The shepherd doesn’t wait for the sheep to come home before calling it his own. When it disappears into the thicket, when it wanders, it’s still his. It’s claimed. It’s named. It’s still precious to him. He doesn’t write it off as a loss. He goes after it. He searches until he finds what is his.
Maybe we come to worship seeking God. Maybe we come hungry, distracted, weary, hopeful, or unsure why we came at all. But our seeking is never the first movement. God has already come toward us. In Jesus Christ, He has entered the country where we are lost and come looking for us.
God seeks us!
Our worship can be misconstrued as ascent. This call to worship1 declares God’s descent—His relentless coming after us.
We’re all too familiar with wandering. We know the ache of shame that drives us into hiding, the fear that whispers we are unwanted, the suspicion that our lostness has made us unlovable. We know what it is to run, to hide, to wonder if God has given up.
In all of that, Jesus doesn’t wait for us to find our way back. He enters the thicket. He steps into our darkness. The eternal Son takes our humanity into union with Himself, bears our suffering, descends into our death, and carries us through His death, resurrection, and ascension, all the way home to the Father. In Jesus, the love of the Father is not a theory. It’s not a theological concept. It is a rescue. It is a homecoming. We discover just how deeply the Father loves us.
The Holy Spirit then does what we cannot: He opens our hearts to the home Jesus has made for us with the Father. He teaches us to trust what we can’t see, to believe that the Father’s love is for us, not just for the worthy or the strong. He gives us the courage to speak the impossible word: Father. And when our prayers falter—when they are tangled, half-formed, or lost in silence—Jesus hears them, takes them into His own perfect prayer, and brings them before the Father as His own.
From within that love, something shifts in us. Our eyes stop looking inward and start turning outward. We see the neighbor who has vanished, the friend whose shame has driven them underground, the person who is suffering whom we’ve avoided because their pain unsettles us. Christ doesn’t let us remain spectators. He draws us into His own love for them. And we go, not as rescuers, but as friends who have been found, carried, and welcomed home ourselves.
And, in the end, the Shepherd’s joy doesn’t remain just His alone. It becomes ours. His compassion doesn’t remain just an idea we hold on to. It begins to take shape in our life together.
So, let’s receive the love that’s come searching for us. And when we do, we’ll open our hearts to those Christ loves and calls us to love, too.
Themes
Divine pursuit • Reconciliation • Homecoming • Adoption • Christ’s sonship • Communion with God • Mission • Compassion • Humility • Grace • Worship • Christ’s intercession • Joy
If we want to know whether God loves us, we need only see Jesus coming after us.
Scripture reading
Luke 15:4–6 Psalm 139:7–10 2 Corinthians 5:18–20
The historian Luke recorded these words of Jesus: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.” King David penned these lyrics: Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast. Paul wrote this in a letter to the church in Corinth: God, through Christ, reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ; God is making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
Prayer
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, We’re all here again this morning. And it’s because You first came looking for us. We don’t have to persuade You toward us with our intensity or our sincerity. In Jesus Christ, You couldn’t possibly get any closer. When we wander, You don’t abandon us. When we hide, You call our names. When we can’t find our way home, You come find us. No matter how estranged from You we become, it never means that You become estranged from us. Father, we praise You for the love that refuses to let us go. If we want to know whether You love us, all we need do is see Jesus coming after us Lord Jesus Christ, we praise You because You didn’t love us from a distance. You came down into our darkness. You took our humanity into union with yourself. And then You entered our fear, our shame, our sorrow, and our death. You carried our lost humanity upon Your shoulders, and in Your death and resurrection and ascension you brought us home to the Father. Holy Spirit, open our hearts again today to the joy of this good news. Silence all the voices that tell us we are forgotten, or that we are unwanted, or that we are beyond the reach of grace. We don’t have to manufacture our sonship! As the Spirit of adoption, You draw us into Christ’s sonship. And there You enable us to respond from within that communion with these words, “Abba, Father.” Turn our eyes away from ourselves this morning; turn them toward Christ. Draw us into His communion with the Father. Draw us also into His love for the world and into the Son’s mission to the world. Give us the heart of the Shepherd for those who are wandering. Give us the compassion of Christ for those who are suffering. Give us the courage to enter the places where others are afraid to go. Keep us from heroic activism. We can only enter such places because Jesus has already gone there. Keep us from looking down upon anyone. Remind us that we seek only because we ourselves have been sought; we love only because we have been loved; we forgive only because we have been forgiven. There is no spiritual superiority. We haven’t succeeded where others have failed. We are only in the lives of others because we live entirely by Your grace. Make us a people of reconciliation. Make this church a place where the lonely are welcomed, where the wounded are cared for, where the ashamed find grace, where the lost hear the joyful news that the Shepherd has come looking for them. So gather us now around Jesus Christ. In Him, you, God, have come to humanity, and in Him, humanity is brought to You. Our faltering worship is brought into His worship. Our feeble faith is brought into His faithfulness. Our prayers are brought into His intercession. Receive our worship. Fill us with Your joy. And send us again into the world as witnesses to Your reconciling love. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Good Shepherd, Amen.
Go deeper.
A call to worship for the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church in Beaverdam, Michigan, on October 4, 2026.