Daily Readings for Sunday 2nd 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 - The firstborn are sanctified to God. The memorial of the deliverance from Egyptian bondage commanded to be observed yearly. The firstlings of man and beast are set apart to God. The Israelites carry Joseph's bones with them out of Egypt. They come to Etham; God guideth them by a pillar of a cloud, and of fire.
Exodus 13
Preface - The parable of the unjust steward. Christ reproveth the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who were covetous, and derided him. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar.
Luke 16

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Daily Reading - Morning
God hath caused me to be fruitful
in the land of my affliction.

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

Nor for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. - The Lord stood with me, and strengthened me.

Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.
Ge. 41.52; 2 Co. 1.3-5
1 Pe. 1.6-7; 2 Tim. 4.17
1 Pe. 4.19



Daily Reading - Evening
There remaineth therefore a rest
to the people of God.

There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.

Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth....they....rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.

We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened. - Ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope.... But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
He. 4.9; Job 3.17-18
Rev. 14.13
Jn. 11.11,13
​2 Co. 5.4; Ro. 8.23-24,25


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A Puritans Catechism
Q 30 - What is effectual calling?
A - Effectual calling is the work of God's Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he does persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the gospel.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of the State of Man after Death and of the Resurrection of the Dead
Chapter 31
PARAGRAPH 2
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At the last day, such of the saints as are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed;  (5)  and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and none other;  (6)  although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.  (7)
(5)  1 Cor. 15.51,52; 1 Thes. 4.17  (6)  Job 19.26-27  (7)  1 Cor. 15.42-43

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Be ready
For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
2 Timothy 4 v 6

Dear believers, be ready to leave your room for the golden harp, at a minute's warning; be ready to leave your desk for the throne of Jesus - your pen for the palm of victory; be ready to leave the market below, for the street of the new Jerusalem, where the redeemed shall walk. If you were in a sinking ship, you would not cling hard to bags of money - you would sit loose to all, and be ready to swim. This world is like a sinking ship, and those who grasp at its possessions will sink with it. Oh! buy as though you possessed not;' for the time is short.'