Daily Readings for Sunday 19th January 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


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 Plan - First Year
Preface - Abraham sojourneth at Gerar, and denieth his wife; Abimelech taketh her, but is reproved of God in a dream, and commanded to restore her. He rebuketh Abraham, who excuseth himself. Sarah is restored with presents after a gentle reproof. Abimelech and his house are healed at Abraham's prayer.
Genesis 20
Preface - Christ healeth the sick in Judaea: answereth the question of the Pharisees concerning divorce, and the objection of his disciples to the expediency of marriage: receiveth little children with tenderness: instructeth a young man how to attain eternal life, and how to become perfect: showeth how hard it is for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God: and promiseth great rewards to his disciples, and to all who have forsaken ought to follow him.
Matthew 19


Daily Reading - Morning
Serving the Lord with all humility of mind.

Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

If a man think himself to be something, when He is nothing, he deceiveth himself. - I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man....not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. - When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.

Our rejoicing is this...that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world. - We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of hte power may be of God, and not of us.
Ac. 20.19; Mt. 20.26-28
Ga. 6.3; Ro. 12.3; Lu. 17.10
2 Co. 1.12; 2 Co. 4.7


Daily Reading - Evening
We have turned every one to his own way.

Noah....planted a vineyard: and he drank of the wine, and was drunken. - Abrahm....said unto Sarai his wife.... Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake. - Isaac said unto Jacob.... Art thou my very son Esau? And he said, I am. - Moses....spake unadvisedly with his lips. - The men took of their victuals, and asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD. And Joshua made peace with them. - David did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, and turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. - The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord GOD, be it known unto you: be ashamed and confounded for your own ways.
Isa. 53.6; Ge. 9.20-21; Ge. 12.11,13; Ge. 27.21,24; Ps. 106.32-33; Jos. 9.14-15; 1 Ki. 15.5
Ro. 3.24; Isa. 53.6
​Ezek. 36.32


A Puritans Catechism
Q 70 - What is repentance unto life?
A - Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose to strive after new obedience.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Marriage
Chapter 25
PARAGRAPH 3
​
It is lawful for all sorts of people to marry, who are able with judgment to give their consent; (5)  yet it is the duty of Christians to marry in the Lord; (6) yet and therefore such as profess the true religion, should not marry with infidels, or idolaters; neither should such as are godly, be unequally yoked, by marrying with such as are wicked in their life, or maintain damnable heresy. (7)
(5) Heb. 13.4; 1 Tim 4:3  (6) 1 Cor. 7:39 (7) Neh. 13.25-27


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Asked to a feast
I am the living bread which cometh down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.
John 6 v 51

Christians, learn to feed more on Christ: 'Eat, O friends! drink, yea drink abundantly, O beloved! 'When you are asked to a feast, there is no greater affront you can put upon the entertainer than by being content with a crumb below the table. Yet this is the way the Christians of our day affront the Lord of glory. Oh, how few seem to feed much on Christ! How few seem to put on his white flowing raiment! How few seem to drink deep into his Spirit! Most are content with a glimpse now and then of pardon - a crumb from the table, and a drop of his Spirit. Awake, dear friends! 'These things have I spoken unto you, that your joy may be full.'