Daily Readings for Sunday 18th February 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 that 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, no 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. May these verses challenge us all at the start of this new year to be a people of prayer. 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 belivers 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 foreer.
- 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
Sermons
Sunday morning at 11:00am in church (also available online via Facebook)
(Sunday morning) Scripture reading - Psalm119 v 1-16; Matthew 7 v 1-26
Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (also available online via Facebook)
(Sunday evening) Scripture reading - Psalm 119 v 17-32; Genesis 3 v 1-21
Bible study and prayer
Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in church (also available online via Facebook)
Lunch hour service
Thursday afternoon between 1:00pm and 1:30pm in church (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 - Eliphaz reproveth Job of impiety in justifying himself: he proveth from tradition the disquietude of wicked men.
Job 18
Preface - Paul reproveth a scandalous incest committed and protected from censure in the church at Corinth; and by his authority in Christ excommunicateth the offender. The necessity of purging out the old leaven. Christians guilty of notorious crimes are not to be consorted with.
1 Corinthians 5


Daily Light - Morning
Thou art my hope in the day of evil.

There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? LORD, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. - I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defence and refuge in he day of my trouble.

In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved... thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled. I cried to thee, O LORD; and unto the LORD I made supplication. What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? shall it declare thy truth? Hear, O LORD, and have mercy upon me: LORD, be thou my helper.

For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer. - Sorrow shall be turned into joy. - Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
Jer. 17.17; Ps. 4.6; Ps. 59.16
Ps. 30.6,7-10
Isa. 54.7-8; Jn. 16.20; Ps. 30.5


Daily Light - Evening
Adam...begat a son in his own likeness.

Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? - Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Dead in trespasses and sins...by nature the children of wrath, even as others. - I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I... I know that in me (that is, my my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing.

By one man sin entered into the world...by one man's disobedience many were made sinners. - If through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Thank be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Ge. 5.3; Job 14.4; Ps. 51.5
Eph. 2.1,3; Ro. 7.14-15,18
Ro. 5.12,19; Ro. 5.15
Ro. 8.2
1 Co. 15.57


A Puritans Catechsim
​Q 68 - How may we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin?
A - To escape the wrath and curse of God due to us for sin, we must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting alone to his blood and righteousness. This faith is attended by repentance for the past and leads to holiness in the future.


BAPTIST CONFESSION OF FAITH

Of Religious Worship  and The Sabbath Day
Chapter 22
PARAGRAPH 3
Prayer, with thanksgiving, being one part of natural worship, is by God required of all men.8 But that it may be accepted, it is to be made in the name of the Son,9 by the help of the Spirit,10 according to his will;11 with understanding, reverence, humility, fervency, faith, love, and perseverance; and when with others, in a known tongue.12


8 Ps. 95:1–7, 65:2
9 John 14:13–14
10 Rom. 8:26
11 1 John 5:14
12 1 Cor. 14:16–17


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Delays are not denials
When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. - John 11 v 4

When we ask for something agreeable to God's will, and in the name of Christ, we know that we have the petitions which we desire of Him. But the time, He keeps in His own power God is very sovereign in the time of His answers. When Martha and Mary sent their petition to Christ, He gave them an immediate promise; but the answer was not when they expected. So Christ frequently gives us the desires of our heart, though not at the peculiar time we desired, but a better time. Do not be weary in putting up prayers, say for the conversion of a friend. They may be answered when you are in the dust. Hold on to pray. He will answer in the best time. 'Be not weary in well-doing for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.'