Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

8:30 a.m. – Worship
10:00 a.m. – Sunday School
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café
11:00 a.m. – Worship

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Exodus

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The Never-Forgetting, Always Working for Our Good God

February 5, 2023 |

“All things on Earth only exist in different stages of becoming garbage.” 

Jerry Seinfeld

“God does not make junk, and we dishonor the Creator if we take a negative view of the work of his hands when he himself takes such a positive view. In fact, so positive a view did he take of what he had created that he refused to scrap it when mankind spoiled it, but determined instead, at the cost of his Son’s life, to make it new and good again. God does not make junk, and he does not junk what he has made” 

Al Wolters, Creation Regained

“The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it . . . The pastor’s question is, ‘Who are these people, and how can I be with them in such a way that they can become what God is making them?’” 

Eugene Peterson

Not by Chance

January 22, 2023 |

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God?

A. God’s providence is his almighty and ever present power, whereby, as with his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand.

Heidelberg Catechism #27

“He hath given me rest by his sorrow,
And life by his death.”

“Christian” in The Pilgrim’s Progress

“Remember I’ll always be here for you, even if you can’t see me. Because I love you.”

 “Chilli Heeler” in Bluey

The Secret Master of Ceremonies

January 15, 2023 |

“In friendship … we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting–any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’ The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.” 

C.S. Lewis

“What matters supremely therefore is not in the last analysis the fact that I know God, but the larger fact that underlies it—the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him because he first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off of me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore when his care falters.” 

J.I. Packer

“Jacob, Jacob, . . . I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.” 

Genesis 46:2-4

Seeing Him Who is Invisible

January 8, 2023 |

“The life of Moses presents a series of striking antitheses. He was the child of a slave, and the son of a queen. He was born in a hut, and lived in a palace. He inherited poverty, and enjoyed unlimited wealth. He was the leader of armies, and the keeper of flocks. He was the mightiest of warriors, and the meekest of men. He was educated in the court, and dwelt in the desert. He had the wisdom of Egypt, and the faith of a child. He was fitted for the city, and wandered in the wilderness. He was tempted with the pleasures of sin, and endured the hardships of virtue. He was backward in speech, and talked with God. He had the rod of a shepherd, and the power of the Infinite. He was a fugitive from Pharaoh, and an ambassador from Heaven. He was the giver of the Law, and the forerunner of Grace. He died alone on Mount Moab, and appeared with Christ in Judea. No man assisted at his funeral, yet God buried him. The fire has gone out of Mount Sinai, but the lightning is still in his Law. His lips are silent, but his voice yet speaks. The history of such a life is well worth attention, and the principles which underlie its antitheses, the closest study.”

I.M. Haldeman

 

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” 

Hebrews 11:1

Coveting vs Longing

August 21, 2016 |

 “Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Theodore Roosevelt

“Whatever worldly thing we may covet – zealously striving to obtain and then retain – never seems to bring an end to our   desires. Covetousness, envy, jealousy, and greed always escalate into a vicious spiral, as we seek greater and greater gratification but find less and less contentment. . . . Striving to acquire the things of the world not only does not bring lasting happiness and peace, but it drives us to seek more. When “all we’ve ever wanted” is grounded in the temporal trappings of this world, it is never enough!” ― Brent Top

 “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” ― C.S. Lewis

And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” — Jesus, Luke 12:15

The Truth Will Set You Free

August 14, 2016 |

“We embrace lies—reams of them—about our bodies, our money, our sexuality, our food, our vocations, and our relationships. The temptation to construe reality along the contours of our lies—to literally build a false creation—is everywhere, and never more so than now. In fact, one could argue that the chief destructive force of contemporary Western culture is the unparalleled power and fertility of its lies. We are locked away in a hall of mirrors.

Redemption, however, is about learning to hate the lies, about learning to see again. And part of the calling of God’s people is to name the parody as it presents itself to us and make war upon it. We look for the particular lies that lead us (and our communities) into the poison fog of non-reality and then go after them (in word and deed) with a battle axe. We find the anti-Eden and burn it down. Hating is part of our task in the world.”—Greg Thompson

“An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.” —Proverbs 24: 26

The Big Gulp

August 7, 2016 |

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.”― John Bunyan

… not just what is necessary for bare subsistence, but also what is necessary for living a life “becoming” or appropriate to human beings. The point is not to live on crusts of bread with bare walls and threadbare clothes. The point is that a fully human life is lived in a way free from being enslaved to our stuff.― Rebecca DeYoung

“It’s not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”― Mother Teresa

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”― Winston S. Churchill

“Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”― Brené Brown

Be Generous

July 31, 2016 |

If we look at mankind in all its conditions, it is nothing but a vast wide stable full of great thieves.—Martin Luther

Every time I give, I declare money does not control me. Perpetual generosity is a perpetual de-deification of money.—Kent Hughes

Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.—A. W. Tozer

Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way. Generosity begets generosity.”—Jesus, Luke 6:38, The Message

Sexual Healing

July 24, 2016 |

“I am a riddle to myself; a heap of inconsistencies.” —John Newton

“Though sin wars, it shall not reign; and though it breaks our peace, it cannot separate us from his love. Nor is it inconsistent with his holiness and perfection, to manifest his favor to such poor defiled creatures, or to admit them to communion with himself; for they are not considered as in themselves, but as one with Jesus, to whom they have fled for refuge, and by whom they live by faith.” —John Newton

“The path of the righteous is like the light of the dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble.” —Proverbs 4: 18-19

“The fire of lust’s pleasures must be fought with the fire of God’s  pleasures.  If we try to  fight the fire of lust with prohibitions and threats alone – even the terrible warnings of Jesus – we will fail.  We must fight it with a massive promise of superior happiness.  We must swallow up the little flicker of  lust’s pleasure in the conflagration of holy satisfaction . . . Our aim is not only to avoid something erotic but also to gain something excellent.” —John Piper

 

The Language of the Heart

July 17, 2016 |

“Love is the seed in you of every virtue and of all acts deserving  punishment.”—Dante

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of tasting without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”—CS Lewis, Mere Christianity.

“We use an unfortunate idiom when we say of a man prowling the streets, that “he wants a woman.” Strictly speaking, a woman is what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be a necessary apparatus… [Real love] makes a man really want, not [even] a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious fashion, the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”—CS Lewis, The Four Loves.

“It’s more than just words that got spoken; There was the language of the heart.”—David Wilcox