Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:30 a.m. – Indoor Worship Service & Livestream
11:15 a.m. – Outdoor Worship Service

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David Speakman

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The Who Behind the What and the How

January 10, 2021 |

“Readers looking for seven easy steps to cultural influence will have to look elsewhere – because I do not happen to believe that anything lasting is easy.  What we most have to learn about being creators of culture is the very thing we human beings find hardest to learn: everything about our calling, from start to finish, is a gift.  What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly – who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.”

Andy Crouch

“Creation was a way for God to spend himself . . . Creation is an act of imaginative love.”  

Cornelius Plantinga

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.” 

G.K. Chesterton

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” 

C.S. Lewis

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

Waiting for Glory

December 13, 2020 |

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else be a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals who we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 

C. S.  Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“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.” 

Sinclair Ferguson

“The glory of God is humanity fully alive.” 

Irenaeus

What Are We Waiting For?: Peace

December 6, 2020 |

“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come . . . Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other – things that are really of no consequence – the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Tegel Prison, 1943

“As a general rule, Americans are a people of action. We don’t take long lunches like the French. We don’t take siestas like the Spanish . . . we Americans think of ourselves as busy, busy, busy making things happen . . . and we are a bit impatient with those who aren’t as full of energy as we are. We don’t like passivity. We don’t like waiting around. So the theme of waiting and watching that permeates the Advent season strikes a false note with us. We give lip service to it, but we don’t take it very seriously. We don’t want to sit around watching and waiting. We want to speed things up. We want to move things along. If God isn’t going to bring the kingdom, we’ll bring it ourselves. That’s our American way.” 

Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” 

Matthew 5:9

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.

Learning to See

October 25, 2020 |

36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. 37 And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, 38 and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” 40 And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.”

41 “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” 44 Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” 48 And he said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” 49 Then those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, “Who is this, who even forgives sins?” 50 And he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Luke 7:36-50

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

When Jesus Gets in Your Boat

September 27, 2020 |

“God speaks to us: not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know him so that we may love him.  Therefore, God sends his word to us in the character of both information and invitation. It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and is doing but also calls us into personal communion with the loving Lord himself.” 

JI Packer, Knowing God

“I am growing in the awareness that God wants my whole life, not just part of it. It is not enough to give just so much time and attention to God and keep the rest for myself. It is not enough to pray often and deeply and then move from there to my own projects. As I try to understand why I am still so restless, anxious, and tense, it occurs to me that I have not yet given everything to God. I notice this especially in my greediness for time. I am very concerned to develop my ideas, finish my projects, fulfill my desires. Thus, my life is in fact divided into two parts, a part for God and a part for myself. Thus divided, my life cannot be peaceful . . . I realize that God’s love is a jealous love. God wants not just a part of me, but all of me. Only when I surrender myself completely to God’s parental love can I expect to be free from endless distractions, ready to hear the voice of love, and able to recognize my own unique call.” 

Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak

“Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.”

 Isaiah 6:5