Preparing our Congregations for the Lord’s Supper

The average evangelical church probably celebrates the Eucharist four times a year.  This is unfortunate.  What is even worse is that during these rare times when communion is actually received, most congregants do not spend any time preparing for it!  If you are a pastor, then it is your responsibility to foster self-examination in your congregants.

To help you in this task, consider these questions originally posted in the Georgia Baptist Christian Index during the mid-1800s.  During your preaching before the Supper, plea with your congregation, that they would consider questions such as these.

1. In the interval since last partaking of the Lord’s Supper, what progress have you been making in your Christian life in proportion to the blessings of God you enjoy?  Are you really gaining ground?

2. Is your soul actually strengthened and refreshed?

3. Are your corruptions growing weaker, and your graces growing stronger?

4. Are you able more successfully to strive against your besetting sin?

5. Is your love for the Savior deepening in your heart, and more influential in your life?

6. Is your conformity to His image more distinctly visible to the eye, both of God and man?

7. Are you advancing in love and charity to all men?

8.  Do you find that since your last commemoration of this feast of love, you have become so much more full of the Holy Spirit, that you cannot only freely forgive from your heart the most unprovoked and aggravated injuries and insults, but you delight in pouring out fervent prayer on behalf of your bitterest enemy and are ready to minister to his temporal and eternal welfare?

9. Have you felt a warmer interest in the welfare of all who come under your influence?

. . .

17. Since I last partook of the Lord’s Supper, have I more faithfully followed the promptings of the Holy Spirit; have I listened more teachably to the slightest whisperings of His voice; have I cherished more carefully His sanctifying influences; have I guarded more jealously against the indulgence of any thought or desire that would grieve Him, or cause Him to have to withdraw, even for a season, the manifestations of His love and the communications of His grace?

18. Have I a sweeter sense of my Redeemer’s love?

19. Do I find communion with Him a foretaste of heaven?

20. Do I look forward with increasing desire for the day when I shall sit down with Him at the marriage supper of the Lamb?

. . .