The autonomy we think we have.
A call to worship.
Themes
God’s sovereign presence • God for us • Communion • Making room • Autonomy • Freedom • Identity • Dependence
Our humanity is not the raw material for our self-invention.
Scripture reading
Genesis 11:4 John 1:14 Galatians 2:20 2 Corinthians 5:17–18 John 17:21–23
This call to worship1 is about our refusal to be dependent. It’s about our insistence on having our autonomy. And it’s about Christ, who in the middle of this absurdity and delusion, became flesh and assumed the most broken parts of who we are, and recreated us in Him, and restored our true humanity—our true selves, our human lives back in communion with the Father.
Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory... I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me... Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation... All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself... And Jesus prayed this: …that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us...
Prayer
Father in heaven, You are sovereign. And You are present. Not sovereign as in raw detached power. But present as the Father who comes to us in the Son. You have given Yourself in just such a way so that You can be known by us, and supremely so in Jesus Christ. You are God-for-us in Christ. You have entered space and time. You have assumed our nature. You have borne our sorrows and our sins. You are not a remote control God. Your sovereign rule is expressed in self-giving. Your majesty is Your mercy. You are present. Not passively present. Your sovereign presence is always active and always dynamic. Not as an omnipresent force, but as a personal communion always toward us in grace and in real time and in the real spaces of our life, always inviting our participation into Your life. You are always making room for us. And so even our worship here, now, isn’t our making room for You; it isn’t of our own initiative. It begins with Your call to worship, with You, having made room for us. Remove from us, Father, the illusion that we came here this morning by our own merit. We are here because You have called us here. And we are not here to express our best selves. We are here to lose ourselves and to find our lives in Christ. We confess, Father, that any autonomy we think we have, is really just false, is really absurdity, because our freedom— our true human freedom and our true identity— are only possible in relation to You. We are dependent upon You. We are dependent upon Your personal communion with us, upon Your active grace toward us— every moment, every day. Our autonomous self— to whatever extent we think we have that, Father, we confess is not a real self; it is a distortion; it is a fiction. It is delusion. It is, by definition, movement away from You, and therefore, it is movement back toward the nothingness from which we have been created. When we seek to be autonomous, we court our own annihilation, because apart from You— the One who gives us being, the one who gives us our identity— there is only the void. All our attempts to ground our life, our truth, our identity, our gender, our sexuality, our value, apart from You, are doomed to futility, because apart from You, there is only nothing. We are not self-defining. We have never been. Our identity is not discovered within ourselves. Our humanity is not the raw material for our self-invention. Our humanity is assumed, it is healed, and it is sanctified in Christ. We discover who we are only as we are known by Christ. You, Father, have worked Your way to us in Jesus Christ, because we cannot begin with ourselves and work our way to You. Jesus has stepped into our place. He has stepped into our actual human existence, assuming our mind, our will, our decisions, and He has bent them back to You, Father. He does not stand beside us to give us options. He takes our place, lives the faithful human life we fail to live, and includes us in it. So freedom is not choice, but participation in Christ’s freedom. Will is not self-direction, but Christ-directedness. Identity is not self-made, but received in union with Christ. Our personhood arises from Your will, Father, and is redeemed in Your Son, and is sustained in Your Spirit. In the name of Jesus, we no longer ask, “What should I do?” In His name we ask, “What is He doing— and how are we being called into participation with Him?” Amen.
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, May 4, 2025.