Daily Readings for Sunday 18th May 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 daughters of Zelophehad entreat for an inheritance. The law of inheritances. Moses is told of his death. He pleadeth for a successor. Joshua is appointed to succeed him.
Numbers 27
Psalms 70) Preface - David prayeth for God's speedy help and deliverance, to the confusion of his enemies, and triumph of the godly.
Psalms 71) Preface - The Psalmist, declaring his trust in God founded on past experience, prayeth for the continuance of God's saving help, and the confusion of his enemies: he promiseth acts of praise: he prayeth not to be abandoned in the decline of life: he praiseth God, and promiseth to do it cheerfully.
Psalms 70-71

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Daily Reading - Morning
As the Father hath life in himself;
so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.

Our Saviour Jesus Christ....hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. - I am the resurrection, and the life. - Because I live, ye shall live also. - We are made partakers of Christ - Partakers of the Holy Ghost. - Partaker of the divine nature. - The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. - Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. - Who liveth for ever and ever. - The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality. - Unto the King eternal, immortal....be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Jn. 5.26; 2 Tim. 1.10; Jn. 11.25; Jn. 14.19; He. 3.14; He. 6.4; 2 Pe. 1.4; 1 Co. 15.45; 1 Co. 15.51-52 He. 6.4; 2 Pe. 1.4; 1 Co. 15.45; 1 Co. 15.52
Rev. 4.8; Rev. 4.9; 1 Tim. 6.15-16; 1 Tim. 1.17



Daily Reading - Evening
Let us not be desirous of vain glory.

Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey.... And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it: which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house.

Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not. - Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh.

Let nothing  be done, through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. - Charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not their own.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.
Ga. 5.26; Judg. 8.24-25,27
Jer. 45.5; 2 Co. 12.7
Phil. 2.3; 1 Co. 13.4-5
Mt. 11.29

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A Puritans Catechism
Q 25 - How does Christ execute the office of a king?
A - Christ executes the office of a king in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.



The 1689
Baptist Confession of Faith
Of Good Works
Chapter 16
PARAGRAPH 3
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Their ability to do good works is not all of themselves, but wholly from the Spirit of Christ;  (10)  and that they may be enabled thereunto, besides the graces they have already received, there is necessary an actual influence of the same Holy Spirit, to work in them and to will and to do of his good pleasure;  (11)  yet they are not bound to perform any duty, unless upon a special motion of the Spirit, ut they ought to be diligent in stirring up the grace of God that is in them.  (12)
(10)-John 15.4-5  (11)-2 Cor. 3.5; Phil. 2.13  (12)-Phil. 2.12; Heb. 6.11-12; Isa. 64.7


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Robert Murray M'Cheyne - God Makes A Path - Daily Devotional Readings
Christ our righteous
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
1 Corinthians 15 v 22

We have seen that in the fall and ruin of man, it pleased God to deal with man, not as a field of corn, each standing on his own root, but as a tree, in which all the branches stand or fall together. We were not made sinners, each by his individual sin, ubt all by the sin of one. In like manner it has pleased God to justify sinners, not each by his own obedience, by his own goodness and holiness, but 'by the obedience of one.' Just as Adam by his one sin brought death, the curse of God, and total spiritual death, not only upon himself, but upon all his branches, even the most distant, even the minutest, even though unborn; so the second Adam, by His own obedience, brought pardon, righteousness, spiritual life, and eternal glory to all His branches, even the most distant, the smallest, even those unborn.