Daily Readings for Sunday 2nd June 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.

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 - The indignation wherewith God avengeth his church of her enemies to their utter desolation. The certainty of the prophecy.
Isaiah 34
Preface - John seeth the throne of God in heaven, surrounded by four and twenty elders, and four beasts full of eyes before and behind. The continual adoration and worship offered by the beasts and elders before him that sat on the throne.
Revelation 4


Daily Light - Morning
Thus shall ye eat it;
with your loins girded...
and ye shall eat it in haste:
​it is the LORD'S passover.

Arise, ye, and depart; for this is not your rest. - Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come. - There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching. - Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. - This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind... I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded.
Ex. 12.11; Mi. 2.10; He. 13.14; He. 4.9
Lu. 12.35-37; 1 Pe. 1.13; Phil. 3.13-15


Daily Light - Evening
The LORD is the portion
of mine inheritance and of my cup.

Heirs of God, and joint - heirs with Christ. - All things are yours. - My beloved is mine. - The Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

The LORD spake unto Aaron, Thou shalt have no inheritance in their land, neither shalt thou have any part among them: I am thy part and thine inheritance among the children of Israel.

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. - I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land.
Ps. 16.5; Ro. 8.17; 1 Co. 3.21; Song 2.16; Ga. 2.20
Nu. 18.20
Ps. 73.25-26
Ps. 23.4; 2 Tim. 1.12
Ps. 63.1


A Puritans Catechism
​Q 4 - What is God?
A - God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Free Will
Chapter 9
PARAGRAPH 1

​God hath endued the will of man with that natural liberty and power of acting upon choice, that it is neither forced, nor by any necessity of nature determined to do good or evil.

1. Matthew 17:12 
2. James 1:14 
3. Deuteronomy 30:19

​


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Hide behind him
To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. - Ephesians 1 v 6
Jesus must be seen by the Father, instead of our guilty soul. You must leave self, and stand in your Elder Brother. Hide behind Him. Let the Father's eye fall on Him, not on you. This is what Jesus wants. He died to be a shelter for such as you. This is what the Father wants; for He is not willing that any should perish. If you are seen by the Father you must die. There is no help for it. But if Jesus appears for you - if you hide in His wounds, like the dove in the clefts of the rock - then the Father Himself loveth you.