Daily Readings for Sunday 8th December 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 - Habakkuk's prayer: he describeth God's majesty, and wonders wrought in his people's behalf: he professeth his unshaken trust in God.
Habakkuk 3
Preface - The chief priests and scribes conspire against Christ: Judas covenanteth to betray him. The apostles sent to prepare the passover: Christ eateth it with them; and instituteth his last supper: he covertly pointeth out the traitor: checketh the ambitious strife of his disciples, and promiseth them a share in his kingdom: he telleth Peter of Satan's desire to sift him; he adviseth his disciples to provide necessaries and a sword: his agony and prayer in the garden: he is betrayed; healeth a servant of the high priest, whose ear was cut off; is led to the high priest's house; Peter thrice denieth him. Christ is scornfully used; and brought before the council, where confessing himself to be the Son of God, he is pronounced guilty of blasphemy.
Luke 22


Daily Light - Morning
By love serve one another.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins. - Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. - Owe no man any thing, but to love one another; for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. - Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another. - Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

We...that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
Ga. 5.13; Ga. 6.1-2
Jas. 5.19-20; 1 Pe. 1.22; Ro. 13.8; Ro. 12.10; 1 Pe. 5.5
Ro. 15.1


Daily Light - Evening
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was.

It is sown in corruption...it is sown in dishonour...it is sown in weakness...it is sown a natural body. - The first man is of the earth, earthy.

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. - One dieth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet... And another dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never eateth with pleasure. They shall lie down alike in the dust, and the worms shall cover them.

My flesh...shall rest in hope. - Though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, - The Lord Jesus Christ...shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I man know how frail I am. - So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Ec. 12.7; 1 Co. 15.42,43,44; 1 Co. 15.47
Ge. 3.19; Job 21.23,25-26
Ps. 16.9; Job 19.26; Phil. 3.20,21
Ps. 39.4; Ps. 90.12


A Puritans Catechism
​Q 28 - How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?
​A - Christ's exaltation consists in his rising again from the dead on the third day, in ascending up into heaven, in sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and in coming to judge the world at the last day.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Good Works
Chapter 16
PARAGRAPH 1
​
​Good works are only such as God has commanded in his Holy Word,1 and not such as without the warrant thereof are devised by men out of blind zeal, or upon any pretense of good intentions.2
1 Mic. 6:8; Heb. 13:21
2 Matt. 15:9; Isa. 29:13


​Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Not yet in heaven
Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, It is good for us to be here:
Matthew 17 v 4

My friend, you are no believer, if Jesus hath never manifested Himself to your soul in your secret devotions - in the house of prayer, or in the breaking of bread - in so sweet and overpowering a manner, that you have cried out, 'Lord it is good for me to be here!' Peter must come down again from the mount of glory, and fight the good fight of faith, amid the shame and contumely of a cold and scornful world. And so must every child of God. We are not yet in heaven, the place of open vision and unbroken enjoyment. This is earth, the place of faith, and patience, and heavenward-pointing hope.