SELF-EXAMINATION

I Was Just Thinking About – SELF-EVALUATION.
There are different approaches within the Protestant Church for observing The Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The passage that is referred to as The Institution of the Lord’s Supper is I Corinthians 11:23-29, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: that 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 broken 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 as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes."
The frequency of this observance varies. Some churches do it quarterly, others monthly, and some each week. I often have wondered about the placement of the Lord’s Supper in a Worship Service. Why is it always at the end of the Service? Is it a ritual that has been adopted along the way? What if the entire Service of Worship focused on the Communion Table, usually with the inscription: “In Remembrance Of Me”? What if the theme of the Worship Service was, in the words of commentator Alfred Plummer: “The Lord's Supper perpetually calls to mind the redemption by Christ from the bondage of sin, as the Passover recalled the redemption from the bondage of Egypt - not just a memorial of my death but the remembrance of all that I have done, and all that I am to you”?
And then, I Corinthians 11:28-29 states the reason for self-evaluation: “Each one must examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. As part of a personal self-examination, my heart and mind are drawn to words of a Hymn written in 1758. Robert Robinson wrote the words to: Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing. The Music, Nettleton, of John Wyeth was added for so the words would be sung. As and when one engages in self-evaluation, one stanza encapsulates some context for us:
O to grace how great a debtor

Daily I’m constrained to be!

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,

Bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,

Prone to leave the God I love;

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,

Seal it for Thy courts above.
The self-examination should meaningfully include, as a starting point, I John 1:6-10, and Ephesians 1:4-9. May the Lord lead and guide in your life as you seek and desire to be more like The Savior.
Prayerfully – Consider these things with me!