Hope Church PCA

Presbyterian Church in Winston-Salem

Sunday Schedule:

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

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Sermons

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

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Love to the Loveless Shown

September 25, 2022 |

“A church can become crowded with legitimate causes, concerns, and needs. And it can be hard to find Jesus.” 

Ray Ortlund

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself … as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.” 

C.S. Lewis

“We love because he first loved us.” 

1 John 4:19

Merciful and Mighty

September 18, 2022 |

“Aslan had stopped and turned and stood facing them, looking so majestic that they felt as glad as anyone can who feels afraid, and as afraid as anyone can who feels glad . . . A mad chase began. Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind . . .Terrible paws, if he did not know how to velvet them.” 

CS Lewis, describing Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia

“The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are not worthy of him.” 

AW Tozer

“Who do you say that I am?” 

Jesus, Matthew 16:15

The Unveiling of Jesus Christ

September 11, 2022 |

“We do not need a detailed forecast of future events which has to be laboriously deciphered, but (rather) a vision of Jesus Christ to cheer the faint and encourage the weary. John’s desire is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future but to stimulate our faithfulness in the present.” 

John Stott

“If 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

“‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” 

Revelation 22:20

The Recipe for Joy

September 4, 2022 |

“We tend to think that sorrow and despair are more authentic and real than celebration and joy. The last thing we want to be—or be seen as—is happy-clappy. … Joy is not ‘toxic positivity.’ It does not insist that we pretend things are better than they are. It does not refuse to face grief or sorrow. But it does say that they are not all there is and that they are not all that needs to be faced.”

Tish Harrison Warren, “How to Cultivate Joy Even When It Feels in Short Supply”

“It is more blessed to give than to receive—that’s true. But for needy adults, who in this respect are like sick infants, something of value must be received before anything of value can be given. Receiving always precedes giving. And that never changes. We never outgrow our need to receive. It’s a beautiful thing to witness the humility that receives.”

Larry Crabb, Shattered Dreams: God’s Unexpected Path to Joy

“Joy is always all-encompassing; there is nothing of us left over to hate with or to be afraid with, to feel guilty with or to be selfish about. Joy is where the whole being is pointed in one direction, and it is something that by its nature a man never hoards but always wants to share. The second thing is that joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes. Even nailed to a tree.”

Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

Life-giving Agreement in a World of Toxic Disagreement

August 21, 2022 |

“Ideally . . . the church is not made up of natural ‘friends.’ It is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together as the church is not common education, common race, common income levels, common politics, common nationality, common accents, common jobs, or anything else of that sort. Christian come together . . . because . . . they have all been loved by Jesus himself. They are a band of natural enemies who love one another for Jesus’ sake.” 

Donald Carson

“When the grace of Jesus sinks in, we will be among the least offended and most loving people in the world.” 

Scott Sauls

“Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Faithful are the wounds of a friend; deceitful are the kisses of an enemy . . . Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” 

Proverbs 27: 5-6, 17

On Earth as it is in Heaven

August 14, 2022 |

“If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next…It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither.” 

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, on “Hope”

“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.”  

Ken Gire, The Reflective Life

“Just because we will not ultimately succeed in restoring shalom in our lifetime does not mean we should throw up our hands in despair. We may not be able to correct every slight and meet every need, but we can still make headway. We can bring a slice of shalom to our corner of the planet, to our sphere of influence, and so become a sign or firstfruit of the kingdom that Christ is bringing. We must wait for Christ’s return, but it can be an active rather than passive waiting. While we wait, why not choose to participate in the activities that herald the coming shalom? Simply put, regardless of our prospects for immediate success, we who follow the Prince of Peace must seek to increase the net gain of shalom in the world.”

Michael Wittmer, Heaven is a Place on Earth

Is God Dead?

August 7, 2022 |

“God isn’t a sadist who delights in using agony to teach us a lesson. But in the alchemy of redemption, God can take what is only sorrow and transform it into the very path by which we learn to love God and let ourselves be loved. This is the strange (and usually unwanted) way of abundant life—the dying necessary to bring resurrection.”

Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night

“So if I stand, let me stand on the promise
That you will pull me through.
And if I can’t, let me fall on the grace
That first brought me to You.
And if I sing, let me sing for the joy
That has born in me these songs.
And if I weep, let it be as a man
Who is longing for his home.”

Rich Mullins, “If I Stand”

“The human soul under the disciplined regimen of God works like muscles do under the disciplined regimen of a trainer. The more the soul is worked and stretched to its limits, the more able it becomes to endure suffering and enjoy God all at once. When this happens in us, we become the best kind of dangerous. The more we get pushed, the more pushing we can do, and the more able we become to show up for others in their toil and tribulation.”

Scott Sauls, Beautiful People Don’t Just Happen

Trading Trash for Treasure

July 31, 2022 |

“Our pride drives us to establish our own righteousness. We strive all our life to see ourselves as keepers of rules we cannot keep, as loyal subjects of laws under which we can only be judged outlaws. Yet so deep is our need to derive our identity from our own self-respect … that we will spend a lifetime trying to do the impossible rather than, for even one carefree minute, consent to having it done for us by someone else.”

Robert Capon

“It is like this: the earth does not produce rain, nor is it able by its own power or work to get it. The earth simply receives it as a gift of God from above. It is the same with ‘passive’ righteousness. It is given to us by God without our deserving it or working for it. So let’s look at what the earth is able to do to get the rain each season so that it can be fruitful, and we will see how much we are able in our own strength and works to do to get heavenly and eternal righteousness. We see we will never be able to attain it unless God Himself, by the great gift of His Son, gives us Jesus’ perfect record, and gives us Jesus’ perfect righteousness.”

Martin Luther

The Joy of Working Out

July 24, 2022 |

“If I grapple with sin in my own strength, the devil knows that he may go to sleep.” 

Thomas Adams

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

Augustine

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

C.S. Lewis

“The deepest word that can be spoken about sanctification is that it is a progress towards true humanity. Salvation is, essentially considered, the restoration of humanity to people . . . The greatest saints of God have been characterized, not by haloes and an atmosphere of distant unapproachability, but by their humanity. They have been intensely human and lovable people with a twinkle in their eyes.”

 James Phillips

The Normal Christian Life: Dying and Rising with Jesus

July 17, 2022 |

“We all long for Eden and are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature is soaked with the sense of exile.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

“The enthusiasms of my conversion have worn off. For whole stretches since the dream, since the baptism, my belief has faltered, my sense of God’s closeness has grown strained, my efforts at living in accord with what I take to be the call of the gospel have come undone…. Once upon a time, I thought I had arrived. Now I have arrived at a middle.”

Lauren Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis

“Yea, amen, let all adore Thee,
High on thine eternal throne
Savior take the power and glory
Claim the Kingdom for thine own
O come quickly, O come quickly,
Alleluia, come, Lord, come.”

Charles Wesley, “Lo! He Comes With Clouds Descending”