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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 expressio 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 fo rthe 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 19) - Preface - The confusion of Egypt. The foolishness of her princes. The calling of Egypt into the church; and God's blessing upon her in union with Israel and Assyria. 20) - Preface - A type prefiguring the shameful captivity of Egypt and Ethiopia. Isaiah 19-20 Preface - The apostle, saluting the Christians, admonisheth them of the gifts and promises of the gospel, and their tendency to promote a godly life. He exhorteth them to add to their faith such virtues as would make it fruitful; and thereby to make their calling and election sure. He is careful to remind them hereof, knowing his dissolution to be near; and urgeth the evidence of what he had seen and heard in the holy mount in confirmation of Christ's second coming, together with the word of prophecy, which he recommendeth to their regard. 2 Peter 1 Daily Light - Morning Wash me throughly from mine iniquity. I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me. - Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. - If the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? He saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known. - Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's sake. Ps. 51.2; Jer. 33.8; Ezek. 36.25 Jn. 3.5; He. 9.13-14 Ps. 106.8; Ps. 115.1 Daily Light - Evening Fellowship in the gospel. As the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. - That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. - These words spake Jesus... Neither pray I for these alone but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. Phil. 1.5; 1 Co. 12.12-13 1 Co. 1.9; 1 Jn. 1.3 1 Jn. 1.7; Jn. 17.1,20-21 A Puritans Catechism Q 72 - How is the Word made effectual to salvation? A - The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching of the Word, an effectual means of convicting and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith to salvation. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Of God's Covenant Chapter 7 PARAGRAPH 2 Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace,2 wherein He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved;3 and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.4 2 Gen. 2:17; Gal. 3:10; Rom. 3:20–21 3 Rom. 8:3; Mark 16:15–16; John 3:16 4 Ezek. 36:26–27; John 6:44–45; Ps. 110:3 Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings Learn to stoop low Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. - Romans 14 v 1 We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. - Romans 15 v 1 There is much of an opposite spirit, I fear, amongst us. I fear thatyou love our Mays and Pauls and Johns, you highly esteem those that are evidently pillars. But can you condescend to men of low estate? Learn to stoop low, and to be gentle and kind to the feeble. Do not speak eveil of them, do not make their blemishes the subject of your common talk. Comer their faults. Assist them by counsel, and pray for them.
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