Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:00 a.m. – Worship
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café
10:45 a.m. – Worship

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Deuteronomy

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What about those Girgashites?

October 17, 2021 |

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” 

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

 “The picture of Jesus as the coming Judge is the central feature of another absolutely vital and nonnegotiable Christian belief: that there will indeed be a judgment in which the creator God will set the world right once and for all. The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and postliberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be. Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.” 

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

“I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.”  

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

God’s Promised People into God’s Promised Land

September 12, 2021 |

“Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.” 

Clyde Kilby

“In this scene set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay,
There is evil cast around us
But it’s Love that wrote the play.
And in this darkness
Love will show the way.” 

David Wilcox

“The church is the model home for the Kingdom of God.” 

Harvie Conn

Call the Sabbath a Delight!

July 12, 2020 |

“The Sabbath is not a fast, but a feast, a day for rejoicing in the works of a gracious God, and joy must be its temper throughout.  Joy suits no person so much as a saint, and it becomes no season as well as a Sabbath.” 

J.I. Packer

“O day of rest and gladness, O day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright,
On you the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
Sing ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to the great God triune.” 

Christopher Wordsworth

“Sunday feels odd without church in the morning. It’s the time in the week when we take our bearings, and, if we miss it, we’re just following our noses.” 

Garrison Keillor

“People who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently.” 

Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now

O Day of Rest and Gladness!

July 5, 2020 |

“Sabbath is about God interfering with all the things you think you need to get done so that you can focus on what He has done for you.” 

Eugene Peterson

“When we rest we acknowledge that all our striving will, of itself, do nothing. Rest means letting the world pass us by for a time. Genuine rest requires acknowledging that God and our brothers and sisters can survive without us. It requires recognizing our own insufficiency and handing over responsibility.  It is truly surrendering to the ways of God. It is a moment of celebration, when we acknowledge that blessing comes only from the hand of God. That is why rest requires faith. It is also why salvation can be pictured as rest. When we rest we accept God’s grace: we do not seek to earn; we receive. We do not justify; we are justified.” 

Paul Marshall

“At least at night,
Let your heart have a rest . . .
At least at night,
stop your career,
calm those desires that nearly madden you,
see if you can manage to put your dreams to sleep.
Yield yourself,
body and soul,
yield yourself really, truly and completely into God’s hands!” 

Brazilian pastor’s poem

“Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD keeps watch over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.”  

Psalm 127: 1-2

Choose Life

July 10, 2016 |

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.”  —Isaiah 42: 3

“God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men’s sake.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“You can survive on your own.  You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own.  But you cannot become human on your own.  Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye.  Because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything that he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift.  He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from God himself, a helping hand.”—Frederick Buechner

“But all the while, there was one thing we most needed even from the start, and certainly will need from here on out into the New Jerusalem: the ability to take our freedom seriously and act on it, to live not in fear of mistakes but in the knowledge that no mistake can hold a candle to the love that draws us home. My repentance, accordingly, is not so much for my failings but for the two-bit attitude toward them by which I made them more sovereign than grace. Grace – the imperative to hear the music, not just listen for errors – makes all infirmities occasions of glory.” —Robert Farrar Capon

O Day of Rest and Gladness

May 29, 2016 |

“The Sabbath is not a fast, but a feast, a day for rejoicing in the works of a gracious God, and joy must be its temper throughout.  Joy suits no person so much as a saint, and it becomes no season as well as a Sabbath.”     —J.I. Packer

“O day of rest and gladness, O day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright,
On you the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
Sing “Holy, holy, holy” to the great God triune.”
—Christopher Wordsworth

“Sunday feels odd without church in the morning. It’s the time in the week when we take our bearings, and, if we miss it, we’re just following our noses.”  —Garrison Keillor

“Be still, and know that I am God.” —Psalm 46:10

Salvation by Rest

May 22, 2016 |

“Sabbath is about God interfering with all the things you think you need to get done so that you can focus on what He has done for you.” —Eugene Peterson

“When we rest we acknowledge that all our striving will, of itself, do nothing.  Rest means letting the world pass us by for a time.  Genuine rest requires acknowledging that God and our brothers and sisters can survive without us.  It requires recognizing our own insufficiency and handing over responsibility.  It is truly surrendering to the ways of God.  It is a   moment of celebration, when we acknowledge that blessing comes only from the hand of God.  That is why rest requires faith.  It is also why salvation can be pictured as rest.  When we rest we accept God’s grace: we do not seek to earn; we receive.  We do not justify; we are justified.” —Paul Marshall


“At least at night,
Let your heart have a rest . . .
At least at night,
Stop your career,
Calm those desires that nearly madden you,
See if you can manage to put your dreams to sleep.
Yield yourself,
Body and soul,
Yield yourself really,
Truly and completely into God’s hands!”
—Brazilian pastor’s poem


“Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.  Unless the LORD keeps watch over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.  It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.” —Psalm 127: 1-2