Count me in.
A call to worship.
Themes
God moves first • Liberated will • Faithfulness • Grace • Foretaste of the kingdom • Providence and care • Freedom in Christ • Leaving home • Costly obedience • Communion with God • Shared life • Doing what delights God
There’s no coercion. God hasn’t bypassed our will. His grace has liberated it.
Scripture reading
Genesis 24 Phil 2:13 2 Cor 3:17
This call to worship1 is inspired by the incredible and compelling story of Rebekah. This call to worship is about a God who moves first—who loves, promises, and provides in such a way that we say “Yes!” back. No pressure. No performance. Just the response of people whose wills have been healed and who are drawn into a shared life with Christ.
Guided by the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Paul wrote these words: For it is God who works in you— not around you, not in spite of you, not counter to you, but in you— to will—that is: to desire— His good pleasure and to work for His good pleasure. All the promises of God find their “Yes!” in Him. That is why it is through Him that we utter our Amen— our “Yes!” back— to God.
Prayer
Father in Heaven, You are the God who moves first. You take action. You speak. You provide. And You do it all in a way that our response— our response to Your move, our response to Your action, to Your words, our response to You— is “Yes!” Truly “Yes!” There’s no coerrision. You haven’t bypassed our will. Your grace, instead, has liberated it. Your grace has enabled it. You have made a promise to us, formed a covenant with us, taken an oath for us. You have poured out Your grace on us. And now our response doesn’t come from our resolve, but comes, instead, from all that You have done for us. All of Your grace has created space for us— real space. Not pressure. There hasn’t been any arm-twisting. There hasn’t been any manipulation. Your providence unfolds in our lives. And even before we pray and offer our petitions, we see and we experience Your care. Your grace also comes to us in the form of a pledge— a pledge that steadies us: the Holy Spirit of promise, earnest money, so to speak, of a promised glorious future. You haven’t demanded blind leaps from us. Instead, by Your Spirit, You have given us a foretaste of the kingdom come and You have given us assurance. You have healed our will, so that our answer back to You is simple, “We will go!” Our “Count me in!” comes from inside all of Your care for us— from all Your poured-out grace on us. It is Your grace that sets us free. It is Your grace that enables our free consent to go with You— something that fear and corrosion could never produce. We will leave our home. We will leave this place. We will travel. We will go. The freedom Your grace has enabled for us isn’t just some enjoyable feeling we have— a feeling of possibility while we do nothing. It is our real movement. It is costly steps we’ll take. It is action from us that fits Your faithfulnes to us. And in the end, it is all about communion with You. Not You controlling us. In the end, our story resolves in union with You and in love with You. Your goal for our freedom is not compliance; in the end, it is a shared life with You. In Christ, You have said “Yes!” to us. And by Your Spirit, You’ve enabled our “Yes!” in response. Your actions and our responses are not competing rivals. It is Your Spirit that enables our choices and our actions to coincide with Your will without ever crushing us. It is Your grace that creates in us our freely given “Yes!” rather than bypassing it. Freedom is Your Spirit-enabled capacity in us— a capacity to want what it is You delight in and to do what it is You delight in. All of our freedom is freedom for You. All of our freedom is the joyful capacity in us to say “Yes!” to the One who first loved us. Amen
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church in Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, November 9, 2025.
Love it! Yes!