God desires to engage with us.
A call to worship.
Themes
Mission • Abraham • Called • Sent • Communion • God with us • Trinity • Love • Witness • Testimony
It is deeply personal to God that He wills not to be alone. He is an eternal, personal, dynamic, relational communion of love, and He extends all of that outward toward us. He includes us!
Scripture reading
Genesis 12:1–2 John 20:21–22
This call to worship1 is about a missional God. Mission is in the heart of God. It’s at the heart of the biblical story. Consider God’s call to Israel through Abraham.
In Genesis, we read: The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, go from your people, go from your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.” After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and said to them: “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.” And with that, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Prayer
Triune God, Your whole life is lived by giving Yourself. You are the one who sends and is sent. Your life flows outward in communion Father in Heaven, You are the One who sends the Son and the Spirit. Your love moves outward toward us with a mission of reconciliation. You are missional. It is deeply personal to You that You will not to be alone. You are an eternal, personal, dynamic, relational communion of love, and You extend all of that outward toward us. You include us! You are self-giving. You have Your being in loving and in being loved. You are inherently outgoing and self-communicative. And You do not will to be God without us. Trinity is not a doctrinal abstraction for philosophers and theologians to contemplate. It is Your beautiful, astonishing, radiant, ecstatic life. And it is in that trinitarian life— Your life of eternal and active giving and receiving and sharing of love between Father, Son, and Spirit— it is in that life —a life of eternal, relational friendship— that our own mission has its origin. There is mission because You love. And Your love is eternal. Whatever mission we have or are on or support, it is a participation in Your mission— a participation in Your active love. The love that has characterized Your own life from all eternity— that love is the basis for all Your action in the world and, by extension, the basis of our actions in the world. Any mission we have has no life of its own. Only in Your hands —the hands of a God who sends— can anything we do be called mission. Mission is Your movement toward the world, and we get to participate in that. We participate in Your love for the world, and it is that that causes action and witness and testimony from us. The love that characterizes Your mission from all eternity is the compelling basis for our mission work in the world It is Your desire to engage the world— each one of us. It was You who engaged Abraham. And it continues with us only through the sending of Your Spirit, who calls, who guides, who empowers each of us to be Your embodied witness to the gospel and to be the tangible expression of Your mission in the world. In the name of Jesus Christ, who was your perfect and complete image, who perfectly expressed and exemplified your mission, who we worship, who is Love, who calls us to live likewise in the world, who calls us to be His faithful disciples, who has enabled us to participate in Your mission in the world to rescue the world from the powers of Sin and Death, 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.
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on May 10, 2025.