Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

9:30 a.m. – Indoor Worship Service & Livestream
11:15 a.m. – Outdoor Worship Service

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Sermons

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

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All that I Need, I Have

January 17, 2021 |

“On the one hand [the Christian faith] is the most pessimistic religion in the world, for it recognizes the tragic and awful dimensions of man’s sin. But on the other hand it is the most optimistic religion in the world, for it recognizes the heightening dimensions of God’s grace and how God’s grace can come in and pick up…. Christianity, therefore, becomes the greatest pessimistic optimistic religion in the world…. God’s grace stands over man’s sin.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.”

Brennan Manning

“God’s blessings don’t pursue temporarily—but relentlessly…. When I’m in a wilderness, His mercy and goodness run after me. When I’m hurting, His grace hunts for me. When I’m plagued by problems, His goodness pursues me. No matter where I go, He has his two blessing men right there in hot pursuit: goodness and mercy, and no shadow of death can overshadow the goodness and mercy that shadows the child of God.”

Ann Voskamp

The Who Behind the What and the How

January 10, 2021 |

“Readers looking for seven easy steps to cultural influence will have to look elsewhere – because I do not happen to believe that anything lasting is easy.  What we most have to learn about being creators of culture is the very thing we human beings find hardest to learn: everything about our calling, from start to finish, is a gift.  What is most needed in our time are Christians who are deeply serious about cultivating and creating but who wear that seriousness lightly – who are not desperately trying to change the world but who also wake up every morning eager to create.”

Andy Crouch

“Creation was a way for God to spend himself . . . Creation is an act of imaginative love.”  

Cornelius Plantinga

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.” 

G.K. Chesterton

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” 

C.S. Lewis

Proper Confidence

January 3, 2021 |

“The Gospel does not become public truth for a society by being propagated as a theory or as a worldview and certainly not as a religion. It can become public truth only insofar as it is embodied in a society (the church) which is both “abiding in” Christ and engaged in the life of the world.”

Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence, 39.

“Every Sunday millions of Christians recite the creed. Some sleepwalk through it thinking of other things, some puzzle over the strange language, some find offense in what it seems to say.  Perhaps few of them fully appreciate what a remarkable thing they are doing. Would they keep doing it if they grasped how different it made them in today’s world? Would they keep on saying these words if they really knew what they implied?

In a world that celebrates individuality, they are actually doing something together. In an age that avoids commitment, they pledge themselves to a set of convictions and thereby to each other. In a culture that rewards novelty and creativity, they use words written by others long ago. In a society where accepted wisdom changes by the minute, they claim that some truths are so critical that they must be repeated over and over again. In a throwaway, consumerist world, they accept, preserve, and continue tradition. Reciting the creed in worship is thus a counter-cultural act.” 

Luke Timothy Johnson, The Creed

“There is something beautiful and extraordinary about knowing that when you confess the Apostles’ Creed, there are people all over the world doing the same thing in different languages. Swedish Lutherans and Korean Presbyterians, African Pentecostals and Guatemalan Catholics, Chinese house churches and Egyptian Coptics – all can affirm, “this is what we believe.” 

Ray Cannata

Get a Life! True Year’s Resolutions

December 27, 2020 |

“… we have to give our mind, time and energy to both flight and pursuit. Once we see evil as the evil it is, we will want to flee from it, and once we see goodness as the good it is, we will want to pursue it.”

John Stott

“… the imperatives exhort Timothy to persevere both in his life in Christ and in his ministry (the present) and thereby to secure the awaited prize (the future), by being reminded of his beginnings – God’s call and his own response (the past).”

Gordon Fee

The Thing Everyone Needs This Christmas

December 20, 2020 |

Now some are lost in shopping malls and some on battlefields
And some are lost in suburbs and some on capitol hills
Some are lost on terminal wards or in a nursing home
And some are equally as lost in between their headphones
But whatever your coordinates on your map of shame
Rather close or far away we’re all lost just the same

The birth of births was like a death
Under that hallowed star
Still every father know and cares
Where his sons and daughters are

Bill Mallonee, “Every Father Knows”

“It’s still not Christmas, but it’s also still not the great last Advent, the last coming of Christ. Through all the Advents of our life that we celebrate runs the longing for the last Advent, when the word will be: ‘See, I am making all things new’ (Rev. 21:5).”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger

O King within the child within the clay,
O hidden King who shapes us in the play
Of all creation. Shape us for the day
Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

Malcom Guite, O Rex Gentium (O King of the Nations)

“Remember that this God in whose hand are all creatures, is your Father, and is much more tender of you than you are, or can be, of yourself.”

John Flavel, Keeping the Heart

Waiting for Glory

December 13, 2020 |

“It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else be a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals who we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” 

C. S.  Lewis, The Weight of Glory

“Salvation is membership in the family of God…. The creation of a family with children is the reason for all of God’s activity. This is how he intends to show his glory.” 

Sinclair Ferguson

“The glory of God is humanity fully alive.” 

Irenaeus

What Are We Waiting For?: Peace

December 6, 2020 |

“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come . . . Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other – things that are really of no consequence – the door is shut, and can be opened only from the outside.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Tegel Prison, 1943

“As a general rule, Americans are a people of action. We don’t take long lunches like the French. We don’t take siestas like the Spanish . . . we Americans think of ourselves as busy, busy, busy making things happen . . . and we are a bit impatient with those who aren’t as full of energy as we are. We don’t like passivity. We don’t like waiting around. So the theme of waiting and watching that permeates the Advent season strikes a false note with us. We give lip service to it, but we don’t take it very seriously. We don’t want to sit around watching and waiting. We want to speed things up. We want to move things along. If God isn’t going to bring the kingdom, we’ll bring it ourselves. That’s our American way.” 

Fleming Rutledge, Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” 

Matthew 5:9

When the Wrong Seems Oft So Strong

November 29, 2020 |

Broken bottles, broken plates
Broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Bob Dylan, “Everything is Broken”

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

When we read in the Old Testament that God is just and righteous …. it is much more like a verb than a noun, because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong. That in itself sounds inoffensive enough, but the radical message underlying it, and the one we resist, is that God does this right-making in spite of our resistance.

 Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion

True News for a Fake News Culture

November 22, 2020 |

“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”

CS Lewis

“Anything must be true before it can significantly claim other merits. Without truth all else is worthless.”

Felix Fernandez

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that unless we love the truth we cannot know it.”

Blaise Pascal

When People Walk Away Sad

November 15, 2020 |

“The sins I once feared to lose became a delight to dismiss. You turned them out and took their place, pleasanter than any pleasure.” 

Saint Augustine

“A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing! A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.” 

J.C. Ryle

“You can survive on your own.  You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own.  But you cannot become human on your own.  Surely that is why, in Jesus’ sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle’s eye.  Because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything that he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift.  He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from God himself, a helping hand.” 

Frederick Buechner

“Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing – the reason they can fly.” 

Mary Oliver, “Storage”