What in the world was God doing?
A call to worship.
Themes
Abraham • Covenant • Divine initiative • Human dependence • Incarnation • Revelation • Forgiveness • Atonement • Reconciliation • Communion with God • Divine love and freedom • Faithfulness of God • Participation in divine life • True humanity in Christ • Mission and vocation • God’s steadfast love and mercy • Union with Christ • Election for the sake of the world
We have come to know that God wills not to be God without us.
Scripture reading
Genesis 12:1–3 Galatians 3:16, 29 2 Corinthians 1:19–20
This call to worship1 answers simply what appears to be a profoundly difficult question: What in the world—literally in the world—has God been doing?
In Genesis, God speaks directly to Abraham and says: Go from your country... to the land I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation... in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed A couple millennium later, the Apostle Paul writes these words in his letters to small groups of believers; The promises were made to Abraham and to his seed... who is Christ. If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. … in Him it has always been “Yes!” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes!” in Christ.
Prayer
Father in Heaven, You have clearly shown us Your character. We really don’t have to wonder what it is You’re doing with us or how it is that You’re doing anything with us at all. Consider Abraham… well, you did consider Abraham. He had no merit, no resume, no record of faithfulness. He had a genealogy— and really nothing else. No virtue. No success. No prior covenant-keeping. You just chose him. And You spoke to him. Oh Father, forgive us— forgive us for wishing it was something more. Because if it were something more, then maybe we could self-justify why it is You love us. But clearly, Your choice to love — to love any one of us — is grounded in only Your own purpose, Your own love. Period. Not in some potential You saw in Abraham… or in us. Not in some piety of Abraham’s… or ours. You chose in freedom, Father. You chose in love. And we confess that we secretly wish it were more. We are so desperate for self-worth. But You haven’t—You never have— acted toward us in response to our actions, or our choices, or our mental or intellectual makeup, or our fondness for You, or whatever it is that we think makes us a little special. Any choice or action or fondness or specialness that we might claim— any of it, all of it— is only, and can only ever be, our response to Your first act of love toward us. You have not willed to live alone, but to create us and then to seek us as others distinct from Yourself upon whom to pour out Your Spirit. And so You moved toward us. We did not move toward You. It has always been unilateral. You chose us. You spoke to us. You bound Yourself to us. You started with a man named Abraham. And it all culminated in the Incarnation when You took on our human flesh. Everything that has unfolded toward us from You has been grounded in Your exuberant, eternal love, and has overflowed in Your redemption of each one of us With Abraham, You began a long patient process of wrestling with us, and preparing us, and teaching us what we would have never, ever have come to learn on our own— through a process called Covenent— in which we came to know who You truly are, and so have also come to know ourselves as we truly are. We have come to know that You are not a projection of our fears or our ideals. You are not a set of abstract attributes. You are the one who speaks and acts and keeps. We have come to know that You are merciful and abounding in steadfast love. We have come to know that You are faithful even when we are faithless. That Your love is not conditioned on our faithfulness. That You endure with us, You carry us, You uphold us, not because we deserve it, but because You are who You are. We have come to know that You desire communion, not domination. That You desire fellowship and friendship with us. That You will not to be God without us. That You will to be God for us, and with us, and in us. We have come to know that Your ultimate aim is our participation in Your divine life. We have come to know that our faith is a response, —not a cause— of Your grace. That repentance is possible because You hold the relationship steady even when we fail and fail again and keep failing. We have come to know what sin really is— it’s a rupture in our relationship with You. It’s the rejection of Your love. It’s the refusal of communion with You. It’s personal. It’s relational. And so we need reconciliation, not just acquittal. We have come to know what forgiveness truly costs. That You will not ignore sin, but that You will deal with it at its root. That atonement is costly, and that You provide the sacrifice nonetheless. We have come to know how to hope in suffering, and in exile, and in loss. That the story of Your people —that our story— is a story of wilderness, and war, and exile, and return. And that through all such things, You keep whispering to us: “I am still your God.” We have come to know that Your goal, Father, is the renewal of all things. That nobody and nothing is left out. That You have not established some narrow contract with a special group of people, but that through such people, light will shine in all places, and all of creation will be renewed. That we have been elected not for privilege, but for a mission— the mission that the world is being redeemed, not discarded. And we have come to know what it means to be truly human. That we can only be truly human in Christ. That we are dependent, not diminished. That we are finite, but made for eternal glory. That we are broken, but being made whole. That we are sons and daughters who belong to You through the Son in the Spirit. Amen.
1
This call to worship was given to the small assembly of Christians who gathered at Pathway Church in Beaverdam, Michigan, on Sunday, June 1, 2025.