Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem
“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
“To persevere is to succeed.”
Thomas Sutcliffe Mort
“By the mercy of God, we do not lose heart . . . We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
2 Corinthians 4:2, 16
“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait upon the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”
Psalm 27: 13-14
“We pray, Jesus tells us, knowing the willingness of God to be “disturbed”. God the Father really is your Friend at every midnight.”
Dale Ralph Davis
“There is ultimately no such thing as unanswered prayer. If the answer at first is “no” or “not yet,” it is because he gives us what we want in ways better than we asked . . . He gives what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows!”
Tim Keller
“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with gaining too deep for words.”
Romans 8:26
“Our natural desire to pray comes from Creation. We are made in the image of God. Our inability to pray comes from
the Fall. Evil has marred the image. We want to talk to God but can’t. The friction of our desire to pray, combined with
our badly damaged antennae, leads to constant frustration. It’s as if we’ve had a stroke.”
Paul Miller
“The only way to pray is to pray. The only way to pray well is to pray much.”
Dom John Chapman
“Believers do not pray with the view of informing God about things unknown to him, or of exciting him to do his
duty, or of urging him as though he were reluctant. On the contrary, they pray in order that they may arouse
themselves to seek him, that they may exercise their faith in meditating on his promises, that they may relieve
themselves from their anxieties by pouring them into his bosom; in a word, that they may declare that from him alone
they can hope and expect, both for themselves and for others, all good things.”
John Calvin
“Prayer is an expression of who we are . . . We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.”
Thomas Merton
“Listen to this, you who are often so helpless that you do not know what to do. At times you do not even know how to pray. Your mind seems full of sin and impurity. Your mind is preoccupied with what the Bible calls the world. God and eternal and holy things seem so distant and foreign to you that you feel that you add sin to sin by desiring to approach God in such a state of mind . . . Listen, my friend! Your helplessness is your best prayer. It calls from your heart to the heart of God.”
O. Hallesby
“Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living, which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.”
Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion
“Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit you would stay out and your dog would go in.”
Mark Twain
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Jesus
“Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story. … If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.”
Ivan Illich
“If you win this golf tournament today, if you lose this golf tournament by 10 shots, if you never win another golf tournament again, I’m still going to love you. You’re still going to be the same person. Jesus loves you. And nothing changes.”
Meredith Scheffler
“Food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.”
Anthony Bourdain
“The most fantastic of all Christian claims is thot Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It strains our credulity to the limit. Human beings have tried with all possible ingenuity both to defy and to deny death. But only Christ has claimed to conquer it, that is, to defeat it in his own experience, and, to deprive it of its power over others.”
John Stott
“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
“Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall . . .
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.”
John Updike
44 It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45 while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” 48 And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. 49 And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.
Luke 23:44-49
“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.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall speak peace to the nations;
his rule shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.”
Zechariah 9:9-10
“Jesus bursts into tears . . . in them is distilled an eternity of grief. And although we know something of the brimming surface of those tears, we know nothing of the depths from which they are drawn. Nothing of the pain that lies at the watery depths of his heart. Nothing of the sorrow. Or of the sadness . . . He is going to his death. A horrible, shameful, humiliating death. He knows the pain will be unbearable . . . He knows the blessings outside the gate will turn to curses within. He knows the hands of praise will become fists of punishment. He knows the reverently placed palms will become a mocking reed scepter. But knowing all of this, Jesus does not weep for himself. He weeps for Jerusalem.”
Ken Gire
