God’s intentions with us.
A call to worship.
Themes
Created • Communion with God • Friendship • Purpose • Union with Christ • in Christ • Human • Knowledge of God • Eternal Life • Redeemer • Creation • Incarnation • Freedom • Autonomy • Self-discovery
God’s purpose for us was and is and has always been centered in Jesus Christ. He is not the afterthought to our sin. He is the very reason for our existence. His incarnation—His coming here and becoming human—was not just a rescue plan; it was the fulfillment of God’s eternal intention for union with us.
Scripture reading
John 17:3, 21–23 Acts 17:28 Ephesians 1:4–5, 9–10 2 Corinthians 3:17–18 Colossians 1:9–10
This call to worship1 is about God’s intent for us—our purpose, our place.
As recorded in John’s gospel, Jesus clearly states God’s intention for us when He prays to His Father for us. He prays: This is eternal life: that they (us) know You, Father, the only true God, and that they know Jesus Christ, whom You have sent… That they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us. This is eternal life… that they also may be in Us. In the book of Acts and across several of his letters, the Apostle Paul taught us the following: In God, we live and in God we move and in God we have our being. God chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight… He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment— (and that mystery is) to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, we all are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory. And in his letter to the Colossians, Paul told them how he prayed for them. He wrote: We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord.
Prayer
Creator God, we have been created by You for communion with you and for friendship with You. Our purpose is not self-contained. It is not found in ourselves. Our purpose isn’t boxed in by what we’ve made up about who we are or by what we’ve come to believe about ourselves from our woundedness or our histories or our race or our gender. Our purpose isn’t boxed in by what we see, or how we feel, or by all the troubles and worries that drain our emotional capacity. Our purpose is found in Your desire, Father, to be in relationship with us. Our purpose is fulfilled in our union with Christ, Your Son. We have become united with Him. We are in Him, and He is in us. And because this is true and because He is in You, and You are in Him, our purpose, Father, is now being fulfilled— we are participating in Your very own divine life. We exist to be in a relationship with You. Not as a plus-one to our other relationships, not as an add-on to our day-to-day human experiences, not as a sidebar to whatever else is going on with us. No! The real purpose of our lives is communion with You. This is the very essence of what it means to be human. This means, then, that You, Father, have created us, and formed us, and designed within us the capacity and all of the necessary mechanisms for growing in our knowledge of You. We are now inherently structured for having life in You. We are now inherently structured for communion and friendship with You. Yes, we are rightfully fascinated and amazed by our biology and our microbiology and our cellular biology and for all the truly inconceivable and astonishing functions happening within us that give us human life. But what is more amazing is that these have all been structured not just so that we can live, but so that we can have knowledge of You, so that we can have life in You, so that we can have communion and friendship with You. We have been made so that we can know You. And knowing You is not a finished, completed state. For us, it will be forever unfolding. And we have been created just for this dynamic, forever-unfolding, never-completed purpose— and that is to grow forever into deeper knowledge, deeper wonderment of You. We have been created with the capacity to forever grow in knowledge and communion with You, to grow into a forever-increasing union with You. And this is the essence of eternal life— not to merely live forever, but to eternally grow forever into an ever-deepening participation in Your life. We have been made in Christ. We have been made for Christ. From the very beginning, all of creation was structured in just such a way that its ultimate meaning is found in Jesus Christ, the One in whom all things hold together. He is not only our Redeemer. He is the foundation of creation itself. Your purpose for us, for humanity, for creation was and is and has always been centered in Jesus Christ. He is not the afterthought to our sin. He is the very reason for our existence. His incarnation —His coming here and becoming human— was not just a rescue plan; it was the fulfillment, Father, of Your eternal intention for union with us. From the beginning, You created us in Christ and for Christ. And so, our purpose and our identity is only understood in relation to Him. Our identity is not any of the things we are being told it is. We were always meant to be in Christ. To be human means to exist in Christ. He is the foundation of our identity and our purpose. And as it is true of Christ, we, too, Father, get to respond to You, reflect You, share in You, live with You in freedom, not in robotic obedience. Our very being is characterized by freedom, because it is grounded in Your free grace. And our freedom is not autonomy; it is the freedom to live in loving response to You. Our purpose is not self-definition; it is joyful participation in your Love. Our goal in life is not self-discovery; it is Christ-discovery, the one in whom we find our full identity. Father, You did not intend to just make humans; you intended to make us like Your Son. And so this morning, our worship, our love, our obedience are not burdens; they are the very reason we exist. We have been created to freely and joyfully correspond to Your Love. And so, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, February 23, 2025.