Daily Readings for Sunday 16th June 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.)


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 - God revealed himself by prophecy, that his works might not be ascribed to idols: he saveth his people for his own sake: he exhorteth them to obedience because of his power and providence: he lamenteth their disobedience: he sendeth his people out of Babylon.
Isaiah 48
Preface - A mighty angel declareth the fall of Babylon. God's people commanded to depart out of her. Her judgment. The kings of the earth, and the merchants, and mariners, lament over her. The saints are excited to rejoice over her. A millstone cast into the sea denoteth her irrecoverable fall. 
Revelation 18


Daily Light - Morning
See then that ye walk circumspectly,
not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time,
because the days are evil.

Take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law...to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. - Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be alway with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. - Abstain from all appearance of evil.

While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. - Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.

Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. - Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching.
Eph. 5.15-16; Jos. 22.5; Col. 4.5-6; 1 Th. 5.22
Mt. 25.5-6; Mt. 25.13
2 Pe. 1.10; Lu. 12.37 


Daily Light - Evening
Hold that fast which thou hast,
that no man take thy crown.

If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. - Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean... I will; be thou clean. - Faith as a grain of mustard seed.

Cast not away...your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. - Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. - Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD. - The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. - So run, that ye may obtain.

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.
Rev. 3.11; Mt. 9.21; Mt. 8.2,3; Mt. 17.20
He. 10.35; Phil. 2.12-13
Mk. 4.28; Hos. 6.3; Mt. 11.12; 1 Co. 9.24
2 Tim. 4.7-8


A Puritans Catechism
​Q 18 - What is the misery of that state whereinto man fell?
A - All mankind by their fall, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Justification
Chapter 11
PARAGRAPH 6

The justification of believers under the Old Testament was, in all these respects, one and the same with the justification of believers under the New Testament.

1. Galatians 3:9 
2. Romans 4:22-24

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
God's wounded spirit
And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. - Ephesians 4 v 30
Let me show you the holy friendship that subsists between the Holy Spirit and believer's soul. It is implied in the words, 'Grieve not the Holy Spirit.' It is only a friend we can grieve. If he was an enemy he would rejoice if we fell. And this shews that he is a true friend, because when we fall the Holy Spirit is grieved. It is quite true that the infinite God does not grieve in the same sense as we do, for that would imply that He was not infinitely happy; but it is quite as true that there is something analogous between His grief and ours.