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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 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 - God's vengeance upon the Ammonites, upon Moab and Seir, upon Edom, and upon the Philistines, for their declared malevolence to the Jews. Ezekiel 25 Preface - The Psalmist sheweth that his faith had almost failed him on seeing the prosperity of the wicked; but that, unwilling to give up the cause of goodness, he had at length discovered their fearful end: his trust in God's present support and future favour: he concludeth it best to adhere to God. Psalms 73 Daily Light - Morning My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. - For who in the heaven can be compared unto the LORD? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the LORD? My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. - One pears of great price. - The prince of the kings of the earth. His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. - The head over all things. - He is the head of the body, the church. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers. - He could not be hid. His lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. - Never man spake like this man. His countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. - Make thy face to shine upon thy servant. - LORD, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Ps. 104.34; Son 2.3; Ps. 89.6 Song 5.10; Mt. 13.46; Rev. 1.5 Song 5.11; Eph. 1.22; Col. 1.18 Song 5.13; Mk. 7.24 Song 5.13; Jn. 7.46 Song. 5.15; Ps. 31.16; Ps. 4.6 Daily Light - Evening O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. - He...became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. - In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? - Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Mt. 26.39; Jn. 12.27 Jn. 6.38; Phil. 2.8; He. 5.7-8 Mt. 26.53; Lu. 24.46-47 A Puritans Catechism Q 33 - What is adoption? A - Adoption is an act of God's free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Of the Last Judgment Chapter 32 PARAGRAPH 3 As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, both to deter all men from sin,7 and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity,8 so will he have the day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security, and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come,9 and may ever be prepared to say, Come Lord Jesus; come quickly.10 Amen. 7 2 Cor. 5:10–11 8 2 Thess. 1:5–7 9 Mark 13:35–37; Luke 12:35–40 10 Rev. 22:20 Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings Fullness of joy Your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you. John 16 v 22 For my own part, I never knew what joy was till I felt that Jesus had died for me - that he lived for me and reigned for me. The world can give you little joy; but here is fullness of joy.
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