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It’s More Than a Simple Church Ritual
When we come to the Lord’s table, we often spend little time in spiritual preparation to meet with our Lord. But this is His table, and He has offered to each of us, regardless of our sins and failures, the blessing to come and dine with Him. Remember His words to His disciples?
Then He said to them, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15).
With “fervent desire I have desired.” Can you feel the intensity of His words? This is something Jesus was passionate about, something that He truly wanted to do. And it involved each of us.
Spiritual Preparation for the Invite
In the Philadelphia church age (Rev. 3:7-13) where the Lord only had good things to say about the church, just a few generations ago, the church took the Lord’s Supper much more seriously than we do today. In fact, they had printed prayers and a devotional study they spent the week going through to make sure they were not taking this in an “unworthy manner” (1 Cor. 11:29). For example, let me give you the text for just Saturday, the day of Self-Surrender to the Lord.
My Father, You call me to Your table to participate by faith anew in the sacrifice of Your Son: I cry to You, in turn, to make me partaker of the power, the inclination, and the spirit of His self-sacrifice, that I, in fellowship with Him, may in like manner offer myself up to You. “Through the Eternal Spirit, He offered Himself up to God.” My God, let the same Spirit make me also, on my part, a complete offering to You.
My Father, grant unto me to see that self-offering constitutes the essence and the worth of His sacrifice. Let the surrender of my feeling and will to the will of God be the mark of my piety. Yes, Lord, let me live as one who offers himself wholly to the desire of God and man to further Your honor and their salvation.
My Father, at the Supper I desire truly to present myself as a living, a holy sacrifice, well-pleasing, to God—an offering that shall be wholly consumed.
For this end, I entreat You for grace to prepare myself for this sacrifice, as Your Son prepared Himself for the sacrifice on Golgotha by saying in Gethsemane: “Not My will, but Yours be done.” So would I offer myself as a sacrifice to You with the complete surrender of my will: may Your will be all in all to me, O my God. Lord enable me to say in truth: “I live only to do the will of God.” In the strength of Jesus Christ, who lives in me and in whom I offer myself to You, I venture to make His language my own: “I come to do Your will, O God!”
Lord, prepare me also to say: I desire here before You to renounce every known and unknown sin. All self-seeking and self-will I desire to abandon before You. I take Jesus Christ as my holiness, my strength, my victory; and in virtue of the new nature which He has prepared for me, I say: Father, no more sin, but Your will only— Your will wholly, Your will always and in all.
Lord Jesus, who did give Himself for me, I give myself to You. Yes, Lord, in this very moment, where I in solitude am this morning preparing myself for the Supper, I say before heaven and earth: Jesus, Son of God, I will give myself wholly to You, to live now and henceforth only for You. Lord Jesus, I do this now. And as one who is offered to the Father and to You, I will go to the Supper table, there to be confirmed in the faith and confession; I am no longer my own: I have been bought with a high price: I will glorify God in my body and my spirit, which are God’s.
Are you humbled? Convicted? Maybe you should be. I know I am when I read this and the rest of what they prayed during their week of preparation for the invite.
Take some time and read through the days of prep the church of a time gone by spent preparing themselves to meet with the Lord. And see, like me, if it doesn’t give you a deeper view of what this Lord’s Supper is all about.
