My favourite hour of the week is any Sunday morning from 10–11 a.m. As a follower of Christ, my entire life is to be a living sacrifice of worship to the King. I believe the greatest service God gives his people toward leading such lives of worship is the specific hour of corporate worship with his people, in a local body of Christ, every Lord’s Day. This hour calls us to remember God’s story and how he has saved us as part of that story. It sets the tone and pattern for the whole of our life in Christ. It also foreshadows the joy of our eternity, the unending Lord’s Day to come.
My church practices a liturgical order of worship, and the rhythm of our service each Sunday morning serves as a rehearsal of the gospel. It is a weekly balm for my soul. I love singing praises to God with his people, I desperately need the confession of sin and assurance of pardon, and I relish hearing God’s word preached. However, if I must select my favourite portion to discuss today, I will choose the element of worship that kicks the whole thing off: the call to worship.
What is a “call to worship?” It is fairly easily defined by its name. Before we join in song together, before the offering is passed, before the Lord’s supper is taken, one of our elders stands before our congregation and calls us to worship. Our worship guide describes the call to worship as the event where “God invites and calls us to worship Him; we respond to his invitation.” This invitation then looks like the pastor expressing God’s call to us through a portion of Scripture and the congregation responding with the same. For example, one week our call to worship looked like the following:
Minister: Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, You are very great! You are clothed with splendour and majesty, covering Yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent.
People: O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom You have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
Minister: When You send forth your Spirit, they are created, and You renew the face of the ground.
People: May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.
Why do I love the call to worship? It’s not merely because it’s the start of the most treasured hour of my week, though that is a crucial reason. It’s also not just because it is another opportunity to recite precious truths from Scripture. I also love what this element of worship displays about God’s character and my purpose as one he made and redeemed. Namely, that he himself initiates worship of himself and that I am made to glorify him and enjoy him.
I remember my initial confusion attending a service where a call to worship was issued. Don’t we all know why we’re here? Why not jump right in? However, over the years, I have come to savour the message that the call to worship points my heart toward each week: I could not hope to worship God without God. Without his pursuit of me, his invitation to me. As I hear the pastor’s words that, again, this Sunday, God has called me to worship, I am struck afresh by the wonder of his salvation. That the holy God who made me and who I spurned in my sin would not only deliver me from the just punishment my sin deserves but would invite me to be his own. That he gave the blood of his Son to resurrect my dead heart. Without the immense grace and mercy of God causing his Spirit to breathe on my dry bones and make them live, I would be a mere spiritual corpse in the pew, unable to worship anyone other than myself.
As God calls me to worship him again, week after week, I am reminded that I only love him because he first loved me. That again this Sunday, though I have failed in countless ways the week before, my hope does not rest on my performance but on God’s inviting me to be a guest at his table.
The first question in the Westminster Confession of Faith asks, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Why do I exist? What is my purpose? The answer is so marvellous and complex that theologians will spend eternity wondering at its implications, and yet so simple that a four-year-old child can answer in faith: “To glorify God.” I am here for his glory. To look at any person made in God’s image is to see clearly that we are made for worship. As Tim Keller memorably states, “You don’t get to decide to worship. Everyone worships something. The only choice you get is what to worship.”
Humanity cannot be removed from worship; the need to worship is at the core of our being. And yet, without God’s mercy, our dead hearts are unable to worship the one we are made for—the one who we are designed to glorify. Again, God’s mercy is incredible in that he would awaken sinners, worshipping everything aside from him, to our true purpose: glorifying him. I am reminded of my chief end as a worshipper of God every Sunday when I am called to worship.
The second portion of the answer to the first question in the Westminster Confession is inseparable from the first. Intertwined with my purpose to glorify God is my purpose to “enjoy him forever.” The worship I get to offer to the living God from a heart awakened by his mercy is not that of a robot programmed to perform his duty, unaffected in my own body and soul. No, because God has made me to glorify him, true joy can be found nowhere else. For no other reason than his own good pleasure, God has delighted to give me ultimate delight in himself. I was made for this. I was redeemed for this.
And I get to remember this call to true delight every week as my pastor issues God’s call to worship. What a beautiful cycle unfolds: God delights to awaken my heart to himself, I delight to worship him for whom my soul was made, he delights in my praises sanctified by his Son, and on it goes into an eternal life of pleasures at his right hand forevermore that I cannot yet imagine but get to taste each Sunday.
There is nothing like Sunday morning with God’s people. We enter in from our various stages of life, perhaps from a week of toil or sickness. Maybe the day before was plagued with discouragement or a deep battle with a certain sin struggle. It is not just in spite of these struggles but because of them that we gather together again. We greet each other, we settle into our seat, and we wait with anticipation. The God of the cosmos has given his Son in order to call his own children to worship, again.
Photo by Nycholas Benaia on Unsplash
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I cannot put into words how deeply this piece has affected me. What a precious reminder! Thank you for this.