Daily Readings for Sunday 2nd February 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 - Dinah is ravished by Shechem. He demandeth to marry her. The sons of Jacob offer the condition of circumcision to the Shechemites. Hamor and Shechem persuade them to accept it. The sons of Jacob taking advantage thereof slay them, and spoil their city. Jacob reproveth Simeon and Levi.
Genesis 34
Preface - Christ casteth out the legion of devils, and suffereth them to enter into the herd of swine: he is entreated by Jairus to go and heal his daughter: by the way he healeth a woman of an inveterate issue of blood: he raiseth Jairus' daughter to life.
Mark 5


Daily Reading - Morning
Oh....that thou wouldest keep me from evil.

Why sleep ye? rise and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. - The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.

The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. - I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible. - He that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not.

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. - The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations.
1 Chr. 4.10; Lu. 22.46; Mt. 26.41
Pro. 30.7-9
Ps. 121.7; Jer. 15.21; 1 Jn. 5.18
Rev. 3.10; 2 Pe. 2.9



Daily Reading - Evening
One star differeth from another star in glory.

By the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. And he sat down, and called the twelve, and saith unto them, if any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all. - Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, thatt he may exalt you in due time.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who....made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.... Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament;a nd they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.
1 Co. 15.41; Mk. 9.34-35; 1 Pe. 5.5-6
Phil. 2.5-6,7,9-10
Dan. 12.3



A Puritans Catechism
Q 2 - What rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify him?
A - The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy him.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Marriage
Chapter 26
PARAGRAPH 5
​
In the execution of this power wherewith he is so entrusted, the Lord Jesus calls out of the world unto himself, through the ministry of his word, by his Spirit, those that are given unto him by his Father,  (9)  that they may walk before him in all the ways of obedience, which he prescribes to them in his word.  (10) Those thus called, he commands to walk together in particular societies, or churches, for their mutual edification, and the due performance of that public worship, which he requires of them in the world. (11)
(9)  John 10:16; John 12:32  (10)  Matt. 28:20  (11) Matt. 18:15-20

​

Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Face to Face
And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.
Revelation 22 v 4

Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright; for the end of that man is peace. God calls upon you to mark the death-bed of His children. Sometimes it is triumphant, like Stephen: 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hands of God. Lord Jesus, receiving my spirit.' Almost always peaceful - or, if it be that the sun goes down in a cloud, O how sweet the surprise, when the believer finds himself on the other side of Jordan, at the pearly; gate of the New Jerusalem, in the arms of the angels, in the smile of Jesus! 'There is a rest remaining for the people of God.'