Our worship service is a dialogue between God and us. In our previous post we looked at how God speaks to us by his Word in Scripture and moves upon us by his Holy Spirit in inwardly apply the grace of the gospel. He engages us not just in our minds, but in all of our senses to confirm that we are not our own, but we belong to Him and that He is for us. And we are reoriented to see our lives in light of God’s redeeming work.

Worship is not our idea. Worship is not us trying to get God’s attention by how well we sing, how perfectly we’ve lived, how well we listen to the sermon, or how much we give. Worship is at God’s invitation, not our initiative. That’s why all of our worship is done according to his instruction and why he gets the first word: the Call to Worship.

This is more than just an arbitrary starting point. It has a deep theological significance. After all, if we were simply seeking to start an event or program we could begin with us singing a song, someone simply saying “let’s begin now,” or any number of ways. But in the Call to Worship, we hear God beckon to us, by grace, to come to Him as his redeemed and renewed community

Our Call to Worship is always rooted in Scripture. It’s here that we become more than a group of people in the same room who happen to be doing similar things. When God calls to us we are gathered as one to marvel at the gospel and experience his grace.

The Call to Worship points to the reality of God who called all things into being by his word, who in Christ declares the ungodly righteous apart from anything they’ve done or not done, who continues to speak into our world of death calling forth life. God has the first word in worship because he truly has the first word in everything. Grace goes first, always.

So let’s open our ears to hear his call. Let’s open our hands to let go of the worst and the best we have to offer—empty hands prepared to receive grace sufficient for us.

Come and worship.

Worship as Dialogue: The Call to Worship