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 Preface - Belshazzar's impious feast. The handwriting on the wall, which the magicians could not explain, troubleth him: at the recommendation of the queen Daniel is brought in: he reproveth the king of pride, profaneness, and idolatry: he readeth and interpreteth the writing. Belshazzar slain; the kingdom translated to the Medes. Daniel 5 Psalms 110) Preface - A prediction of the kingdom, priesthood, triumphs, and sufferings of Christ. Psalms 111) Preface - The Psalmist by his example inciteth other to praise God for his glorious and gracious works. The fear of God is the source of true wisdom. Psalms 110-111 Daily Light - Morning I delight in the law of God after the inward man. O how love I thy law! It is my meditation all the day. - Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart. - I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. - I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart. - My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes... More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the oneycomb. - Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, eceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and no a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass. Ro. 7.22; Ps. 119.97; Jer. 15.16; Song 2.3; Job 23.12 Ps. 40.8; Jn. 4.34 Ps. 19.8,10; Jas. 1.22-23 Daily Light - Evening The LORD thy God accept thee. Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD required of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. - There is none righteous, no, not one... For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood...To declare...at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Accepted in the beloved. - Ye are complete in him. 2 Sa. 24.23; Mi. 6.6-8 Isa. 64.6; Ro. 3.10,23-25,26z\a Eph. 1.6; Col. 2.10 A Puritans Catechism Q 61 - Which is the ninth commandment? A - The ninth commandment requires the maintaining and promoting of truth between man and man, and of our own and our neighbour's good name, especially in witness-bearing. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Of Divine Providence Chapter 5 PARAGRAPH 4 The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God, so far manifest themselves in His providence, that His determinate counsel extends itself even to the first fall, and all other sinful actions both of angels and men;11 and that not by a bare permission, which also He most wisely and powerfully binds, and otherwise orders and governs,12 in a manifold dispensation to His most holy ends;13 yet so, as the sinfulness of their acts proceeds only from the creatures, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.14 11 Rom. 11:32–34; 2 Sam. 24:1; 1 Chron. 21:1 12 2 Kings 19:28; Ps. 76:10 13 Gen. 1:20; Isa. 10:6–7,12 14 Ps. 1, Ps. 21; 1 John 2:16 Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings The sinner's friend In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old. Isaiah 63 v 9 Dear friend, do you feel that Jesus is your Surety and Elder Brother? Then remember that, by reason of His real Divinity, He is now by your bedside, afflicted in all your afflictions, touched with a feeling of your infirmities, and able to save you to the uttermost. He is as really beside you as He was beside Mary when she sat at His feet. Tell Him all your sorrows, all your doubts and anxieties. He has a willing ear. Oh, what a friend is Jesus! the sinner's friend. What an open ear He has for all the wants, doubts, difficulties of His dying disciples. You know how it is with a kind mother, even though a worldly person. In a time of danger she clasps her children to her breast. In a time of health she may often let them wander out of her sight, but in hours of sickness she will watch beside their bed. Much more will Jesus watch over you.
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