Daily Readings for Sunday 25th May 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 borders of the land. The names of the men which shall divide the land.
Numbers 34
Preface - An exhortation both to learn and to preach the law of God. The story of God's wrath against the incredulous and disobedient. The Israelites being rejected, God chose Judah, Zion, and David.
Psalms 78:38

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Daily Reading - Morning
Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up
for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for
them that trust in thee before the sons of men!

Since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. - Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. - Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light.

Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
Ps. 31.19; Isa. 64.4; 1 Co. 2.9-10; Ps. 16.11
Ps. 36.7-9
1 Tim. 4.8



Daily Reading - Evening
The Son of God....
hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. - Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countencance. - The Lord turned, and looked upon Peter.... And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.

Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man. - He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.  - A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench.

The Lord knoweth them that are his. - I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep.... My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
Rev. 2.18; Jer. 17.9-10; Ps. 90.8; Lu. 22.61,62
Jn. 2.24-25; Ps. 103.14; Isa. 42.3
2 Tim. 2.19; Jn. 10.14,27-18

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A Puritans Catechism
Q 32 - What is justification?
A - Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Perseverance of the Saints
Chapter 17
PARAGRAPH 2
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This perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability of the decree of election,  (4)  flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father, upon the efficacy of the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ and union with him,  (5)  the oath of God,  (6)  the abiding of his Spirit, and the seed of God within them,  (7)  and the nature of the covenant of grace;  (8)  from all which ariseth also the certainty and infallibility thereof.
(4)-Rom. 8.30, 9.11,16  (5)-Rom. 5.9,10; John 14.19  (6)-Heb. 6.17  (7)-1 John 3.9  (8)-Jer. 32.40


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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Christ for us
But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.
Hebrews 2 v 9

Paul got such a view of the glory, brightness, and excellency of the way of salvation by Jesus, that it filled his whole heart. All other thing sunk into littleness. Every mountain and hill was brought low, the crooked was made straight, the rough places smooth, and the glory of the Lord was revealed. As the rising sun makes all the stars disappear, so the rising of Christ upon his soul made everything else disappear. Jesus, suffering for us, filled his eye - filled his heart. He saw, believed, and was happy. Christ for us, answered all his need. From the Cross of Christ a ray of heavenly light flames to his soul, filling him with light and joy unspeakable. He felt that God was glorified, and he was saved; he cleaved to the Lord with full purpose of heart.