Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

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

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John

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You Were Made for This

March 21, 2021 |

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. … There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. … But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 

CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“The inner logic of this vision of holistic salvation is that the creator has not given up on creation and is working to salvage and restore the world (human and nonhuman) to the fullness of shalom and flourishing intended from the beginning. And redeemed human beings, renewed in God’s image, are to work toward and embody this vision in their daily lives.”

Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology

“[Niggle] went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever laboured at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in his mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had had time.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, “Leaf by Niggle”

The Greatest Gift

February 21, 2021 |

“A church can become crowded with legitimate causes, concerns, and needs. And it can be hard to find Jesus.”

Ray Ortlund

“The work of the Holy Spirit is the honoring of Jesus Christ . . .  the work of the Holy Spirit is simply to thrill us with Christ.”

Dale Bruner

“Spirit of God, descend upon my heart.
Wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
Stoop to my weakness, mighty as Thou art;
and make me love Thee as I ought to love.

I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies,
No sudden rending of the veil of clay,
No angel vision, no opening skies;
but take the dimness of my soul away.”

George Croly

Proper Confidence

January 3, 2021 |

“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

True News for a Fake News Culture

November 22, 2020 |

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”

CS Lewis

“Anything must be true before it can significantly claim other merits. Without truth all else is worthless.”

Felix Fernandez

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth we cannot know it.”

Blaise Pascal

Come and See the One Seeing You

September 20, 2020 |

“The night I fell in sorrow I knew I was alone.
A dozen good-time friendships but my heart is still unknown.
I thought I saw your footsteps in the sand along the shore
And I mumbled empty phrases that sang so well before.
Now inches from the water about to disappear,
I feel you behind me, but how did you find me here?” 

David Wilcox, “How Did You Find Me Here?”

“The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” 

Jesus, Luke 19:10

Renew: The True Hope of Heaven

June 7, 2020 |

“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

Help My Unbelief

April 12, 2020 |

“Death and the hells of dereliction and abandonment eat people up, exhaust them, scrape them out, and bring them to nothing. Jesus is already empty, already poor, already nothing, for God is everything in him; and so the inexhaustible life of God meets death and eats it up and exhausts it.” 

Rowan Williams, A Ray of Hope

“I find that Holy Week is draining; no matter how many times I have lived through his crucifixion, my anxiety about his resurrection is undiminished – I am terrified that, this year, it won’t happen; that, that year, it didn’t. Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer.” 

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt?  If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.” 

Frederick Buechner

“Doubt is the ants-in-the-pants of faith; it keeps it alive and moving.”

Frederick Buechner

“Awake, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns;
Thy Saviour comes, and with Him mirth:
Arise, arise;
And with His burial-linen dry thine eyes:
Christ left His grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears, or blood, not want a handkerchief.” 

George Herbert, from ‘The Dawning” in Herbert: Poems, 131.

I Thirst

April 10, 2020 |

The One who gives the calm of lakes and pools, the freshness of brooks and streams, the majestic depths of seas and oceans, the glory of pounding surf, the might of Niagara and the sprinkle of the garden fountain, the One from whose being flows the gift of the water of eternal life – this is the One who is dying of a terrible thirst on the Cross for the love of his lost sheep. 

Fleming Rutledge

“I dare not come and drink,” said Jill. “Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion. “Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.” “There is no other stream,” said the Lion. 

C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

 

See the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love,
Well supply thy sons and daughters, and all fear of want remove;
Who can faint while such a river ever flows their thirst t’assuage?
Grace, which like the Lord, the giver, never fails from age to age.

John Newton, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken”

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 Heartbeat of Hope: Engage the World by the Power of the Holy Spirit

June 2, 2019 |

“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