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Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

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You are here: Home / Archives for Isaiah

Isaiah

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Proper Confidence

January 3, 2021 | David Speakman

“The Gospel does not become public truth for a society by being propagated as a theory or as a worldview and certainly not as a religion. It can become public truth only insofar as it is embodied in a society (the church) which is both “abiding in” Christ and engaged in the life of the world.”

Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 39.

“Every Sunday millions of Christians recite the creed. Some sleepwalk through it thinking of other things, some puzzle over the strange language, some find offense in what it seems to say.  Perhaps few of them fully appreciate what a remarkable thing they are doing. Would they keep doing it if they grasped how different it made them in today’s world? Would they keep on saying these words if they really knew what they implied?

In a world that celebrates individuality, they are actually doing something together. In an age that avoids commitment, they pledge themselves to a set of convictions and thereby to each other. In a culture that rewards novelty and creativity, they use words written by others long ago. In a society where accepted wisdom changes by the minute, they claim that some truths are so critical that they must be repeated over and over again. In a throwaway, consumerist world, they accept, preserve, and continue tradition. Reciting the creed in worship is thus a counter-cultural act.” 

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed

“There is something beautiful and extraordinary about knowing that when you confess the Apostles’ Creed, there are people all over the world doing the same thing in different languages. Swedish Lutherans and Korean Presbyterians, African Pentecostals and Guatemalan Catholics, Chinese house churches and Egyptian Coptics – all can affirm, “this is what we believe.” 

Ray Cannata

The Thing Everyone Needs This Christmas

December 20, 2020 | Ethan Smith

Now some are lost in shopping malls and some on battlefields
And some are lost in suburbs and some on capitol hills
Some are lost on terminal wards or in a nursing home
And some are equally as lost in between their headphones
But whatever your coordinates on your map of shame
Rather close or far away we’re all lost just the same

The birth of births was like a death
Under that hallowed star
Still every father know and cares
Where his sons and daughters are

Bill Mallonee, “Every Father Knows”

“It’s still not Christmas, but it’s also still not the great last Advent, the last coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate runs the longing for the last Advent, when the word will be: ‘See, I am making all things new’ (Rev. 21:5).”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger

O King within the child within the clay,
O hidden King who shapes us in the play
Of all creation. Shape us for the day
Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

Malcom Guite, O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)

“Remember that this God in whose hand are all creatures, is your Father, and is much more tender of you than you are, or can be, of yourself.”

John Flavel, Keeping the Heart

Waiting for Glory

December 13, 2020 | David Speakman

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else be a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals who we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 

C. S.  Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Salvation is membership in the family of God…. The creation of a family with children is the reason for all of God’s activity. This is how he intends to show his glory.” 

Sinclair Ferguson

“The glory of God is humanity fully alive.” 

Irenaeus

What Are We Waiting For?: Peace

December 6, 2020 | David Speakman

“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come . . . Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other – things that are really of no consequence – the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Tegel Prison, 1943

“As a general rule, Americans are a people of action. We don’t take long lunches like the French. We don’t take siestas like the Spanish . . . we Americans think of ourselves as busy, busy, busy making things happen . . . and we are a bit impatient with those who aren’t as full of energy as we are. We don’t like passivity. We don’t like waiting around. So the theme of waiting and watching that permeates the Advent season strikes a false note with us. We give lip service to it, but we don’t take it very seriously. We don’t want to sit around watching and waiting. We want to speed things up. We want to move things along. If God isn’t going to bring the kingdom, we’ll bring it ourselves. That’s our American way.” 

Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” 

Matthew 5:9

When the Wrong Seems Oft So Strong

November 29, 2020 | Ethan Smith

Broken bottles, broken plates
Broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken”

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

When we read in the Old Testament that God is just and righteous …. it is much more like a verb than a noun, because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong. That in itself sounds inoffensive enough, but the radical message underlying it, and the one we resist, is that God does this right-making in spite of our resistance.

 Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion

Come, Thou Unexpected Jesus!

December 24, 2019 | David Speakman

“If I am told over and over to repent, to change, to orient my life to God, nothing will ever happen. I will cling to the Gucci luggage—not that I could afford it—and the earthly status symbols more desperately than ever. I don’t need to hear exhortations to repent. I need power from outside myself to make me different . . . A power from outside is coming, a power that is able to make a new creation out of people like us, stones like us, people who have no capacity of ourselves to save ourselves.”

Fleming Rutledge

“How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh, that life itself became life and walked in our midst? Christianity either means that, or it means nothing. It is either the most devastating disclosure of the deepest reality of the world, or it is a sham, a nonsense, a bit of deceitful playacting. Most of us, unable to cope with saying either of those things, condemn ourselves to live in the shallow world in between.”

N.T. Wright

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Zechariah 9:9

The Reign of the King

December 22, 2019 | Davis Mooney

“How will God deliver from arrogance, war, oppression, and coercion? Surely the book of Isaiah indicates frequently that God was powerful enough to destroy his enemies in an instant, yet again and again, when the prophet comes to the heart of the means of deliverance, a childlike face peers out at us.”

John Oswalt

“In this season of Advent, I’m glad, once again to affirm that there’s only one government and one peace sufficient to meet the needs of my sinful heart and the issues in this broken world. You are the King of which David, at his best, was just a hint and hope. Having conquered death and the devil, you now reign from a throne of grace—advancing your kingdom of peace, justice, and righteousness in the hearts of your people, among the nations of the world, and in every sphere of your creation.”

 Scotty Smith, “An Advent Prayer in Praise of the Kingship of Jesus”

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark peak high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

The Heartbeat of Hope: The Good News Really Is Good

May 5, 2019 | David Speakman

“The church’s great news to a dying world is that there is a living God, whose love for his creation is inexhaustible . . . The church has no other and no better message. This is her great declaration.”

Lewis Allen

“The world is drowning in its efforts at life; it does not need lifeguards who swim to it carrying barbells.”

Robert Farrar Capon

“The religious see God as useful; gospel-believing Christians see God as beautiful.”

Tim Keller

“I am throwing all my good works overboard, and lashing myself to the plank of free grace; for I hope to swim to glory on it.”

Charles Spurgeon

Gluttony: Consuming that Leads to Emptiness

August 20, 2017 | David Speakman

“A glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition.”

—Frederick Buechner

 

“Where gluttony is there is no incarnation, no resurrection, no kingship, no humanity, no God, in short—no living Christianity. Instead we have only gnosticism, anarchy, and idolatry. As those of us who struggle with gluttony know, it ultimately leaves us alone, without hope, and bloated with discontent. And we were made for more than this. This is why God calls (and helps) us away from lives of gluttony—because we were made for more. We were made to be whole, embodying the creational proportionality that marks the kingdom of God. We were made to be shepherded, walking the path of beauty laid out for us by our King. And we were made for God, living not by bread alone, but by the fullness found in the One who feeds us with Himself.”

—Greg Thompson

 

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

—Matthew 5:6

The Grace for Healing

June 11, 2017 | Clyde Godwin

“I was regretting the past; And fearing the future.
Suddenly my Lord was speaking:

‘My name is I Am.’ He paused. I waited. He continued,
‘When you live in the past; With its mistakes and regrets,
It is hard. I am not there, My name is not I WAS.’

‘When you live in the future; With its problems and fears,
It is hard. I am not there. My name is not I WILL BE.’

‘When you live in this moment, It is not hard. I am here.
My name is I AM.’”

—Helen Mallicoat,
I Am Poem

 

“As my sufferings mounted, I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation—either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.”

―Martin Luther King Jr.,
Suffering and Faith

 

“In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others.”

―Brennan Manning
Abba’s Child

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