Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:00 a.m. – Worship
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café
10:45 a.m. – Worship

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Minor Prophets

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Joyful Prayers in Sorrowful Times

June 20, 2021 |

“Batter my heart, three-personed God, for youAs y
et but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bendY
our force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

Excerpt from “Batter My Heart,” John Donne

“The transition from the complaining prophet to the rejoicing prophet surely must be seen as a work of God’s sovereign grace. Nothing else could explain how a person could be joyful and contented in face of the calamities Habakkuk had to undergo. May the Lord himself continue to provide the grace of life to people of this generation by the faith that justifies.”

O. Palmer Robertson

“Contrary to what we expect to be the case, the deeper into weakness and suffering and testing we go, the deeper Christ’s solidarity with us. As we go down into pain and anguish, we are descending ever deeper into Christ’s very heart, not away from it. Look to Christ. He deals gently with you. It’s the only way he knows how to be.”

Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

God’s ‘Woe’ and Our ‘Whoa!’

June 13, 2021

“The world is bigger than my little box. I’m not going to be playing this game forever. So I can’t be expected to stay in this box. … It’s been billions of people on this earth. We really are small, if you look at it from a universe perspective. There’s a lot of stuff that we get distracted by, or we chasing, to make us feel a certain way.”

Kevin Durant

“Vainglory is the excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval from others. Whether we are successful in gaining this approval or not, we all know what it is like to desire public acknowledgement and approval of our own person or our accomplishments. There is a deep part of us that longs to be known and approved of, and to have this acknowledged.”

Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering Vices

“I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong
To crash the critic saying, ‘Is it right or is it wrong?’
If only fame had an IV, baby, could I bear
Being away from you? I found the vein, put it in here

I live for the applause, applause, applause
I live for the applause-plause, live for the applause-plause
Live for the way that you cheer and scream for me
The applause, applause, applause”

Lady Gaga, “Applause”

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

June 6, 2021 |

“It seems to me that the older I get the less I think I really understand God. Which is not to say that I don’t love and trust him. On the contrary, as life goes on, my love and trust grow deeper, but my struggle with what God does or allows grows deeper too. … There are things I don’t understand about God, but they flood me with gratitude because I couldn’t live without the reality of their truth, accepted by faith. The supreme example is, of course, the cross itself. Who is bold enough to say they understand exactly how the cross has dealt with our deepest needs? And yet we cling to the fact that, by God’s grace and on the authority of God’s Word, it has.”

Christopher Wright

“Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle, as in a real friendship or marriage, only then will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination.”

Tim Keller

“When everything that’s right feels wrong
And all of my belief feels gone
And the darkness in my heart is so strong
Can You reach me here in the silence?
Singing these broken songs
Looking for the light for so long
But the pain goes on and on and on
Can You reach me here in the silence?”

Jon Foreman

At the Sound of His Roar

May 30, 2021 |

“There is nothing more essential for the people of God than to hear their God repeating to them amid all their changing circumstances, ‘I will be with you’ or ‘I will not forsake you.’”

Dale Ralph Davis

“Salvation is not a matter of getting a reward that will make up for a rotten deal; it is a matter of entering by faith into the happiness … that has been pounding on our door all along. … [God] has not taken the disasters out of life, he has become our Life in the midst of disasters. But if we believe that! If we live through the irremovable disasters trusting that every last, bitter twist of fate is nothing but Jesus, Jesus, Jesus — well, that is rather more happiness than anyone could possibly have bargained for here. It is being in a snug harbor all through a stormy voyage. It is being home free all the while we were lost.”

  Robert Capon

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight.
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death.
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Religion Isn’t Enough

May 23, 2021 |

“We like to tell ourselves a story: ‘This is not who we are.’ But every single week Christians make a confession: ‘This is who we are. Forgive us.’”

James K.A. Smith

“Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.”

Dane Ortlund

“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.”

Brennan Manning

A Song for When There’s Nothing Left

May 16, 2021 |

“That God is love, that he has set his love upon us, that he loves us still, and that his love will never let us go, is the foundation not only of all reality, but of Christian confidence and Christian stability too. Our stability is not only impossible, but actually inconceivable, apart from the steadfastness of the love of God.”

John Stott

“It might sound strange to consider grief a way to compassion. But it is. Grief asks me to allow the sins of the world—my own included—to pierce my heart and make me shed tears, many tears, for them. … I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving. This grief is so deep not just because the human sin is so great, but also—and more so—because the divine love is so boundless.”

Henri Nouwen

“Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down
Oh, yes, Lord
Sometimes I’m almost level to the ground
Oh, yes, Lord
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory, hallelujah!”

Traditional African-American Spiritual

When Winning Doesn’t Take Care of Everything

May 9, 2021 |

“There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench his determination to bless me.”

JI Packer

“The Christian life, far from transforming us into super-spiritual, quasi-angelic beings, is actually a quest to recover our humanity.”

Michael Wittmer

“Grace always bats last.”

Anne Lamott

Our Second-time God

May 2, 2021 |

“O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.”

                           George Matheson

“It is not so much that case that God has a mission for his church in the world as that God has a church for his mission in the world; Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission – God’s mission.”

Christopher Wright

“The Christian life, far from transforming us into super-spiritual, quasi-angelic beings, is actually a quest to recover our humanity.”

Michael Wittmer

“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

Salvation Belongs to the Lord!

April 25, 2021 |

“Other refuge have I none;
Hangs my helpless soul on thee;
Leave, ah! Leave me not alone;
Still support and comfort me.
All my trust on thee is stayed;
All my help from thee I bring;
Cover my defenseless head
With the shadow of thy wing” 

Charles Wesley

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

Romans 6:23

Intervention

April 18, 2021 |

“O Light, that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to Thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.” 

George Matheson 

“A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law.” 

Isaiah 42:3-4