Daily Readings for Sunday 26th May 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 expressio 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 fo rthe 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.)


Church Services
Sunday morning at 11:00am in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
Doctrine Class - in church (after lunch) (and also available online via FaceBook)
Sunday evening at 6:30pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
Bible Study and Prayer
Wednesday evening at 7:00pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
Lunch Hour Service
Thursday afternoon between 1:00pm and 1:30pm in church (and also available online via FaceBook)
Outreach/Witnessing
Saturday morning at Victoria Street (outside the big Boots store) for 10:30am (across the road from Town Hall - No. 64). Afterwards we go back to church for prayer.  


Daily Reading
Preface - God's judgment upon leviathan; his care over his vineyard, his chastisements are in measure, and with a view to reformation. Desolation threatened for want of knowledge. The restoration of the dispersed.
Isaiah 27
Preface - He that loved God loved God's children, and keeper his commandments. A true faith will enable us to overcome the world. The witnesses of our faith. God hath given to believers eternal life through his Son: and will hear and grant their petitions made according to his will. God's children are distinguished from the world by abstaining from sin, and by a right knowledge. A caution against idolatry.
1 John 5


Daily Light - Morning
Our Lord Jesus,
that great shepherd of the sheep.​

The chief Shepherd. - I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine... My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we hAve turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity us all. - I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. - I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick. - ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
He. 13.20, 1 Pe. 5.4; Jn. 10.14,27-28
Ps.23.1-3
Isa.53.6; Jn. 10.11; Ezek. 34.16; 1 Pe. 2.25


Daily Light - Evening
The city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon,
to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it,
and the Lamb is the light  thereof.

I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of sun, shining round about me...and I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. - Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain  apart, aand was transfigured before them: and his face didshine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. - The sun shall be no more light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee: but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory. The sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the LORD shall thine everlasting light, and today's of thy mourning shall be ended.

The God of all grace...hath called us unto his eternal glory by ChrIstanbul Jesus.
Rev.21.23; Ac.26,13,15; Mt. 17.1-2; Isa. 60.19-20
1 Pe. 5.10


​A Puritans Catechism 
Q 79 - What is the duty of such as are rightly baptised?
​A - It is the duty of such as are rightly baptised, to give themselves up to some partitular and orderly Church of Jesus Christ, that they may walk in all the commandments and ordinancestors of the Lord blambless.