Themes
Healing • I will be your God • Children of God • When Christ appears • Freedom • Hope • Heaven • Blessing • New creation
May God’s kingdom come! We sure do want it to come. Because we sure long for our captivity to sin and to decay and to sickness and to pain and to suffering and to mental illness and to cancers and to genetic disorders and to broken organs to be over.
Scripture reading
Leviticus 26:11–13 Titus 2 1 John 3:2 Romans 8:18–21
Healing is heavy on our minds. And maybe rightfully so. For there are many of us who are groaning under the brokenness of our bodies.
Our bodies are not the way they are supposed to be.
It’s an odd reality that we live in. Although our bodies are old and breaking, our hearts are new, and our minds are being made new.
God has removed our hearts of stone and given us new hearts of flesh. He has actually sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, and He has poured his love into them. And, also, our minds, Paul says, are right now being made new.
It’s just these corrupted bodies that He hasn’t yet glorified. And it’s these corrupted bodies that we’ve dragged here1 this morning into this space, and with them, along with our new hearts and our renewed minds, we worship.
In light of this situation, this call to worship is from a prophecy that God himself made and also from a couple of comments from the Apostles Paul and John.
In the book of Leviticus, God himself spoke, and He said the following: I will live among you. I will not avoid you. I will walk among you. I will stroll through your streets. I will be your God; you’ll be My people. I am the Lord your God. And Paul also wrote about this same hope. He wrote the following in a letter to his friend and coworker, Titus: The grace of God has appeared. It brings us salvation. And so we are being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life. And while we take on a God-filled, God-honoring life, we wait for the blessed hope — the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own. John too wrote about this same hope in his letters. He wrote: Dear friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God! But He has not yet shown us what we will be like when Christ appears. But we know that when Christ does appear, we shall be like Him, for we will see Him as He really is. And again, to the Romans, Paul wrote: I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and what’s coming. The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
Prayer
Father in heaven, we know that Jesus Christ is the center of all our hope. And we confess that any hope we might have that has another focus is not essentially a Christian hope. Jesus Himself taught us to pray, “your kingdom come.” And this is still our prayer: Father, may Your Kingdom come! We sure do want it to come. Because we sure long for our captivity to sin and to decay and to sickness and to pain and to suffering and to mental illness and to cancers and to genetic disorders and to broken organs to be over. The heart of this hope — what we truly wish for, what we long for — is the wish of Your Son’s Bride to be with her Bridegroom, face to face. We long for the day, Father, when You will stroll through our streets. When You will live among us. We long for the appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. It is Him that makes heaven… heaven. Heaven would not be heaven without Him. Because He is the fountainhead of all blessings. He is the source of any blessing we enjoy, and every blessing we’ll enjoy in the new creation. He is the light that drives away the darkness He is the life that defeats death. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead. Precisely because He is at the center, because it is He that is the focus, because it is Him that is our source, we will enjoy the blessings that He brings. And we will find ourselves transformed, freed from sin, physically perfected, emotionally healed. We will become like Him! When Christ appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He really is. And then, Father, creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God There will be individual and cosmic transformation and renewal — all because Jesus will have complete primacy. But at this moment, here now, while we’re here in Beaverdam about to worship… because of sin, everything is off; everything has deviated from its intended path. Everything is off-center. But around Jesus, all things will find what they are meant to be. The winter of our discontent will be made into a glorious endless summer. The earth will be cleansed for us — his people. And evil, injustice, and wickedness will finally be destroyed for the renewal of all creation In the name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, Amen.
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians that gathered in Pathway Church, Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, March 6, 2022.