Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

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

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Revelation

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Love to the Loveless Shown

September 25, 2022 |

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

Ray Ortlund

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself … as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.” 

C.S. Lewis

“We love because he first loved us.” 

1 John 4:19

Merciful and Mighty

September 18, 2022 |

“Aslan had stopped and turned and stood facing them, looking so majestic that they felt as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad . . . A mad chase began. Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind . . .Terrible paws, if he did not know how to velvet them.” 

CS Lewis, describing Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia

“The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are not worthy of him.” 

AW Tozer

“Who do you say that I am?” 

Jesus, Matthew 16:15

The Unveiling of Jesus Christ

September 11, 2022 |

“We do not need a detailed forecast of future events which has to be laboriously deciphered, but (rather) a vision of Jesus Christ to cheer the faint and encourage the weary. John’s desire is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future but to stimulate our faithfulness in the present.” 

John Stott

“If churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.” 

Andrew Sullivan

“‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” 

Revelation 22:20

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”

Good News About Judgment

February 14, 2021 |

“The picture of Jesus as the coming Judge is the central feature of another absolutely vital and non-negotiable Christian belief: that there will indeed be a judgment in which the creator God will set the world right once and for all. The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and postliberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible, not least in the Psalms, God’s coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be. Faced with a world in rebellion, a world full of exploitation and wickedness, a good God must be a God of judgment.” 

NT Wright, Surprised By Hope, 137.

“If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence- that God would not be worthy of worship… If I don’t believe that there is a God who will eventually put all things right, I will take up the sword and will be sucked into the endless vortex of retaliation. Only if I am sure that there’s a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly do I have the power to refrain.” 

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.  He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” 

1 Peter 2: 21-23

Waiting and Working for Heaven

June 14, 2020 |

“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

“Most respectable Christians do have the biblical habit of praying for the kingdom to come, but when their lives are good their prayers for the kingdom sometimes fade. People whisper their prayers for the kingdom, so that God can’t quite hear them. ‘Your kingdom come,’ they say, ‘but not right away.’ When our earthly kingdoms have had a good year, we don’t necessarily long for the kingdom of God to break in.  We like our own setup just fine.” 

Cornelius Plantinga

“If we believe in the kingdom of God we will pray and we will hope for those without much hope left. We will drive through the fog of doubt that descends on even the keenest believers . . . We will work and study in the same direction as we hope. According to Lewis Smedes, hoping for others is hard, but not the hardest.  Praying for others is hard, but not the hardest. 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.’” 

Cornelius Plantinga

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

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

Joining in God’s Song

September 24, 2017 |

“To Christ the Lord let every tongue
Its noblest tribute bring.
When He’s the subject of the song,
Who can refuse to sing?
Survey the beauties of His face
And on His glories dwell.
Think of the wonder of His grace
And all His triumphs tell.

Since from His bounty I receive
Such proofs of love divine,
Had I a thousand hearts to give
Lord, they should all be Thine!
A thousand men could not compose
A worthy song to bring,
Yet Your love is a melody
Our hearts can’t help but sing!”

—Samuel Stennett

 

“Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of God.”

—Bono

 

“Chant down Babylon with music!”

—Bob Marley

Union With Christ: Which Side of the Door

April 23, 2017 |

“Communion between God and man is the end to which both creation and redemption are the means; it is the goal to which both theology and preaching must ever point; it is the essence of true religion; it is, indeed, the definition of Christianity.”

– J.I. Packer

 

“How few of us are experimentally acquainted with the privilege of holding immediate communion with the Father in love!”

– John Owen

 

“Union with Christ is not an idea to be understood, but a new reality to be lived.”

– Rankin Wilbourne

 

“The King of love my shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his
And he is mine forever.”

– Henry Baker