His worship is our worship.
A call to worship.
Themes
Our great high priest • Life. Ministry • Worship • Communion • Trinity • Image • Baptism • Sacrifice • The Lord’s table
Jesus takes all of our brokenness — our broken lives, our half-hearted prayers, our out-of-tune-praise — and He makes them holy.
Scripture reading
Hebrews 3:1 Hebrews 7:26 Hebrews 2:12 Hebrews 8:2
This call to worship1 is from the writer of the book of Hebrews. He writes the following:
Brothers and sisters, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our high priest. Such a high priest truly meets our need — one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. He is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. In fact, He says to God, “I will declare Your name to My brothers and sisters; in the midst of the assembly I will sing Your praises.” We have just such a high priest, one who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord.
Enjoy this call to worship devotionally; change the plural pronouns (we, us) to personal ones (I, me).
Prayer
Father in Heaven, clear whatever is in our way this morning that’s keeping our thoughts from being fixed on Jesus, who is our high priest — who as our priest, does for us what we haven’t always been successful at doing on our own. He offers to You all glory and praise that we haven’t always offered. He glorifies You with a perfect life of love and obedience, a life we’ve failed to live. He lives as Your true servant, carrying out Your ministry, when we haven’t done so. And so we couldn’t be more thankful that His life, lived before You is our life lived before You. His life of service to You, is our life of service. His sanctified, holy life is our sanctified life. Our lives are completely caught up in His life. Such that all that we do, Father, we do with Him in His work and ministry for you. And so our intercession for others — our prayers for others — they are the echo of His intercession in heaven. All of our ministry, Father, is really a participation in His ministry. Any mission we have, any mission we are on, it is really a gift that You have given to us — a gift of participation in His mission, the mission that You have given Him to do. He takes all of our brokenness — our broken lives, our half-hearted prayers, our out-of-tune-praise — and He makes them holy; and He offers them to you. He is the One True Worshiper, leading worship in the midst of a great assembly. He is the great worship leader who tunes our hearts to sing Your praise. He is the agent of all true worship; His life and worship is our life and worship, such that all the worship we bring to You, Father, is really us participating in His perfect communion with You. In the end, then, our worship is really Your gift to us, a gift of participating in Your incarnate Son’s communion with You His communion with You is perfect and beautiful and amazing. And we get to be with Him in that communion with You. He lifts us up into His triune life with You. And so we get to have — and we get to enjoy — wonderful communion with You, because… well… because He does. And He takes us with Him. As we worship together this morning, in a shared communion with each other, and in communion with You, we get to experience Your great, and amazing, and incomprehensible love. And along with all the saints at Pathway and all the saints worshiping You across this planet, and all the saints across the ages — with the incarnate human Jesus as our worship leader — may we comprehend Your love enough to enable Your image to be renewed in each of us. In the name of Christ whose baptism is our baptism, set forth in our water baptism; whose sacrifice is our sacrifice, set forth at the Lord’s Table that’s set here for us this morning; whose worship is our worship, set forth in the worship and prayers we bring to You this morning; 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 that 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 Christmas Sunday, January 2, 2022