Daily Readings for Sunday 24th March 2024

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.

Moeover 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 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. May these verses challenge us all at the start of this new year to be a people of prayer. 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.)



Church Services
Sunday morning at 11:00am in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
(Sunday morning) Scripture reading - Genesis 24 v 1-33, 50-67 - Sermon taken by Pastor Graham
Doctrine Class- Sunday afternoon - (after lunch) in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
(Sunday afternoon) Scripture reading - Imputed Righteousness
Scripture readings - 2 Corinthians 5 v 20-21; Romans 5 v 18-21; Romans 3 v 10; Romans 5 v 12; Romans 4 v 8; Romans 4 v 23-25
Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook)


Bible Study and Prayer
Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
Lunch Hour Service
Thursday afternoon between 1:00pm and 1:30pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
Outreach/Witnessing
Saturday morning at Victoria Street (outside the big Boots store) for 10:30am (across the road from Town Hall - No. 64). Afterwards we go back to church for prayer.  


Daily Reading
Proverbs 11 - (no Preface)
Preface - Paul exhorteth to those virtues which become the Christian calling, paricularly to unity: declaring that Christ gave his gifts differently, that his body the church might be built up and perfected in the true faith by the cooperation of the individual members with one another, and with him their head. He calleth me off from the vain and impure conversation of the heathen world, to renouce the old, and to put on the new, man: to discard lying, and sinful anger; to leave off dishonest practices, and to gain by honest labour what they have occasion for; to use no corrupt talk, nor grieve God's Spirit; to put away all expressions of ill will, and to practise mutual kindness and forgiveness.
Ephesians 4



Daily Light - Morning
(Abram) believed in the LORD;
and he counted it to him for righteousness.

He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.

The promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

The just shall live by faith. - Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) - Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased. - With God nothing shall be impossible... And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.
Ge. 15.6; Ro. 4.20-24
Ro. 4.13
Ro. 1.17; He. 10.23; Ps. 115.3; Lu. 1.37,45



Daily Light - Evening
God, who hath called you unto
his kingdom and glory.

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight...but now is my kingdom not from hence. - Expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. - Thou...hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. - I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them...and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. - Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. - Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Isreal.

Thy kingdom come.
1 Th. 2.12; Jn. 18.36; He. 10.13
Rev. 11.15; Rev. 5.9,10; Rev. 20.4; Mt. 13.43; Lu. 12.32
Lu. 22.29-30
Mt. 6.10


A Puritans Catechism
Q 20 - Who is the Redeemer of God's elect?
A - The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God became man, and so was, and continues to be God and man, in two distinct natures and one person, forever.


Of the Communion of Saints
Chapter 27
PARAGRAPH 2
Saints by profession are bound to maintain a holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God, and in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual edification;4 as also in relieving each other in outward things according to their several abilities, and necessities;5 which communion, according to the rule of the gospel, though especially to be exercised by them, in the relation wherein they stand, whether in families,6 or churches,7 yet, as God offers opportunity, is to be extended to all the household of faith, even all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus; nevertheless their communion one with another as saints, does not take away or infringe the title or propriety which each man has in his goods and possessions.8

4 Heb. 10:24–25, 3:12–13
5 Acts 11:29–30
6 Eph. 6:4
7 1 Cor. 12:14–27
8 Acts 5:4; Eph. 4:28



Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Soul sickness
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved,
that ye tell him, that I am sick of love
Song of Solomon 5 v 8
In the parable, the bride told the daughters of Jerusalem that she was sick of love. This was the message she bade them carry; and when they asked her about her beloved, she gave them a rich and glowing description of his perfect beauty ending by saying: 'He is altogether lovely.'
So it is with the believer in time of darkness: 'He is sick of love.' When Christ is present to the soul, there is no feeling of sickness. Christ is the health of the countenance. When I have him full in my faith as a complete surety, a calm tranquillity is spread over the whole inner man, the pulse of the soul has a calm and easy flow, the heart rests in a present Saviour with a healthy, placid affection. The soul is contented with him, at rest in him: 'Return unto thy rest, O my soul.' There is no feeling of sickness. It is health to the bones; it is the very health of the soul to look upon Him, and to love Him.