Fierce grace.

A call to worship.

Themes

Relentless grace • Invariable grip • God of the living • Incarnational descent • Presence • Darkness • Grace • Divine pursuit • Rebellion • Wrestling • Transformation • Freedom from control

God enters the psych ward of our human delusion.

God wrestles with us. He blesses us. He transforms us. He renames us.

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Scripture reading

Matthew 22:31–32

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This call to worship¹ is a defiant, hope-saturated announcement that the Christian God is not a distant deity waiting for improved humans, but the living Triune God whose covenant faithfulness outlasts our dysfunction and even outlasts death. Grace is not a spiritual substance or divine leniency. It is God’s personal, costly self-giving in Jesus Christ, an “invariable grip” that holds when our grip fails, rebels, or collapses. God is “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” — that Jacob, Jacob in all his ugliness. If God is that Jacob’s God, then no one present is beyond His pursuit. From generational mess to Incarnation to wrestling transformation, the Christian life is God’s relentless, healing descent into the darkest places of our delusion, where He binds Himself to us and renames us into freedom.

Jesus, when he was responding to questions being asked of Him by Israel's religious legal class, said:

Have you not read what was said to you by God: 
“I am the God of Abraham, 
and the God of Isaac, 
and the God of Jacob”? 
He is not God of the dead, 
but of the living.

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Prayer

God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
God of that Jacob—
the deceiving, 
selfish, 
relationship-destroying, 
dysfunctional, 
ambitious, 
independent Jacob.
The God of that Jacob. 

God of the living, 
not the dead, 
Your faithfulness
—Your grace—
is so unrelenting,
even death itself cannot terminate it. 

Even in death 
—or in anything that will lead us to it— 
we will never slip out of Your grasp. 
We will never cease to be 
the object of Your love. 

Your grace is unconditional.
Your grace is relentless. 
Your grace is rooted in Your eternal, triune being, 
and only in your eternal, triune being.

Thank goodness it is not rooted in us!

Your grace is not some divine attribute. 
It is not some kind of leniency 
toward our mistakes.
It is Your fierce, 
unconditional, 
unyielding movement
into the deepest, darkest pits of our rebellion, 
into the most shameful parts of our being,
so that you can bind Yourself to us there
—in those parts—
forever!
FOREVER!

You will never abandon us. 
You are the God of the living. 

You call us by name, 
even when our lives are tangled, 
and deceptive, 
and flawed, 
and messy, 
and self-willed, 
and stiff-necked. 

We have lost our minds in sin. 
You enter the psych ward of our human delusion. 
You do not wait for us to become sane.
You do not stay at some safe distance.
You do not write a prescription for grace.
You do not shout instructions to us for fixing our delusions. 
You enter them. 
You step inside our delusions. 
You step inside our darkness.
You meet us exactly where we are.
And there You bind yourself to us. 

This is called Incarnation.
This is Your grace. 
Your grace is not an abstract idea. 
It is not some spiritual commodity. 
It is not some spiritual medicine You give us. 
Your grace is a person. 
Your grace has a name. 
Its name is the Lord Jesus Christ. 
It is You, God, 
giving Yourself to us unreservedly, 
in Jesus Christ. 

Our grip on You fluctuates 
from clenching tight 
to active, open, shoving-You-away rebellion. 
But Your grip on us 
is the one invariable grip.
Our salvation,
our identity, 
do not depend on the strength 
of our hold on You, 
but entirely on the unyielding strength 
of Your hold on us

Because we are frail, 
because we are self-willed, 
being drawn into Your holy presence 
is not a magic touch you give us in our sleep 
that annihilates our flaws
so that in the morning 
we wake up whole and different. 
No. 
You accomodate Yourself to our frailness. 
You enter our mess.  
And it is a painful, disruptive wrestling match
—an agonizing struggle— 
that You engage in. 
You wrestle with us.
You bless us.
You transform us.
You rename us.

Today, like Jacob, 
we answer: “Here I am.”
Meet us in the truth of who we are.
Wrestle down what is false in us,
heal what is wounded,
and free us from our need to control everything.

We’re here this morning, 
not because we are strong,
but because You are faithful.
Not because we have held on,
but because You have not let go.

To You, 
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
—one God of relentless grace—
be glory in this worship, 
now and forever.
Amen.

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However deep our ruin goes… that’s what God stepped into. And healed it. Go a little deeper. Enjoy this essay:

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1. A call to worship given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, February 22, 2026.