Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:00 a.m. – Outdoor Worship
10:00 a.m. – Hope Café
11:00 a.m. – Indoor Worship

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Mark

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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 Eyes and Face, the Heart and Hands of God

January 24, 2021 |

“I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene . . . Jesus is too colossal for the pen of the phrase-mongers, however artful . . . No man can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word.” 

Albert Einstein

“At the cross, the most powerful man who ever lived submitted to the most brutal death ever died, to save the powerless. Christianity does not glorify violence. It humiliates it.” 

Rebecca McLaughlin, Confronting Christianity

Larry King, when asked if he could interview anyone from all of history, said, “Jesus Christ . . . I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin-born. The answer to that question would define history for me.”

 

“You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” 

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

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

When People Walk Away Sad

November 15, 2020 |

“The sins I once feared to lose became a delight to dismiss. You turned them out and took their place, pleasanter than any pleasure.” 

Saint Augustine

“A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing! A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.” 

J.C. Ryle

“You can survive on your own.  You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own.  But you cannot become human on your own.  Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye.  Because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything that he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift.  He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from God himself, a helping hand.” 

Frederick Buechner

“Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing – the reason they can fly.” 

Mary Oliver, “Storage”

The Cross Comes Before the Crown

November 8, 2020 |

“The cross comes before the crown, and tomorrow is a Monday morning.”

C.S. Lewis

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

Tim Keller

“To bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination, to kill him is almost an act of murder: to crucify him is – What? There is no fitting word that can possibly describe so horrible a deed.”

Cicero

Mine!

November 1, 2020 |

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Abraham Kuyper

“In Jesus Christ we witness the long-awaited vindication and effective demonstration of God’s kingship in the world. The coming of Christ is the climax of the whole history of redemption as recorded in the Scriptures. The rightful king has established a beachhead in his territory and calls on his subjects to press his claims ever farther in creation.”

Al Wolters, Creation Regained

“Laudetur Iesus Christus – Praise be to Jesus Christ!”

Edith Stein, responding to German soldiers greeting her in her church with the customary “Heil Hitler” salute.

The Antisocial Distance of God

October 18, 2020 |

The list goes on forever
Of all the ways I could be better, in my mind
As if I could earn God’s favor, given time
Or at least congratulations …
I’ve spent my whole life searching desperately
To find out that grace requires nothing of me

Sleeping at Last, “One”

“Your Christian life and mine don’t make any sense unless in the depth of our beings we believe that Jesus not only knows what hurts us, but knowing, seeks us out whatever our poverty, whatever our pain.”

Brennan Manning, “What It Means to Be Cool in Christ Jesus”

“The hands of the king are healing hands, and thus shall the rightful king be known.”

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

In His Arms He Gently Bears Us

October 4, 2020 |

“Fatherlike he tends and spares us
Well our feeble frame he knows.
In his hands he gently bears us
Rescues us from all our foes.”

Henry Lyte, “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven”

“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 . . . Our sonship to God is the apex of creation and the goal of redemption . . . The story of Paradise lost becoming Paradise regained is the story of God’s grace bringing us from alienation from him to membership in his family . . . Our self-image, if it is to be biblical, will begin just here. God is my Father (the Christian’s self-image always begins with the knowledge of God and who he is!); I am one of his children (I know my real identity); his people are my brothers and sisters (I recognize the family to which I belong and have discovered my deepest ‘roots’).”

Sinclair Ferguson

“If the love of the father will not make a child delight in him, what will?”

John Owen

Call the Sabbath a Delight!

July 12, 2020 |

“The Sabbath is not a fast, but a feast, a day for rejoicing in the works of a gracious God, and joy must be its temper throughout.  Joy suits no person so much as a saint, and it becomes no season as well as a Sabbath.” 

J.I. Packer

“O day of rest and gladness, O day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright,
On you the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
Sing ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to the great God triune.” 

Christopher Wordsworth

“Sunday feels odd without church in the morning. It’s the time in the week when we take our bearings, and, if we miss it, we’re just following our noses.” 

Garrison Keillor

“People who keep Sabbath live all seven days differently.” 

Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now

O Day of Rest and Gladness!

July 5, 2020 |

“Sabbath is about God interfering with all the things you think you need to get done so that you can focus on what He has done for you.” 

Eugene Peterson

“When we rest we acknowledge that all our striving will, of itself, do nothing. Rest means letting the world pass us by for a time. Genuine rest requires acknowledging that God and our brothers and sisters can survive without us. It requires recognizing our own insufficiency and handing over responsibility.  It is truly surrendering to the ways of God. It is a moment of celebration, when we acknowledge that blessing comes only from the hand of God. That is why rest requires faith. It is also why salvation can be pictured as rest. When we rest we accept God’s grace: we do not seek to earn; we receive. We do not justify; we are justified.” 

Paul Marshall

“At least at night,
Let your heart have a rest . . .
At least at night,
stop your career,
calm those desires that nearly madden you,
see if you can manage to put your dreams to sleep.
Yield yourself,
body and soul,
yield yourself really, truly and completely into God’s hands!” 

Brazilian pastor’s poem

“Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD keeps watch over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, for he gives to his beloved sleep.”  

Psalm 127: 1-2