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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Sermons

The latest sermon from our pastors is posted here each week.

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The Appearance and Reality of the Gospel’s Advance

June 19, 2022 |

“At least five times the Christian faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.” 

G.K. Cheserton

“The lizard you can take in your hands, yet it is in kings’ palaces.” 

Proverbs 30:28

“The church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end;
Though there be those that hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against a foe or traitor,
She ever shall prevail.” 

Samuel Stone, “The Church’s One Foundation”

How to Pray for an Imperfect Church

June 12, 2022 |

“I wish you’d see yourself as beautiful as I see you. Why can’t you see yourself as beautiful as I see you?” 

The Avett Brothers, “Will You Return?”

“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 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 gleam in glory, but all is being purified.” 

Martin Luther

“Oh! I am my beloved’s
And my beloved is mine!
He brings a poor vile sinner
Into His house of wine
I stand upon His merit
I know no other stand
Not e’en where glory dwelleth
In Emmanuel’s land.” 

Anne Cousin, “The Sands of Time are Sinking”

Living Grace and Peace

June 5, 2022 |

“If we know that we are loved – that someone is looking at us – then we can give love; then we can look at others . . . This is not new behavior for God. He has looked at people with compassion for centuries. When the Israelites were enslaved, God said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt . . . and I am concerned about their suffering” (Exodus 3:7). Jesus’ eyes give God a face.” 

Paul Miller

“Behold the One beholding you, and smiling.” 

Anthony De Mello

“Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to the rescue, God giving himself generously in and through Jesus Christ.” 

John Stott

Renewing Mission: The Movement of True Love

May 29, 2022 |

“Ordinary love, anonymous and unnoticed as it is, is the substance of peace on earth, the currency of God’s grace in our daily life.”

Tish Harrison Warren

“All other gods are actually powerless, because there is no true power without love. And there is no true love without compassion, no true compassion without suffering. Which means Christ, the one who innocently and truly suffered, the one who truly feels with us, the only one who has shown God’s true love for us—only Christ has the power of God for salvation, which means only Christ can be worshiped as God and King.”

NT Wright

“Love moves toward people, even if that means confrontation. It doesn’t leave them alone in their suffering or in their selfishness. Sometimes people are so paralyzed that unless we intrude, unless we break through both of our natural reserves, we can’t love them. When I need to talk to one of our teenagers about something and know I’ll get an earful, I remind myself that love moves toward people. I don’t even need to know what to say—I can just move closer.”

Paul Miller

Renewing Discipleship: Hearing and Doing the Word

May 22, 2022 |

“The greatest single secret of spiritual development lies in personal, humble, believing, obedient response to the Word of God. It is as God speaks to us through his Word that his warnings can bring us to conviction of sin, his promises to assurance of forgiveness, and his commands to amendment of life. We live and grow by his Word.” 

John Stott

“Our bodies, our pleasures, our fears, our fatigue, our friendships, our fights – these are in fact the stuff of our formation and transformation into the frail but infinitely dignified creatures we were meant to be and shall become. Our moments of exaltation and our stifled yawns – somehow they go together, part of the whole life that we were meant to offer to God day by day, as well as Sunday by Sunday, the life that God has taken into his own life. It is the life that Christ himself assumed, and thus rescued and redeemed.” 

Andy Crouch, in Liturgy of the Ordinary, by Tish Harrison Warren 

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” 

Jesus, Luke 6:46

Renewing Discipleship: The Working Word

May 15, 2022 |

“Christians feed on Scripture.  Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body.  Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.” 

Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, 18.

“When a minister reads out of the Bible, I am sure that at least nine times out of ten the people who happen to be listening at all hear not what is really being read but only what they expect to be read. And I think that what most people expect to hear read from the Bible is an edifying story, an uplifting thought, a moral lesson—something elevating, obvious, and boring. So that is exactly what very often they do hear. Only that is too bad because if you really listen—and maybe you have to forget that it is the Bible being read and a minister who is reading it—there is no telling what you might hear.”

Frederick  Buechner

“The most precious part of each day for me is the 30-40 minutes I spend each morning before breakfast with the Bible.  All the rest of the day I am bombarded with the stories the world is telling about itself.  As I take time to immerse myself in the story the Bible tells, my vision is cleared, and I see things in another way.  I see the day that lies ahead in its place in God’s story.” 

Lesslie Newbigin

Stepping In

May 8, 2022 |

“The persons within God exalt each other, commune with each other, and defer to one another…. Each divine person harbors the others at the center of his being. In constant movement of overture and acceptance, each person envelops and encircles the others…. God’s interior life overflows with regard for others.” 

Cornelius Plantinga

“How do we relate to him now? How, where, and when is this loving relationship practically played out? The answer is in corporate worship. This is exactly what corporate worship is: the interaction between a groom and his bride. Corporate worship is the dialogue that takes place between two who love each other and take delight in each other’s presence.” 

Steve Klingbeil

We will dance on the streets that are golden
The glorious bride and the great Son of Man
Let every tongue and tribe and nation
Rejoice in the song of the Lamb

“We Will Dance,” David Ruis

Not Neglecting Such a Great Savior

May 1, 2022 |

“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

“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, 110.

“Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace . . . to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.” 

Ephesians 3:7-8

Seven Miles with Jesus

April 24, 2022 |

“Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story. … If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.”

Ivan Illich

“If you win this golf tournament today, if you lose this golf tournament by 10 shots, if you never win another golf tournament again, I’m still going to love you. You’re still going to be the same person. Jesus loves you. And nothing changes.”

Meredith Scheffler

“Food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.”

Anthony Bourdain

The Living from the Dead

April 17, 2022 |

“The most fantastic of all Christian claims is thot Jesus Christ rose from the dead. It strains our credulity to the limit. Human beings have tried with all possible ingenuity both to defy and to deny death. But only Christ has claimed to conquer it, that is, to defeat it in his own experience, and, to deprive it of its power over others.” 

John Stott

“I find that Holy Week is draining; no matter how many times I have lived through his crucifixion, my anxiety about his resurrection is undiminished – I am terrified that, this year, it won’t happen; that, that year, it didn’t. 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

“Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall . . .

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.” 

John Updike