Daily Readings for Sunday 16th March 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 altar of burnt offering with the vessels thereof. The court of the tabernacle inclosed with hangings and pillars. The measure of the court, and the furniture of brass. The oil for the lamp.
Exodus 27
Preface - Christ feedeth five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes: he withdraweth himself from the people, who would have made him a king, and walketh on the sea: the multitude flocking to him, he reproveth their carnal views, and requireth their faith in him whom God had sent. They ask a sign like that of the manna in the wilderness; he declareth himself to be the bread of life from heaven, and that none can live but by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Many of his disciples taking offence at this, he sheweth his meaning to be spiritual. Many leaving him, Peter in the name of the twelve professeth stedfast faith in him; Jesus pronounceth one of them to be a devil.
John 6

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Daily Reading - Morning
What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away.

My days are swifter than a post: they flee away, they see no good. They are passed away as the swift ships: as the eagle that hasteth to the prey. - Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth. - Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down.

The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. - They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end. - Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.
Jas. 4.14; Job 9.25-26; Ps. 90.5-6; Job 14.1-2
1 Jn. 2.17; Ps. 102.26-27; He. 13.8



Daily Reading - Evening
I will sing with the spirit,
and I will sing with the understanding also.

Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. - Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD: and let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.

Praise ye the LORD: for it is good to sing praises unto our God; for it is pleasant; and praise is comely.... Sing unto the LORD with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God.

I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.
1 Co. 14.15; Eph. 5.18-19; Col. 3.16
Ps. 145.21
Ps. 147.1,7
​Rev. 14.2


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A Puritans Catechism
Q 44 - Which is the second commandment?
A - The second commandment is, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them but hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of God and of the Holy Trinity
Chapter 2
PARAGRAPH 1
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The Lord our God is but one only living and true God;  (1)  whose subsistence is in and of Himself,  (2)  infinite in being and perfection; whose essence cannot be comprehended by any but Himself;  (3)  a most pure spirit,  (4)  invisible, without body, parts, or passions, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto;  (5)  who is immutable,  (6)  immense,  (7)  eternal,  (8)  incomprehensible, almighty,  (9)  every way infinite, most holy,  (10)  most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of His own immutable and most righteous will,  (11)  for His own glory;  (12)  most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him,  (13)  and withal most just and terrible in His judgments,  (14)  hating all sin,  (15)  and who will by no means clear the guilty.  (16)
(1)  Cor. 8.4-6, Deut. 6.4  (2)  Jer. 10.10, Isa. 48.12  (3)  Exod. 3.14  (4)  John 4.24  (5)  1 Tim. 1.17; Deut. 4.15-16  (6)  Mal. 3.6  (7)  1 Kings 8.27; Jer. 23.23  (8)  Ps. 90.2  (9)  Gen. 17.1  (10)  Isa. 6.3  (11)  Ps. 115.3, Isa. 46.10  (12)  Prov. 16.4; Rom. 11.36  (13)  Exod. 34.6-7; Heb. 11.6  (14)  Neh. 9.32-33  (15)  Ps. 5.5-6  (16)  Exod. 34.7; Nahum 1.2-3

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Like the planets
.... I have finished my course.
2 Timothy 4 v 7

The moment a soul is brought to Christ, he has a course to run: And as John fulfilled his course, he said, 'Whom think ye that I am? I am not he. But behold, there cometh one after me, whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose' (Acts 13 v 25). Paul says: 'But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God' (Acts 20 v 24.) 'Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us' (Hebrews 12 v 1). Every one has a different course. Like the planets, all do not shine in the same part of the sky. So every believer has his course - a work to do. One has the course of a minister, another the course of a master, another that of a servant. Each of us has a work to do for Christ; let us do it diligently. 'My meat is to do the will of him that sent me.'