Daily Readings for Sunday 1st June 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 borders of the land. The names of the men which shall divide the land.
Deuteronomy 5
Preface - An exhortation both to learn and to preach the law of God. The story of God's wrath against the incredulous and disobedient. The Israelites being rejected, God chose Judah, Zion, and David.
Psalms 88

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Daily Reading - Morning
The fruit of the Spirit is....
longsuffering, gentleness....

The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth.

Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love. - Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. - The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. - Charity suffereth long, and is kind.

In due season we shall reap, if we faint not. - Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
Ga. 5.22; Ex. 34.6
Eph. 4.1-2; Eph. 4.32; Jas. 3.17; 1 Co. 13.4
Ga. 6.9; Jas. 5.7-8



Daily Reading - Evening
Emmanuel....God with us.

Will God in very deed dwell with men on the earth? behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee. - The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. - Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.

God....hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.

The first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled....came Jesus and stood in the midst... Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.... After eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them.... Then saith [Jesus] to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said.... My Lord and my God. - Unto us a son is given.... The mighty God.
Mt. 1.23; 2 Chr. 6.18; Jn. 1.14; 1 Tim. 3.16
He. 1.1,2
Jn. 20.19,20,26-28; Isa. 9.6
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A Puritans Catechism
Q 39 - What shall be done to the wicked at the day of judgment?
A - At the day of judgment the bodies of the wicked being raised out of their graves, shall be sentenced, together with their souls, to unspeakable torments with the devil and his angels for ever.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the Law of God
Chapter 19
PARAGRAPH 1
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God gave to Adam a law of universal obedience written in his heart, and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil;  (1)  by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience;  (2)  promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it.  (3)
(1)-Gen. 1.27; Eccles. 7.29  (2)-Rom. 10.5  (3)-Gal. 3.10,12


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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
The breathing of the new creature
O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!
Psalm 119 v 5

Brethren, this is a simple verse, but it is the breathing of the new creature; never did an old creature breathe this from his inmost soul. Can you say that? Do you breathe an entire devotedness to Him? Have you given up every sin for Him? Some of you may say, God forbid that I should part with every sin. It is but a little one; I cannot part with my money, I cannot part with my pleasures, I would come to the Lord's table. Well, you may come, but you come uninvited; nay, you come against the Master's will. None are invited but those who want complete devotedness to Him. Is it so with you? Some soul may say, 'O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes.' I am vile, but thou knowest it will be heaven to me to be like thee. Is it so? The the Master says 'Come.' He says to you what He said to the disciples, 'Come and dine.' Amen.