Riverside Church

“The success of our building, our watching and our sleeping is conditional on what the Lord has already accomplished. We must base our activities, the Bible is saying, on what God has already accomplished. The Lord must first build, he must first watch, and he must first grant rest, or our efforts are always futile. That’s the point of a condition clause like this, it’s always futile unless it is in the Lord. It is always futile, our efforts, all of them. It is a universal statement. Think about that. Everything that we do, every activity that we put our hand to, if it is not done in the Lord, will always, always, always be ultimately futile.”

— Rev. Robert Widdowson

“It is sinful to seek to be honored as the real focus of the honor. It is right to desire to be honored in such a way that the ultimate honor is directed at God. ”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“Separation between God and man is the reason for all that is wrong in the world and all that is wrong in our lives and the reason for that separation is sin. The biblical teaching about union with Christ is how that separation is overcome; it is about how we can have a close and intimate relationship with God. Union has to do with being united. It has to do with being one. And being one with God is at the heart of having a good life. It is at the heart of all blessing. This is what it means to be saved.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“It is sinful to seek to be honored as the real focus of the honor. It is right to desire to be honored in such a way that the ultimate honor is directed at God. ”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“Separation between God and man is the reason for all that is wrong in the world and all that is wrong in our lives and the reason for that separation is sin. The biblical teaching about union with Christ is how that separation is overcome; it is about how we can have a close and intimate relationship with God. Union has to do with being united. It has to do with being one. And being one with God is at the heart of having a good life. It is at the heart of all blessing. This is what it means to be saved.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“None of us knows when we will die. For some of us it is years in the future. For others of us the time is much shorter. But for all of us it is part of our future. We will all die. But the whole Bible is about a glorious future for the people of God and a glorious place where believers will spend eternity with God.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“What this means is that while accepting the Bible as God’s Word is something that we do with our minds, it is more fundamentally something that the Holy Spirit works in us. And the result of the Holy Spirit’s work is not simply an intellectual persuasion, but an inner spiritual perception of the glory of God as revealed in the Scriptures and an inner spiritual perception of the authority of God speaking in the Scriptures.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“None of us knows when we will die. For some of us it is years in the future. For others of us the time is much shorter. But for all of us it is part of our future. We will all die. But the whole Bible is about a glorious future for the people of God and a glorious place where believers will spend eternity with God.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“What this means is that while accepting the Bible as God’s Word is something that we do with our minds, it is more fundamentally something that the Holy Spirit works in us. And the result of the Holy Spirit’s work is not simply an intellectual persuasion, but an inner spiritual perception of the glory of God as revealed in the Scriptures and an inner spiritual perception of the authority of God speaking in the Scriptures.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra

“The message of the story is that God is working, directing all that happens, but that his presence and his involvement in Joseph’s life is largely hidden. God is working behind the scenes.
And that is the case in our lives as well. God directs our lives. We know that from the Bible. But God’s presence is usually not obvious. We do not see God. We know that he is at work directing our lives and the whole of history because the Bible tells us so. We only know that he is at work in our lives and in history by faith – faith in the words that God speaks to us in the Bible.”

— Rev. Jerry Hamstra