Faith is death that creates life.
A call to worship.
Themes
The experience of faith • Death to self • The God who raises the dead • in Christ
God has moved us from a life-for-self into a life-for-Christ. And this is not an optional upgrade to our lives. It is not an add-on experience. Instead, it is the essence of the experience of faith, for it was the very reason for the death of Jesus Christ.
Scripture reading
Philippians 3:3 Galatians 6:14 Galatians 5:24 Galatians 2:19–20 2 Corinthians 5:15, 17
This call to worship1 comes from the Apostle Paul. He writes about faith.
We worship in the Spirit of God, and we boast in Christ Jesus alone, and we have no confidence in the flesh. May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. I died, so that I might live to God. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. He died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for the One who for their sake died and was raised. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being!
Prayer
Father in heaven, faith is the only appropriate response to Your gospel. We place our faith — our complete trust and confidence — in You. Our pride… is in You alone and in no one and in nothing else. We abandon all other grounds of assurance. We abandon all the gods of this modern world — power, money, acclaim, safety, materialism, science, authenticity, selfism, pride, entertainment, network news, sports, sexual freedom… We leave behind everything that characterizes a world in rebellion. This world, Father, has been crucified to us, and us to the world. With our confidence in You, we also abandon the shaky ground of self-confidence and self-assurance. Apart from Jesus Christ, we would belong to — and live for — only ourselves. We would be the benchmark and the goal of our own existence, under the direction of our own ambitions. But… the experience of faith, triggered by Your apocalyptic event of the cross, has reoriented our lives away from self and brought us out of ourselves and into Christ, in whom we now live. We are no longer masters of our own fate, but instead, we have become the servants of another. You have shifted us from a life-for-self to a life-for-Christ. And so, we no longer have confidence in our flesh. In fact, Father, we have crucified our flesh along with all its passions and desires. And we are now under a power that is stronger than the impulses of our flesh. Faith has brought death to self. And contrary to all our natural impulses, we instead believe in You — the God who raises the dead. We are so crazy in this belief that we actually do believe that You bring life out of death itself — out of Christ’s death… and our own. And so, faith is a death experience — a death that creates life, that brings to life all the intended outcomes of Christ’s death, that frees us from all the interlocking hostile powers that otherwise enslave us, so that we can be incorporated into Christ, so that we can live a life of faithfulness, empowered by Your Spirit, so that we can be free — liberated from all evil powers — to become… to become your servants. You have not simply liberated us from one realm — the realm of sin and death and self and flesh and the Law and unrighteousness. But You have transformed us and You have brought us into a new realm — into the realm of the reign of Jesus Christ our Lord. We are now liberated from all past slaveries of world and self and the powers of sin and all that is based in fear. And we now have true freedom — we now belong to our Lord Jesus Christ. We have become the slave of another. You have moved us from a life-for-self into a life-for-Christ And we acknowledge that this is not an optional upgrade to our lives as believers, it is not an add-on experience. It is rather the essence of the experience of faith, for it was the very reason for the death of Your beloved son, Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ, whose faith has become our faith — a faith that is participation in the very story of Jesus — Amen
Inspiring resources
A call to worship creates wonderment, amazement, curiosity, yearning, captivation, provocation, hopefulness, thankfulness, affection, rapture, delight. As these mix together, the response is worship.
If this call to worship leaves you wondering or curious or provoked or hopeful, consider diving into this awesome book which inspired me to write this call to worship.
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on June 26, 2022.