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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 - Ezekiel is shewed the presumption of the princes of Judah: he declareth their sin, and the manner of their punishment. He is terrified at the sudden death of Pelatiah. God sheweth him his purpose of restoring the captives with favour, and of punishing the idolaters. The glory of God leaveth the city. Ezekiel carried back by the spirit prophesieth to them of the captivity. Ezekiel 11 Preface - The majesty of God in the church: his command to gather his saints. God delighteth not in sacrifice, but in a pious heart. The hypocrite rebuked: salvation promised to the upright. Psalms 50 Daily Light - Morning Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. The LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. - That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. - The LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. - Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? - What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts. - Thou hast proved mine heart; thou hast visited me in the night; thou has tried me, and shalt find nothing. Dan. 5.27; 1 Sa. 2.3; Lu. 16.15; 1 Sa. 16.7; Ga. 6.7-8 Mt. 16.26; Phil. 3.7 Ps. 51.6; Ps. 17.3 Daily Light - Evening Christ the firstfruits. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. - If the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. - Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. - If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. - 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. The firstborn from the dead. - If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. 1 Co. 15.23; Jn. 12.24; Ro. 11.16; 1 Co. 15.20; Ro. 6.5; Phil. 3.20-21 Col. 1.18; Ro. 8.11 Jn. 11.25 A Puritans Catechism Q 19 - Did God leave all mankind to perish in the state of sin and misery? A - God, having out of his good pleasure from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the state of sin and misery, and to bring them into a state of salvation by a Redeemer. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith Of the Lord's Supper Chapter 30 PARAGRAPH 1 The supper of the Lord Jesus was instituted by him the same night wherein he was betrayed, to be observed in his churches, unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance, and showing to all the world the sacrifice of himself in his death,1 confirmation of the faith of believers in all the benefits thereof, their spiritual nourishment, and growth in him, their further engagement in, and to all duties which they owe to him; and to be a bond and pledge of their communion with him, and with each other.2 1 1 Cor. 11:23–26 2 1 Cor. 10:16–17,21 Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings Our truest joy And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness Ephesians 4 v 24 It is the chief glory and joy of a soul to be like God. You remember this was the glory of that condition in which Adam was created. 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.' His understanding was without a cloud. He saw, in some measure, as God seeth; his will flowed in the same channel with God's will; his affections fastened on the same objects which God also loved. When man fell, we lost all this, and became children of the devil, and not children of God. But when a lost soul is brough to Christ, and receives the Holy Ghost, he puts off the old man, and puts on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. It is our true joy in this world to be like God. Too many rest in the joy of being forgiven, but our truest joy is to be like Him. Oh, rest not, beloved, till you are renewed after His image, till you partake of the divine nature. Long for the day when Christ shall appear, and we shall be fully like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
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