Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem
“To be in Christ, is, by definition, to be part of something much bigger, more comprehensive, and more wonderful than you.”
Rankin Wilbourne
“Membership in a local church means joining your imperfect self to many other imperfect selves to form an imperfect community that, through Jesus, embarks on a journey toward a better future . . . together.”
Scott Sauls
“He can no longer have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother.”
Cyprian of Carthage
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
Colossians 3:1-4
“Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable will remain.”
CS Lewis, The Great Divorce
“God does not make junk, and God does not junk what he made.”
Al Wolters, Creation Regained
“Heaven means sharing in the blessedness of God so that in the very depths of our being there is divine contentment, joy, and fulfillment. There is total shalom: a sense of sheer well-being. Every need is met. Every longing is fulfilled. Every goal is achieved. Every sense is satisfied. We see him. We are with him. He holds us and hugs us and whispers, ‘This is forever.’”
Donald Macleod
“Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”
Thomas Moore
“We are sinners with the capacity to do great damage to ourselves and our relationships. We need God’s grace to save us from ourselves. But we are also God’s children, which means that we have great hope and potential—not hope that rests on our gifts, experience, or track record, but hope that rests in Christ. Because he is in us and we are in him, it is right to say that our potential is Christ.”
Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp, Relationships: A Mess Worth Making
“A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God’s grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God’s love and welcome to us.”
Christine Pohl, Making Room
“It is not merely that the rich man is obliged to meet the needs of those who are less well off than he is but also that each one of us must use the gifts which we have received either by nature or by the Holy Spirit, so that no one may say that we are keeping these things to ourselves and refusing to share them with our neighbors.”
Andreas, Catena
“What more sublime can be said of friendship, what more true, what more profitable, than it ought to, and has proved to, begin in Christ, continue in Christ, and be perfected in Christ.”
Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship
“There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of ‘the missionary mandate.’ This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel. If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact?”
Lesslie Newbigin
“In service which Thy will appoints, there are no bonds for me;
For my inmost heart is taught “the truth” that makes Thy children “free;”
And a life of self–renouncing love is a life of liberty.”
Anna Waring
“The hardest task for people who believe in the second coming of Jesus Christ is in ‘living the sort of life that makes people say, ‘Ah, so that’s how people are going to live when righteousness takes over our world.’ The hardest task is simple, persistent faithfulness in our work and in our attitudes – the kind of faithfulness that shows we are being drawn forward by the magnet force of the kingdom of God.”
Cornelius Plantinga
“People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.”
N.T. Wright
“For centuries, philosophers, theologians, novelists, and artists have described the human predicament and then prescribed a cure, or at least a salve. They have then estimated the likelihood that the prescription will work. That is, they’ve offered a prognosis. Hope is the reach of our hearts for the cure. It’s the reach of our hearts toward what we think will fulfill us, secure us, save us – and not just us, but also the whole world. To be a Christian is to participate in this very common human enterprise of diagnosis, prescription, and prognosis, but to do so from inside a Christian view of the world, a view that has been constructed from Scripture and that centers on Jesus Christ the Risen Savior.”
Cornelius Plantinga
“O Israel, hope in the LORD!”
Psalm 130:7
“We have been so soaked in the individualism of modern Western culture that we feel threatened by the idea of our primary identity being that of the family we belong to – especially when the family in question is so large, stretching across space and time. The church isn’t simply a collection of isolated individuals, all following their own pathways of spiritual growth without much reference to one another. It may sometimes look like that, and even feel like that. And it’s gloriously true that each of us is called upon to respond to God’s call at a personal level. You can hide in the shadows at the back of the church for a while, but sooner or later you have to decide whether this is for you or not.”
—N. T. Wright
“Membership in a local church means joining your imperfect self to many other imperfect selves to form an imperfect community that, through Jesus, embarks on a journey toward a better future . . . together.”
—Scott Sauls
“He can no longer have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother.”
—Cyprian of Carthage
33”And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.
—Luke 23:33-34
21”For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22Hecommitted no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.”
—1 Peter 2:21-24
Hope is remembering God’s future into the present.” —N.T. Wright
