Daily Readings for Sunday 20th April 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 oil for the lamps. The shewbread. Shelomith's son blasphemeth; his sentence; and the law of blasphemy. The law of murder: of damage. The blasphemer is stoned.
Leviticus 24
Preface - David shewing his confidence in God desireth his help: he rejoiceth in God's mercy: he prayeth in his calamity: he extolleth God's goodness toward them that fear him: he blesseth him for the kindness which he himself had experienced: he exciteth the faithful to love and trust in him.
Psalms 31

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Daily Reading - Morning
There shall cleave nought of
the cursed thing to thine hand.

Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing. - Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. - Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. - The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
Deu. 13.17; 2 Co. 6.17; 1 Pe. 2.11; Jude 23
1 Jn. 3.2-3; Titus 2.11-14



Daily Reading - Evening
Who art thou, Lord?.... I am Jesus.

It is I; be not afraid. - When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the LORD thy God....thy Saviour.

Thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. - Emmanuel....God with us.

Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. - If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. - Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Ac. 26.15; Mt. 14.27; Isa. 43.2-3
Ps. 23.4; Mt. 1.23
​Mt. 1.21; 1 Jn. 2.1; Ro. 8.34-35

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A Puritans Catechism
Q 79 - What is the duty of such as are rightly baptized?
A - It is the duty of such as are rightly baptized, to give themselves up to some particular and orderly Church of Jesus Christ, that they may walk in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Free Will
Chapter 9
PARAGRAPH 1
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God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.  (1)
(1)-Matt. 17.12; James 1.14; Deut. 30.19

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
It was good
Only one sin
For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
Romans 5 v 19

Only one sin. Some of you see little evil in one sin, or in a hundred sins; but here you see one sin cast Adam and all his children out of paradise. God did not wait till it was repeated. It appeared a small sin. The outward action was small - only stretching out the hand and taking an inviting fruit. Some of you think little of sins that make no great noise; such as breaking the Sabbath, drinking too much, speaking what is false, sitting down Christless at the Lord's table; but see here, one small sin brought a world under the curse of God. God would rather a world should perish than one small sin go unpunished.