Daily Readings for Sunday 30th March 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


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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.)


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Daily Reading Plan - First Year
Preface - The burnt offerings, of the herd, of the flocks, of the fowls.
Leviticus 1
Preface - Mary Magdalene, seeing the stone taken away from the sepulchre, runneth to tell Peter adn John, who go thither, and find not the body. Mary seeth two angels sitting in the sepulchre; Jesus himself appeareth to her. He appeareth to his disciples: the incredulity of Thomas. Jesus appeareth again to the disciples, and satisfieth the doubts of Thomas; who confesseth him. The sufficiency of what is written for a ground of faith unto salvation.
John 20

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Daily Reading - Morning
Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the eventide.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? - The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel for the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. - This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. - My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: when I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.
Ge. 24.63; Ps. 19.14
Ps. 19.14
Ps. 8.3-4; Ps. 111.2
Ps. 1.1-2; Jos. 1.8; Ps. 63.5-6



Daily Reading - Evening
How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever?
how long wilt thou hid thy face from me?

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. - But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her suckling child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Thou shalt not be forgotten of me. I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.

Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. - A woman....cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David.... But he answered her not a word.

The trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth.
Ps. 13.1; Jas. 1.17; Isa. 49.14-15
Isa. 44.21-22
Jn. 11.5-6; Mt. 15.22,23
​1 Pe. 1.7

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A Puritans Catechism
Q 58 - What is forbidden in the seventh commandment?
A - The seventh commandment forbids all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions.


The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Divine Providence
Chapter 5
PARAGRAPH 2
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Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly;  (4)  so that there is not anything befalls any by chance, or without His providence;  (5)  yet by the same providence He ordered them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.  (6)
(4)-Acts 2.23  (5)-Prov. 16.33  (6)-Gen. 8.22

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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
His glory reflected
For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
Isaiah 60 v 2

It has long been discovered that colour is nothing in the object, but is all thrown upon it by the sun, and reflected back again. The beautiful colours with which this lovely world is adorned all proceed from the sun. His glory is seen upon the earth. It is all the gift of the sun that the grass is of that refreshing green, and the rivers are lines of waving blue. It is all the gift of the sun that the flowers are tinged with their thousand glories, that the petal of the rose has its delicate blush, and the lily, that neither toils nor spins, a brightness that is greater than Solomon's. Now, my dear souls, this is the way in which you may be justified. You are dark, and vile, and worthless in yourselves; but Christ's glory shall be seen on you.
If you only consent to take Christ for your surety, His divine righteousness is all imputed to you; His sufferings, His obedience are both yours.