Daily Readings for Sunday 7th April 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, ther 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. 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. Know that we have a prayer hearing and answering God.

Pastor Jonathan Arnold.


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 - Ezekial 24 v 15-24 - Sermon by Dennis Arnold (You're dead)
(Sunday evening) scripture reading - John 20 v 19-31 - Sermon by Neil McGovern (The Words of Jesus)
Doctrine Class - in church (after lunch) (and also available online via FaceBook)
(Doctrine Class) - Total depravity - scripture readings; Romans 3 v 10-18; Jeremy 17 v 9; Ephesians 2 v 1-3; Genesis 3 v 1015; Galatians 3 v 22; 2 Timothy 2 v 25-26;
Mark 4 v 11-12; 1 Corinthians 2 v 14; Psalm 51 v 5; Isiah 1 v 5; Genesis 6 v 5; Job 14 v 4; Jeremiah 13 v 23; Isiah 64 v 6; John 6 v 63-65; Isiah 53 v 6 -    by Neil McGovern
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
Preface - In this and the four following chapters are contained various maxims and observations of Solomon, collected by the men of Hezekiah, about kings, and other subjects of both private and public conern.
Proverbs 25
Preface - Paul exhorteth the Thessalonians to proceed in their endeavours to please God by a holy and just conversation. He commendeth their love to one another, entreating them to abound in it, and quietly to follow their respective callings. And that they might not sorrow for the dead, as men without hope, he briefly describeth the resurrection of the just, and Christ's second coming.
1 Thessalonians 4


Daily Light - Morning
As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor,
yet making many rich; as having nothing,
and yet possessing all things.

We...rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also. - I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation. - Believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

In a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. - Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; and to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.

Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? - God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work.
2 Co. 6.10; Ro. 5.2-3; 2 Co. 7.4; 1 Pe. 1.8
2 Co. 8.2; Eph. 3.8-9
Jas. 2.5; 2 Co. 9.8


Daily Light - Evening
The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them. - He whom thou lovest is sick. - My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. - I can do all things through Christ wich strengtheneth me.

We faint not...though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

In him we live, and move, and have our being. - He giveth power to the faint: and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength. - The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
Ps. 41.3; Isa. 63.9; Jn. 11.3; 2 Co. 12.9; Phil. 4.13
2 Co. 4.16
Ac. 17.28; Isa. 40.29-31; Deu. 33.27


A Puritans Catechism
Q 31 - What benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life?
A - They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justification, adoption, and sanctification, and the several benefits which in this life do either accompany or flow from them.


Of The Lord's Supper
Chapter 30
PARAGRAPH 8
All ignorant and ungodly persons, as they are unfit to enjoy communion with Christ, so are they unworthy of the Lord's table, and cannot, without great sin against him, while they remain such, partake of these holy mysteries, or be admitted thereunto;12 yea, whosoever shall receive unworthily, are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, eating and drinking judgment to themselves.13
12 2 Cor. 6:14–15
13 1 Cor. 11:29; Matt. 7:6



Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
God forsaken by God
...My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?
Matthew 27 v 46
These are the words of the great Surety of sinners, as He hung upon the accursed tree. The more I meditate upon them, the more impossible do I find it to unfold all that is contained in them. You must often have observed how a very small thing may be an index of something great going on within. The pennant at the mast-head is a small thing; yet it shows plainly which way the wind blows. A cloud no bigger than a man's hand is a small thing, yet it may show the approach of a mighty storm. The swallow is a little bird; and yet it shows that summer is come. So it is with man. A look, a sigh, a half-uttered word, a broken sentence may show more of what is passing within than a long speech. So it was with the dying Saviour. These few troubled words tell more than volumes of divinity.