Daily Readings for Sunday 5th January 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


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 Plan - First Year
Preface - The genealogy, age, and death of Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel,, Jared, Enoch, who is translated, Methuselah, Lamech, and Noah,
Genesis 5
Preface - Christ beginneth his sermon upon the mount, declaring who are blessed: he calleth his disciples the salt of the earth, the light of the world, and urgeth upon them the necessity of setting a good example. He came not to destroy, But to fulfil, the law: He extendeth the precepts against murder, adultery, and false swearing: exhorteth to suffer wrong patiently, to love our enemies, and to aim at perfection. 
Matthew 5


Daily Light - Morning
We which have believed do enter into rest.

They....weary themselves to commit iniquity. - I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this dath?

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. - Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

He that is entered into his res, he also hath ceased from his own works. - Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. - This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing.
He. 4.3; Jer. 9.5; Ro. 7.23-24
Mt. 11.28; Ro. 5.1-2
He. 4.10; Phil. 3.9; Isa. 28.12


Daily Light - Evening
Set a watch, O LORD, before my mouth;
keep the door of my lips.

If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O LORD, who shall stand? - They provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips.

Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

A whisperer separateth chief friends. - There is that speaketh like the piercing of a sword: but the tongue of the wise is health. The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment. - The tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison... Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.

Put off...anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man with his deeds. - This is the will of God, even your sanctification. - In their mouth was found no guile.
Ps. 141.3; Ps. 130.3; Ps. 106.33
Mt. 15.11
Pro. 16.28; Pro. 12.18-19; Jas. 3.8,10
Col. 3.8-9; 1 Th. 4.3; Rev. 14.5


A Puritans Catechism
​Q 56 - What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?
A - The sixth commandment forbids the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbour unjustly, or whatever tends to it.


​The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day
Chapter 22
PARAGRAPH 4
​
Prayer is to be made for things lawful, and for all sorts of men living, or that shall live hereafter; (13) but not fo rthe dead, (14) nor for those of whom it may be known that they have sinned the sun unto death. (15) 
(13) 1 Tim. 2:1-2; 2 Sam. 7.29  (14) 2 Sam. 12:21-23  (15) 1 John 5:16
​


Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Believers shall grow like willows
And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses.
Isaiah 44 v 4

There is nothing more distressing in our day than the want of growth among the children of God. They do not seem to press forward, they do not seem to be running a race. When I compare this year with last year, alas! where is the difference? - the same weakness, the same coldness; nay, I fear, greater languor in divine things. How different when the Spirit is poured out! They shall be like willows. You have seen the willow, how it grows - ceases not day or night, ever growing, ever shooting out new branches. Cut it down - it springs again. Ah! so would you be dear Christians, if there were a flood-time of the Spirit, a day of Pentecost.