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Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

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Witness Unhindered

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Train Wreck Conversion

April 21, 2019 |

“The life of discipleship is not a matter of coming up with a Gospel I can live with; it’s a matter of learning to live with all of the scandal of the Gospel–and that can take a lifetime. Graham Greene’s ‘whiskey priest’ doesn’t for a moment think that the church should revise its doctrine and standards in order to make him feel comfortable about his fornication–even if he might lament what seems to be a denial of some feature of his humanness. All of his doubts and suspicion and resistance are not skeptical gambits that set him off in search of a liberal Christianity he can live with; they are, instead, features of a life of sanctification, or lack thereof. And no one is surprised by that. The prayer of the doubter is not, ‘Lord I believe, conform to the measure of my unbelief,’ but rather: ‘Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief.’”

James K.A. Smith

“Anyone can be sentimental about the Nativity; any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas. But Easter is the main event; if you don’t believe in the resurrection, you’re not a believer.”

John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead,” The Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then there’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can . . .”

Flannery O’Connor, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

From Scattered to Welcomed

April 14, 2019 |

“The world is full of darkness, but what I think we caught sight of in that tourist trap in Orlando, Florida, of all places, was that at the heart of darkness – whoever would have believed it? – there is joy unimaginable. The world does bad things to us all, and we do bad things to the world and to each other and maybe most of all to ourselves, but in that dazzle of bright water as the glittering whales hurled themselves into the sun, I believe what we saw was that joy is what we belong to. Joy is home, and I believe the tears that came to our eyes were more than anything else homesick tears. God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in his image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by him, his mark is deep within us. We have God’s joy in our blood.”

– Frederick Buechner

“Our contemporary situation is surprisingly similar to the early Christian context in which the normative understandings and practices of hospitality were developed. We, like the early church, find ourselves in a fragmented and multicultural society that yearns for relationships, identity, and meaning. Our mobile and self-oriented society is characterized by disturbing levels of loneliness, alienation, and estrangement. In a culture that appears at times to be overtly hostile to life itself, those who reject violence and embrace life bear powerful witness. People are hungry for welcome.”

– Christine Pohl

“For thus says the LORD: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”

– Isaiah 56: 4-5

What Money Can’t Buy

April 7, 2019 |

“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

– Tertullian

“How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing . . . it is irresistible.”

– C.S. Lewis

“Albert Einstein once said that we live in an age of perfect means and confused ends. The question which is inherent in that statement I consider to be the most important question of our times. It has to do with the boredom which is deadly, with the emptiness which frightens us, but also with the fulfillments which make life worth living. It has to do with the crucial task which has been set for us, namely, to distinguish between the “means,” which make our life easier, and the “meaning” of our life, which is the only thing that makes life possible. Even the person who has perfectly solved the problem of the means can still perish in suicide because a life without meaning is dreadful. And this dreadfulness actually increases as the outward course of this life grows smoother.

I can express what I mean by this as a Christian in the words of our Lord: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?” All the means of mastering the world can turn a man into a fool if he overlooks the crucial question. That this should not happen, I consider the most important question of our time.”

– Helmut Thielicke

Living and Dying as a Christian

March 31, 2019 |

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”

– Flannery O’Connor

“I lost fear in the black belt when I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and Resurrection, that in the only sense that really matters I am already dead, and my life is hid with Christ in God . . . I began to lose self-righteousness when I discovered the extent to which my behavior was motivated by worldly desires and by the self-seeking messianism of Yankee deliverance! The point is simply, of course, that one’s motives are usually mixed, and one had better know it.”

– Jonathan Myrick Daniels

 

“Let the world despise and leave me
They have left my Saviour, too
Human hearts and looks deceive me
Thou art not like them, untrue
Oh, while thou dost smile upon me
God of wisdom, love and might
Foes may hate and friends disown me
Show thy face and all is bright

Soul, then know thy full salvation
Rise over sin and fear and care
Joy to find in every station
Something still to do or bear
Think what Spirit dwells within thee
Think what Father’s smiles are thine
Think that Jesus died to win thee
Child of heaven, canst thou repine?”

– Henry Lyte, “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken”

 

Every Story Whispers His Name

March 24, 2019 |

I would not have preached the honor and glory of the cross if I feared the death of the cross.”

The Apostle Andrew

“Seek what you seek; but remember that it is not where you seek it.”

Augustine, Confessions

“All that the world has to do to escape judgment is believe—for the simple reason that, by the gracious work of Jesus, it has in fact already escaped it. It need do nothing to earn that escape, and it certainly need not compile questionable lists of good works to prove that it deserves to escape. It need not negotiate with God, or be afraid of God, or try conning God into being lenient. It has only to believe that God in Jesus has settled all his problems of sin and to laugh loud and long at how graciously easy the whole business always was.”

Robert Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment

“Yielding to God’s will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace.”

John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down

Distraction

March 17, 2019 |

“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal anew to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.”

Andrew Sullivan

 “I believe in the power of distraction.”

Woody Allen

 “A personal gospel without a social gospel is like a soul without a body. A social gospel without a personal gospel is like a body without a soul. One is a ghost. The other is a corpse.”

Bryan Chapell

Grace Taught My Heart to Fear

March 10, 2019 |

“Perhaps the most common invitation to cynicism about the church is hypocrisy. Cynicism’s standard cliché about the church is that it is “filled with hypocrites.” This is a curiously powerless criticism. Of course it is filled with hypocrites. What else is new? Hospitals are filled with sick people. Hypocrisy is a human problem, not a distinctively Christian problem. Is anyone suggesting that there is no hypocrisy outside of the church? . . . Just because hypocrisy is so widespread, almost normal, this does not lessen its seriousness. Jesus reserved some of the most stinging rebukes for hypocrites. He repeated, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” no less than seven times in one chapter (Matthew 23) as he denounced one hypocrisy after another in the religious leadership. They crucified him at the end of the week.”

Dick Keyes

“I hate, I despise your festivals,
and take no delight in your solemn assemblies . . .
Take away the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

Amos

“The fear of God is that affectionate reverence, by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law.”

Charles Bridges

Grace Changes Everything (Even Our Bank Accounts)

March 3, 2019 |

Once we begin to understand and experience ‘wealth’ according to God’s definition of the term—that he himself is our only true riches and that in comparison to him money is a small and insignificant thing—our perspective on the value of persons will be reoriented. Our hierarchies of who is important and who is expendable, of who is noteworthy and who is not-worthy, of who deserves our friendship and who does not, completely fade away. Because in God’s economy, the poor in spirit—regardless of their so-called net worth—are the sole heirs of God’s riches.”

Scott Sauls, Irresistible Faith

“Hospitality is not so much a task as a way of living our lives and of sharing ourselves. … A life of hospitality begins in worship, with a recognition of God’s grace and generosity. Hospitality is not first a duty and responsibility; it is first a response of love and gratitude for God’s love and welcome to us.”

Christine Pohl
Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition

“The American dream—that hoary mythology that hard work always guarantees upward mobility—has for more than a century made the U.S. obsessed with material success and the exhaustive striving required to earn it. … The problem with this gospel—Your dream job is out there, so never stop hustling—is that it’s a blueprint for spiritual and physical exhaustion.”

Derek Thompson
“Workism Is Making Americans Miserable,” The Atlantic

There is No Other Name

February 24, 2019 |

“Christianity is a religion of salvation, and the fact is that there is nothing in any of the nonChristian religions to compare with this message of a God who loved, and came after, and died for, a world of lost sinners.”

John Stott, Basic Christianity

“The gospel is not a preference. It’s not another piece of flair we add to our vest. It’s something far more beautiful and disturbing. The gospel is the power to raise the dead, to proclaim the greatness of God in a fallen and confused world.”

Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age

“It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free!”

Elsa, “Let it Go,” Frozen

One Beggar Telling Another Beggar Where to Find Bread

February 17, 2019 |

“Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find the bread.”

D. Thambyrajah Niles

“Words without deeds are empty, but deeds without words are dumb.”

Lesslie Newbigin

“The biggest problem with poverty is the shame that comes with it. When you give the best you have to someone in need, it translates into something much deeper to the receiver. It means that they are worthy. If it’s not good enough for you, it’s not good enough for those in need either. Giving the best you have does more than feed an empty belly – it feeds the soul.”

Kristine Levine