Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

8:30 & 11:00 a.m. – Worship
10:00 a.m. – Sunday School
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café

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Matthew

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Week 7 – When You Pray: Two Dead-ends and One Way to Life

July 16, 2023 |

“You  have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” 

Psalm 27: 8

“All shall work together for good. Everything is needful that he sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds.” 

 John Newton

“O Lord, you who own the cattle on a thousand hills, preserve us from living in an economy of scarcity where nothing and no one is good enough, causing us to live stingy and self-absorbed lives. Fill our hearts instead with your abundant life, so that we may be generous-spirited in all that we do and with everyone whom we meet. In the name of the One who makes more than enough.”  

“A Prayer for Being Generous-Spirited” by David O. Taylor

Week 6 – When You Pray: Temptation and Evil

July 9, 2023 |

“I can resist everything except temptation.”  

Oscar Wilde

“O Lord, give me chastity and temperance – but not yet!” 

St. Augustine

“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.” 

C.S. Lewis

Week 5 – When You Pray: From Forgiven To Forgiving

July 2, 2023 |

 

“A debtor to mercy alone,

Of covenant mercy I sing;

Nor fear, with Thy righteousness on,

My person and offering to bring.

The terrors of law and of God

With me can have nothing to do;

My Savior’s obedience and blood

Hide all my transgressions from view.”

Augustus Toplady


“Honestly, I want to be like Christ. But honestly, I want to be like the Christ who turned the water into wine, not the Christ who thirsted on the cross. I want to be the clothed Christ, not the one whose garment was stripped and gambled away. I want to be the Christ who fed the five thousand, not the one who hungered for forty days in the wilderness. I want to be the free Christ, walking through the wheatfields with His disciples, not the imprisoned Christ who was deserted by them . . . This is the dark side of Christianity, the side we don’t see when we sign up. That if we want to be like Christ, we have to embrace both sides of His life. What else could it mean when the Bible talks about the “fellowship of His sufferings”?

Ken Gire, The Reflective Life


“He who is forgiven little, loves little.”

Luke 7:47

 

Week 4 – When You Pray: Daily Bread

June 25, 2023 |

“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

“Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”  

                             Proverbs 30: 7-9

“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.” 

                           Psalm 145: 15-16

Week 3 – When you Pray: First Things First

June 18, 2023 |

“When you stop trying to control your life and instead allow your anxieties and problems to bring you to God in prayer, you shift from worry to watching. You watch God weave his patterns in the story of your life. Instead of trying to be out front, designing your life, you realize you are inside God’s drama. As you wait, you begin to see him work, and your life begins to sparkle with wonder. You are learning to trust again.” 

                                                                                                                                                                    Paul Miller, A Praying Life, 73.

 

“We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is, “Where does my little life fit into the great story of God’s mission?” 

                                                                                                                                                                                    Christopher Wright

 

“Thou art coming to a King,

Large petitions with thee bring;

For His grace and power are such,

None can ever ask too much;

None can ever ask too much.” 

                                                                                                                                                                                              John Newton

Don’t Turn Away – Look!

April 9, 2023 |

“The most fantastic of all Christian claims is that 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

“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

“Practice resurrection.” 

Wendell Berry

Who Is This? The Humble and Exalted Messiah

April 2, 2023 |

“We face the same challenge the Israelites faced long ago. Jesus is king, but we must let him define his kingship. We must receive Jesus as he is, not as we would like him to be. We must let him come on a donkey, not a stallion. We must let him define his reign.”

Dan Doriani

“Well, I’ve got no answers
For hurt knees and cancers
But a Savior who suffers them with me”

John Mark McMillan; The Road, The Rocks, and The Weeds

“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:8-11

The Threat and Relief of Christmas

December 25, 2022 |

“Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man;
Stooping so low but sinners raising,
Heavenward by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love’s sake becamest man.”

Frank Houghton

“No matter how much we give lip service to the notion of free grace and dying love, we do not like it.  It is just too . . . indiscriminate.  It lets rotten sons and crooked tax farmers and common tarts into the kingdom, and it thumbs its nose at the really good people. And it does that, gallingly, for no more reason than the Gospel’s shabby exaltation of dumb trust over worthy works.  The work of redemption is done entirely by the Redeemer and not at all by the redeemed!” 

Robert Farrar Capon

“We need a Savior – even (or especially) we who think that we are good Christians.”

Frederick Dale Bruner

“One of the most unbelievable parts of the Christmas story is that a bunch of men showed up to a child’s birthday party and remembered presents!”

Will Nettleton

The Best of All—God is with Us!

December 24, 2022 |

21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall call his name Immanuel”

(which means, God with us).                                                                                                                                       

Matthew 1:21-23

The Deep and Wide Promise Fulfilled

December 18, 2022 |

“Come, thou long expected Jesus,
born to set thy people free;
from our fears and sins release us,
let us find our rest in thee.
Israel’s strength and consolation,
hope of all the earth thou art;
dear desire of every nation,
joy of every longing heart.” 

Charles Wesley

“Oh! I love God’s ‘shalls’ and ‘wills.’ There is nothing comparable to them. Let a man say ‘shall,’ what is it good for? ‘I will,’ says man, and he never performs; ‘I shall,’ says he, and he breaks his promise. But it is never so with God’s ‘shalls.’ If He says ‘shall,’ it shall be; when He says ‘will,’ it will be.” 

Charles Spurgeon

“Here is a simple Gospel mantra always to keep in mind: “One, I am a complete idiot. Two, my future is incredibly bright. Three, anyone can get in on this.” 

Ray Ortlund Jr.