Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

8:30 & 11:00 a.m. – Worship
10:00 a.m. – Sunday School
10:15 a.m. – Hope Café

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When You Pray

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Week 11 – When You Pray: Saints on the Move

August 27, 2023 |

“To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the father is a greater.” 

J.I. Packer

“No matter how little you think you are, in God’s hand you will be used to accomplish his will in eternally significant ways. There are no little people and no big people, only consecrated or unconsecrated. The call on every Christian’s life is to seek the lowest place of service to God which he will then transform into consecrated leadership.”

Francis Schaeffer

“Prayerlessness leads to a strange powerlessness, emptiness, and burnout even in successful churches. Prayerfulness leads to an equally strange power, fullness, and energy, in even discouraging environments.” 

Paul Miller

Now & Forever

August 20, 2023 |

Christianity is not clay in the hands of the world-spirit to be molded by it, but is itself to be the moulder of public sentiment and everything else.

Rev. Francis Grimke 

Contemporary people tend to examine the Bible, looking for things they can’t accept; but Christians should reverse that, allowing the Bible to examine us, looking for things God can’t accept.

Dr. Tim Keller 

I will build my church. 

Jesus

Week 10 – When You Pray: Upside Down Turned Right Side Up

August 6, 2023 |

 “The world is drowning in its efforts at life; it does not need lifeguards who swim to it carrying barbells.”  

Robert Farrar Capon

“The religious see God as useful; gospel-believing Christians see God as beautiful.” 

Tim Keller

“I am throwing all my good works overboard, and lashing myself to the plank of free grace; for I hope to swim to glory on it.”  

Charles Spurgeon

Week 9 – When You Pray: Don’t Lose Heart

July 30, 2023 |

“To persevere is to succeed.”  

Thomas Sutcliffe Mort

“By the mercy of God, we do not lose heart . . . We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”  

2 Corinthians 4:2, 16

“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait upon the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”  

Psalm 27: 13-14

Week 8 – When You Pray: A Family Affair

July 23, 2023 |

“We pray, Jesus tells us, knowing the willingness of God to be “disturbed”. God the Father really is your Friend at every midnight.”  

Dale Ralph Davis

“There is ultimately no such thing as unanswered prayer. If the answer at first is “no” or “not yet,” it is because he gives us what we want in ways better than we asked . . . He gives what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows!” 

Tim Keller

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with gaining too deep for words.”  

Romans 8:26

Week 7 – When You Pray: Two Dead-ends and One Way to Life

July 16, 2023 |

“You  have said, “Seek my face.” My heart says, “Your face, Lord, do I seek.” 

Psalm 27: 8

“All shall work together for good. Everything is needful that he sends; nothing can be needful that he withholds.” 

 John Newton

“O Lord, you who own the cattle on a thousand hills, preserve us from living in an economy of scarcity where nothing and no one is good enough, causing us to live stingy and self-absorbed lives. Fill our hearts instead with your abundant life, so that we may be generous-spirited in all that we do and with everyone whom we meet. In the name of the One who makes more than enough.”  

“A Prayer for Being Generous-Spirited” by David O. Taylor

Week 6 – When You Pray: Temptation and Evil

July 9, 2023 |

“I can resist everything except temptation.”  

Oscar Wilde

“O Lord, give me chastity and temperance – but not yet!” 

St. Augustine

“A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.” 

C.S. Lewis

Week 5 – When You Pray: From Forgiven To Forgiving

July 2, 2023 |

 

“A debtor to mercy alone,

Of covenant mercy I sing;

Nor fear, with Thy righteousness on,

My person and offering to bring.

The terrors of law and of God

With me can have nothing to do;

My Savior’s obedience and blood

Hide all my transgressions from view.”

Augustus Toplady


“Honestly, I want to be like Christ. But honestly, I want to be like the Christ who turned the water into wine, not the Christ who thirsted on the cross. I want to be the clothed Christ, not the one whose garment was stripped and gambled away. I want to be the Christ who fed the five thousand, not the one who hungered for forty days in the wilderness. I want to be the free Christ, walking through the wheatfields with His disciples, not the imprisoned Christ who was deserted by them . . . This is the dark side of Christianity, the side we don’t see when we sign up. That if we want to be like Christ, we have to embrace both sides of His life. What else could it mean when the Bible talks about the “fellowship of His sufferings”?

Ken Gire, The Reflective Life


“He who is forgiven little, loves little.”

Luke 7:47

 

Week 4 – When You Pray: Daily Bread

June 25, 2023 |

“Believers do not pray with the view of informing God about things unknown to him, or of exciting him to do his duty, or of urging him as though he were reluctant.  On the contrary, they pray in order that they may arouse themselves to seek him, that they may exercise their faith in meditating on his promises, that they may relieve themselves from their anxieties by pouring them into his bosom; in a word, that they may declare that from him alone they can hope and expect, both for themselves and for others, all good things.” 

                       John Calvin

“Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?” or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”  

                             Proverbs 30: 7-9

“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing.” 

                           Psalm 145: 15-16

Week 3 – When you Pray: First Things First

June 18, 2023 |

“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.

 

“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

 

“Thou art coming to a King,

Large petitions with thee bring;

For His grace and power are such,

None can ever ask too much;

None can ever ask too much.” 

                                                                                                                                                                                              John Newton