Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:30 a.m. – Sunday School
9:30 a.m. – Indoor Worship Service & Livestream
11:15 a.m. – Outdoor Worship Service

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Isaiah

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When the Wrong Seems Oft So Strong

November 29, 2020 |

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 |

“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 |

“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 |

“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 |

“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 |

“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

The Strength from Resting

June 4, 2017 |

“We can all be Mary, even if we don’t have an hour to sit down for ‘quiet time.’ It’s all in our attitude toward the things that need to be done and the people we are serving. If we view our husbands, families, and guests as so many leeches crying, “Give, give!” then we are not going to develop a godly joy as we serve them. If we resent the fact that our husbands sit down to read with the children while we are preparing supper, we are being harpies, just like Martha. Choose the better part. Be Mary in the kitchen. Sing praises while you sweep up those never-ending crumbs. Whistle hymns while you wipe down the bathroom. Meditate upon Scripture while you are folding that third pile of laundry.

Be a Mary! When the laundry piles rise up in rebellion, the children don’t do their chores right, or the kitchen sink never seems to quite empty itself, rejoice! Choose the better part, crank up the praise, and lay down your life.”

—Wendell Berry
Passionate Housewives Desperate for God

 

“Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.”

—Ecclesiastes 4:6

 

“Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.”

—Frederick Buechner

He was Satisfied

April 16, 2017 |

“The message of Easter is that God’s new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you’re now invited to belong to it…. Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good, but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world which we publicly entered in our baptism.”

– N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

“O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.”

– St. John Chrysostom, “The Paschal Sermon”

“There is an intimate relationship between joy and hope. While optimism makes us live as if someday soon things will go better for us, hope frees us from the need to predict the future and allows us to live in the present, with the deep trust that God will never leave us alone but will fulfill the deepest desires of our heart. Joy in this perspective is the fruit of hope.”

– Henri Nouwen, Here and Now

Music for Suffering and Sadness

April 9, 2017 |

“How we deal with loss and suffering will mostly depend on our ability to see what painful events do to our hearts. If we refuse to face the damage, the dysfunctional patterns set in motion to handle it will continue to exacerbate the wound. Like a broken arm that is not properly set, it may fuse and heal improperly. We may learn to adapt to the way the fissures set, but it is unlikely to provide us with the optimum opportunity to live the way we were meant to live.

Suffering changes the human heart—sometimes for good and often for ill. We are faced with the challenge of learning how to wrestle with sorrow so it can bring about the greatest good. If we want to become more like God wants us to be, we must consider what it means to live well in a fallen world rather than scramble to escape the veil of sorrow.

As men and women after God’s own heart, we are called to walk the path Jesus walked. Jesus, “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3), never once dealt with reality by turning to dark cynicism, blasé acceptance, angry strength, and empty hope. The route to Golgatha was strewn with temptations to sidestep death, yet Jesus learned obedience through suffering. Jesus’ choice to embrace life to the point of death resulted in the healing of the greatest wound of our hearts: separation from God. As his followers, we are on the same journey, the same healing path.”

Dan Allender, The Healing Path

Passion for Flourishing

December 18, 2016 |

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!” —Ebenezer Scrooge

“And it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!” ―Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob.  For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor — spending and being spent — to enrich their fellow men, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends — in whatever way there seems need. There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be. If God in mercy revives us, one of the things He will do will be to work more of this spirit in our hearts and lives. If we desire spiritual quickening for ourselves individually, one step we should take is to seek to cultivate this spirit. ‘Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.’ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.’ ‘I will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt enlarge my heart’ (Psalm 119:32). — J.I. Packer, Knowing God