Daily Readings for Sunday 23rd March 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 - Moses is commanded to prepare new tables, and to go up again to the top of the mount. The name of the Lord is there proclaimed before him. Moses entreateth God to go with the people. God maketh a covenant with them, in which he restraineth idolatry; and repeateth certain duties before prescribed. Moses continueth in the mount forty days, and by God's command writeth upon the tables the ten commandments. On his return his face shineth, and he covereth it with a vail.
Exodus 34
Preface - Jesus washeth his disciples' feet, and exhorteth them to follow his example of humility and charity: he foretelleth the treachery of Judas, and pointeth him out to John by a token: he speaketh of his glorification as near at hand, and commandeth his disciples to love one another: he forewarneth Peter that he shall thrice deny him.
John 13

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Daily Reading - Morning
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.

Thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. - Draw not high hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.... I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. - To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. - I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.... I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.

As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy. - Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? - Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. - Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Rev. 4.8; Ps. 22.3; Ex. 3.5,6; Isa. 40.25; Isa. 43.3,11
1 Pe. 1.15-16; 1 Co. 6.19; 2 Co. 6.16; Am. 3.3



Daily Reading - Evening
They constrained him, saying, Abide with us.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. - Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon: for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions? - I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go.

Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits. - I am come into my garden. - I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain.

Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. - I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. - Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. - The world seeth me no more; but ye see me.
Lu. 24.29; Rev. 3.20; Song 1.7; Song 3.4
Song 4.16; Song 5.1; Isa. 45.19
​Mt. 28.20; He. 13.5; Mt. 18.20; Jn. 14.19


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A Puritans Catechism
Q 51 - How is the sabbath to be sanctified?
A - The sabbath is to be sanctified by a holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days; and spending the whole time in the public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Gods Decree
Chapter 3
PARAGRAPH 5
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Those of mankind that are predestinated to life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ unto everlasting glory, out of His mere free grace and love,  (11)  without any other thing in the creature as a condition or cause moving Him thereunto.  (12)
(11)  Eph. 1.4,9;  Rom. 8.30; W Tim. 1.9; 1 Thess. 5.9  (12)  Rom. 9.13,16; Eph. 2.5,12

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
The utmost farthing
Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
​Romans 4 v 25

If you saw a criminal put into prison, and the prison doors closed behind him, and if you never saw him come out again, then you might well believe that he was still lying in prison, and still enduring the just sentence of the law. But if you saw the prison doors fly open, and the prisoner going free; if you saw him walking at large in the streets, then you would know at once that he had satisfied the justice of his country, that he had suffered all that it was needful to suffer, that he had paid the utmost farthing. So with the Lord Jesus; he was counted a criminal - the crimes of guilty sinners against God were all laid at His door, and he was condemned on account of them. He was hurried away to the death of the cross, and the gloomy prison-house of His rocky sepulchre where the stone was rolled to the mouth of the grave. If you never saw Him come out, then you might well believe that He was still enduring the just sentence of the law. But, lo! 'he is risen - he is not here' - 'Christ is risen indeed'. God, who was His judge, hath raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places; so that you may be quite sure He has satisfied the justice of God. He has suffered everything that it was needful for Him to suffer - He has paid the utmost farthing.