jesus reveals Himself to His own to this day, and makes the sad bosom burn with holy joy.