Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

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

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Union with Christ

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Union with Christ: the Communion of the Saints

May 28, 2017 |

“We have been so soaked in the individualism of modern Western culture that we feel threatened by the idea of our primary identity being that of the family we belong to – especially when the family in question is so large, stretching across space and time. The church isn’t simply a collection of isolated individuals, all following their own pathways of spiritual growth without much reference to one another. It may sometimes look like that, and even feel like that. And it’s gloriously true that each of us is called upon to respond to God’s call at a personal level. You can hide in the shadows at the back of the church for a while, but sooner or later you have to decide whether this is for you or not.”

—N. T. Wright

 

“Membership in a local church means joining your imperfect self to many other imperfect selves to form an imperfect community that, through Jesus, embarks on a journey toward a better future . . . together.”

—Scott Sauls

 

“He can no longer have God for his father, who has not the church for his mother.”

—Cyprian of Carthage

Abiding — the Renewable Energy

May 21, 2017 |

“The most beautiful people … are those who have known defeat, known suffering, struggle, and loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”

—Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

 

“Heaven will work backwards and turn even … agony into a glory.”

—C.S. Lewis

 

“On her website, Joni (Eareckson Tada) summarizes these same sentiments in a single sentence, where she says that God will permit what he hates in order to accomplish what he loves. How can she say something like this? I suspect that it has to do with her deep awareness of the cross of Jesus, where God permitted what he hates (the violent marring and death of his only begotten Son) to accomplish what he loves (salvation for sinners, whom he loves).”

—Scott Sauls

Abiding — the Renewable Energy

May 14, 2017 |

“Where a man’s wound is, that is where his genius will be.”

—Robert Bly

“The Christian often tries to forget his weakness; God wants us to remember it, to feel it deeply. The Christian wants to conquer his weakness and to be freed from it; God wants us to rest and even rejoice in it. The Christian mourns over his weakness; Christ teaches His servant to say, ‘I take pleasure in infirmities. Most gladly … will I … glory in my infirmities’ (2 Cor. 12:9). The Christian thinks his weaknesses are his greatest hindrance in the life and service of God; God tells us that it is the secret of strength and success. It is our weakness, heartily accepted and continually realized, that gives our claim and access to the strength of Him who has said, ‘My strength is made perfect in weakness”

―Andrew Murray
Abide in Christ

“To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed.”

—Frederick Buechner
The Sacred Journey

Union with Christ: Christ in You!

May 7, 2017 |

“He who dwells in a house, keeps the house in repair; so the Spirit dwelling in a believer, keeps grace in repair. Grace is compared to a river of the water of life (John 7:38). This river can never be dried up because God’s Spirit is the spring that continually feeds it.”

– Thomas Watson

“The movement of God’s Spirit is very gentle, very soft – and hidden. It does not seek attention. But that movement is also very persistent, strong and deep.”

– Henri Nouwen

“For your gift of God the Spirit, power to make our lives anew,
pledge of life and hope of glory, Savior, we would worship you.
Crowning gift of resurrection sent from your ascended throne,
fullness of the very Godhead, come to make your life our own.

Father, grant your Holy Spirit, in our hearts may rule today,
grieved not, quenched not, but unhindered, work in us his sovereign way.
Fill us with your holy fullness, God the Father, Spirit, Son;
in us, through us, then, forever, shall your perfect will be done.”

– Margaret Clarkson

Union with Christ: In Christ!

April 30, 2017 |

“Jesus Christ is not to be relegated, like other religious leaders, to history and the history books.  He is not dead and gone, finished or fossilized.  He is alive and active. He calls us to follow him, and he offers himself to us as our indwelling and transforming Savior . . . Once again this is unique. There is nothing comparable to it in the other religions. The Buddhist does not claim to know the Buddha, nor the Confucianist Confucius, nor the Muslim Muhammad, nor the Marxist Karl Marx. Each reveres the founder of his religion or ideology as a teacher of the past.  To Christians too Jesus is a teacher, but even more he is our living Lord and Savior. Phrases claiming this “recur on page after page of the New Testament, and make it clear that it is this intimate and personal relationship of trust, devotion, and communion, which the very heart of the Christian faith.”

—John Stott

“Union with Christ is strong precisely in those places where we in our secular age tend to be weak. It gives us an ability to speak into the void created by our disenchanted, self-centered world, which has only narrowed our vision and caused us to forget who we are.”

—Rankin Wilbourne

“Made like him, like him we rise; ours the cross, the grave, the skies!”

—Charles Wesley

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