How to Prepare Your Heart for Communion (Lamentations 3) clip

Communion invites believers to remember what Jesus has done, examine their hearts, and proclaim His death until He comes again. This short communion meditation from Rockwell Church offers Scripture, reflection, and guided personal prayer to help you prepare your heart for the Lord’s Supper.

Drawing from Lamentations 3 and 1 Corinthians 11, Pastor Chris Teien explains why we can wait on the Lord, place our hope in Him, examine our ways, and return to Him. The guided prayer provides time to confess sin, thank God for His faithfulness, surrender anxiety, seek healing in relationships, and consider whether our priorities are pleasing to Him.

The Lord’s Supper is ordinarily shared with other believers when the church gathers. This recording can help you prepare your heart for communion or guide your personal Scripture reading, reflection, and prayer.

SCRIPTURE

Lamentations 3:24-25, 40-41
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Read the companion article and watch the video:
https://christeien.com/?p=250235

Transcript available at:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2285086/episodes/19773684

I hope this message helps you understand and apply God’s Word. Find sermon transcripts at Well.faith, learn more at ChrisTeien.com, or come visit us at Rockwell Church in Virginia, Minnesota. If this message encouraged you, I’d love to hear from you at wellfaith24@gmail.com.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Chris T 0:21

Alright, so in Lamentations, Jeremiah writes, I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for him. Sometimes we're running ahead of God. Sometimes we need to wait. Sometimes communion is the perfect time for us to evaluate our life and say, God, I'm not as tight with you as I need to be. I need to wait on you to answer my prayer. I need to wait on you for your direction. I need to wait and follow you and spend time with you. The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, the one who seeks him. And maybe today is a day we recommit ourselves to place our hope in Jesus, to seek him for everything that we need and for everything that we desire. Let us examine our ways and test them. Let us return to the Lord. You know, communion is a time to examine our hearts and where we are with Christ. Maybe it's a time for us to receive Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. I think I know almost all of you, and I assume that all of you have received Christ into your life because we're all sinners in need of salvation. And I came to Christ by praying something like, Lord Jesus, I am a sinner in need of salvation. I know you died on the cross and rose again for my sin. Please forgive me and to come into my life and save me. I want to follow you. And we make a commitment to turn from sin, to repent, and to follow Jesus. And that brings a new life in us. We're born again. The Bible says we become a new creation, we receive the Holy Spirit. We're able to be used by God and have a guarantee of answered prayer and of heaven, but to examine our ways and return to the Lord. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven. We praise him. And communion is a great time. If we've confessed any known sin, for us then to praise him and thank him for what he's been doing, for what he is doing. So Paul wrote, I received from the Lord what I passed on to you. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So I'm going to take the bread section first, but Lord may pray. Jesus, I thank you that you lived among us and you experienced all the difficult stuff and all the trash in the world, and also walked tightly with the Heavenly Father like we're supposed to. You are a man of prayer, often getting up early to pray, often leaving everyone to go pray as an example for us, and you prayed for us to be faithful, to make disciples. Jesus, we thank you that you were willing to suffer the shame on the cross, to be pierced for our transgressions, to give your body so that we wouldn't have to. It was a perfect sacrifice. Thank you, Jesus. We take the bread and we eat. Before we take the cup, which represents Jesus' blood being shed on the cross, because without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sin, let me just maybe lead you into prayer. Lord Jesus, I thank you for this time. Right now I confess any any sin that the Holy Spirit brings to mind right now in this place. Lord, you know I'm guilty of fill in the blank. Lord, you know my my thoughts or my motivations or my aspirations aren't pleasing and help me to change that, name what it is in your prayer. Lord help me to trust you more about the things that I'm anxious about. Fill in the blank, whatever that is. Lord, forgive me for anger or bitterness or backbiting or thinking poorly or talking badly about someone. Maybe you name who that is. Help me to restore that relationship. Lord, forgive me for not prioritizing you first with my time and spending time in your word, or fill in the blank, or with my resources, spending them unwisely, or keeping them all for myself, not giving any back to you as a form of worship through offering, or fill in the blank, whatever it is. Lord, forgive me for the lie that I told about. Or Holy Spirit, bring to mind whatever else that's in the way of me being blessed and in this relationship, of me being used so that I powerfully can be used to complete your plan and do your will with the days and the resources you give me. Lord, I praise you for fill in the blank. You're holy and awesome and pure and perfect. And I delight in you. Or whatever else you want to say. Lord, I am so thankful for fill in that blank. I can't believe how you answered prayer in that way. Or how thankful I am that you're gonna get me through this really hard, difficult time. I don't even know how it's gonna turn out. But I trust you. And all of that, Jesus, we thank you. We're gonna take and drink this cup. But part of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ means that you don't just say the Lord's prayer over and over again, but you have a personal, you you hear from God, usually from the pages of the Bible, and you talk back to him as you pray personally to him. We're gonna take this cup and we're gonna drink. Because we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.