Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem
“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
“You can safely assume that you have created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Anne Lamott
“When the grace of God sinks in, we will be among the least offended and most loving people in the world.”
Scott Sauls, Jesus Outside the Lines
“I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them, 1. To vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged the most worthy; 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against; and, 3. To take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side.”
John Wesley
“I rejected the church for a time because I found so little grace there. I returned because I found grace nowhere else.”
Philip Yancey
“When the scriptural people of God seek redemption, they want personal salvation, and they express their desire in what sounds like a cry of the heart. But to them redemption goes far beyond personal salvation. When biblical people want God to redeem, what they want is freedom and righteousness throughout the land. They want God to unseat Pharaoh or Caesar. They want God to drive the Midianites back across the border. They’re Exodus people, after all. They’re Passover people. They have a history of being squeezed by Egypt, Babylon, or Rome. In their eyes, God’s redemption means justice is coming, liberation is coming, the King of all the earth is coming!”
Cornelius Plantinga, Engaging God’s World
“The way to do a great deal is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be continually resolving that you will do everything.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to the household of faith.”
Galatians 6: 9-10
“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
GK Chesterton
“How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing…it is irresistible.”
C.S. Lewis, Letters To An American Lady
“I found it was no easy thing to part with sin, and the impression on my spirit was that of my utter inability to put away sin. And I think I never had a more solid sense of the absolute need of Christ for sanctification. I saw that it was as easy for a rock to lift itself as for me to raise my heart to holiness.”
Thomas Boston
“You were unwilling to say, ‘Why bother?’”
Paul Tripp
“How can this strange story of God made flesh, of a crucified savior, of resurrection and new creation become credible for those whose entire mental training has conditioned them to believe that the real world is the world which can be satisfactorily explained and managed without the hypothesis of God? I know of only one clue to the answering of that question, only one real hermeneutic of the gospel: a congregation which believes it.”
Lesslie Newbigin
“There is a way of telling the gospel that makes people say, ‘I don’t believe it’s true, but I wish it were.’ You have to get to the beauty of it, and then go back to the reasons for it. Only then, when you show that it takes more faith to doubt it than to believe it; when the things you see out there in the world are better explained by the Christian account of things than the secular account of things; and when they experience a community in which they actually do see Christianity embodied, in healthy Christian lives and solid Christian community, that many will believe.”
Tim Keller
“Listen to the Voice who calls you beloved, otherwise you will run around begging for affirmation and praise from everyone else.”
Henri Nouwen
“He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”
Iago, from Shakespeare’s Othello
“The “secular” society is not a neutral area into which we can project the Christian message. It is an area already occupied by other gods. We have a battle on our hands. We are dealing with principalities and powers. What, then, is evangelism in this context?”
Lesslie Newbigin
“Suppose a number of persons were to take it into their heads that they had to defend a lion, the full-grown king of beasts! There he is in the cage, and here come all the soldiers of the army to fight for him. Well, I should suggest to them, if they would not object, and feel that it was humbling to them, that they should kindly stand back, and open the door, and let the lion out! I believe that would be the best way of defending him, for he would take care of himself; and the best ‘apology’ for the gospel is to let the gospel out.”
Charles Spurgeon
“Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural, but rather truth spelled with a capital “T”. Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality – and the intellectual holding of that total Truth and then living in the light of that Truth.”
Francis Schaeffer
“If we remember God’s grace, then we lose the pride that would make us a Pharisee and the despair that would make us a cynic.”
Merold Westphal
“We need to draw ever nearer to the reality of Christian faith and witness in our time, however burdensome, however heavy with failure, limitation, and disappointment. The reason is simple. Our Lord Jesus Christ comes to us in the flesh. We can draw near to him only in his body, the church. Loyalty to him requires us to dwell within the ruins of the church.”
R.R. Reno
“Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Apostle Paul
“Savior, like a Shepherd lead us, much we need thy tender care;
In thy pleasant pastures feed us, for our use thy folds prepare:
blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, thou hast bought us, thine we are;
blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, thou hast bought us, thine we are.”
William Bradbury
“The most difficult lie I have ever contended with is this: life is a story about me.”
Donald Miller
“The most precious part of each day for me is the 30-40 minutes I spend each morning before breakfast with the Bible. All the rest of the day I am bombarded with the stories the world is telling about itself. As I take time to immerse myself in the story the Bible tells, my vision is cleared, and I see things in another way. I see the day that lies ahead in its place in God’s story.”
Lesslie Newbigin
“We must not lag behind the king in some kind of unwarranted pessimism as though his first coming and present reign do not make a difference. We must not run ahead of the king in some kind of unwarranted triumphalism as though we’re going to make utopia here before he comes again. We keep in step with the king.”
David Jones
“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
“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
“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
