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Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

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You are here: Home / Archives for Joy Beyond the Sorrow

Joy Beyond the Sorrow

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Real Strength, Real Supply

November 20, 2016 | Clyde Godwin

Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. —Francis Chan

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. —Saint Augustine

Good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you. So carve your name on hearts and not on marble. —C.H. Spurgeon

The Longing for Beauty

November 13, 2016 | Clyde Godwin

God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you ask do we want? Ah, but we want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to become part of it.  —C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. ―Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Beauty is not only a terrible thing, it is also a mysterious thing. There God and the Devil strive for mastery, and the battleground is the heart of men. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A Sweet and Permanent Peace

November 6, 2016 | David Speakman

“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.

“Prayer is bringing your helplessness to Jesus.” —Paul Miller, A Praying Life, 55.

“Prayer is an expression of who we are . . . We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.” —Thomas Merton

Dear refuge of my weary soul,
On Thee, when sorrows rise
On Thee, when waves of trouble roll,
My fainting hope relies
To Thee I tell each rising grief,
For Thou alone canst heal
Thy Word can bring a sweet relief,
For every pain I feel

—Anne Steele

Come Further Up. Come Further In!

October 30, 2016 | David Speakman

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!”  —Jewel in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle

“Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living, which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward    uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power.” —Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion

“The spiritual world cannot be made suburban. It is always frontier, and if we would live in it, we must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed.” —Howard R. Macy

“There is more
More than all this pain
More than all the falling down
And the getting up again
There is more
More than we can see
From our tiny vantage point
In this vast eternity
There is more

—Andrew Peterson

The Fellowship of HIS Suffering

October 23, 2016 | Clyde Godwin

Our most revolutionary, political act is to hope. I have been meditating lately on a remarkable insight by the novelist Marilynne Robinson: “Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” To be a Christian is to be a person who engages in politics, but without fear. Fear drives us to panic, and no one makes good decisions when panicked. We overestimate some threats and   ignore others. We can’t see clearly, and we’re prone to being manipulated by those who would foment our panic.

But we ought not be a panicked people. Our King has told us over and over again, “Be not afraid.” You have already heard good news that brings great joy. The King is alive, is seated on his throne, and he reigns. And not only that: he is also interceding for you at the right of his Father. “Be not afraid.”—James K. A. Smith

“The essential content of the Faith, then, includes first of all the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, which covers the whole many-sided reality of the divine plan and work of salvation. Secondly, the Faith includes the sound doctrines of the truth that properly accord with that glorious    Gospel. It includes thirdly the Way of living that conforms to those     doctrines. And fourthly it includes the experience of all the life-giving  benefits that flow from the power of the Gospel and enable us to walk in the Way of the Lord. The last three of these elements may be regarded as three facets or dimensions of the Faith that derive from the Gospel” (121, emphasis added).—J.I. Packer

He Knew

October 16, 2016 | Clyde Godwin

Our most revolutionary, political act is to hope. I have been meditating lately on a remarkable insight by the novelist Marilynne Robinson: “Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” To be a Christian is to be a person who engages in politics, but without fear. Fear drives us to panic, and no one makes good decisions when panicked. We overestimate some threats and ignore others. We can’t see clearly, and we’re prone to being manipulated by those who would foment our panic.

But we ought not be a panicked people. Our King has told us over and over again, “Be not afraid.” You have already heard good news that brings great joy. The King is alive, is seated on his throne, and he reigns. And not only that: he is also interceding for you at the right of his Father. “Be not afraid.”—James K. A. Smith

“The essential content of the Faith, then, includes first of all the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, which covers the whole many-sided reality of the divine plan and work of salvation. Secondly, the Faith includes the sound doctrines of the truth that properly accord with that glorious    Gospel. It includes thirdly the Way of living that conforms to those     doctrines. And fourthly it includes the experience of all the life-giving  benefits that flow from the power of the Gospel and enable us to walk in the Way of the Lord. The last three of these elements may be regarded as three facets or dimensions of the Faith that derive from the Gospel” (121, emphasis added).—J.I. Packer

Shoulder to Shoulder

October 9, 2016 | David Speakman

“My Dear Wormwood, I note with grave displeasure that your patient has become a Christian . . . There is no need to despair . . . One of our greatest allies at present in the Church itself . . . when he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with a rather oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print.  When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbors whom he has hitherto avoided.  You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbors.  Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the body of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew.  It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains.  You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side.  No matter.  You patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool.  Provided that any of those neighbors sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous . . . Work hard, then, on the disappointment and anticlimax which certainly coming to the patient during his few weeks as a churchman.

Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape”

—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“Humility and love are precisely the graces which the men of the world can    understand, if they do not comprehend doctrines. They are the graces about which there is no mystery, and they are within reach of all classes… The poorest Christian can every day find occasion for practicing love and humility.” —J. C. Ryle

“If I cannot in honest happiness take the second place (or the twentieth); if I cannot take the first without making a fuss about my unworthiness, then I know nothing of Calvary love.”—Amy Carmichael

Worthy of the Gospel

October 2, 2016 | David Speakman

“The Church is the only institution that primarily exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” —William Temple

“This life, therefore,
is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness,
not health, but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it,
the process is not yet finished, but it is going on,
this is not the end, but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.”
—Martin Luther

“Grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning.  Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.” —Dallas Willard

At Peace, Always Troubled

September 25, 2016 | David Speakman

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and  timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”—Teddy Roosevelt

“There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command.  It has been customary to speak of ‘the missionary mandate.’  This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point.  It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel.  If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another  impression.  Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy.  The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed.  It must be told.  Who could be silent about such a fact?  The   mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving.”—Lesslie Newbigin

“In service which Thy will appoints, there are no bonds for me;
For my inmost heart is taught “the truth” that makes Thy children “free;”
And a life of self–renouncing love is a life of liberty.”
—Anna Waring

The Prayer for Perspective

September 18, 2016 | Clyde Godwin

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve;
I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health, that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity, that I might do better things.
I asked for riches, that I might be happy;
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life;
I was given life, that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.
—Prayer of an Anonymous Confederate Soldier

You left me, sweet, two legacies,
A legacy of love
A heavenly father would content,
Had he the offer of;
You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.
—Emily Dickinson

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