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My cover letter in the Worship Script gives some directions for preparation. Then the Announcements video gives additional directions. And finally, the Worship Script takes you step-by-step through refreshing and renewing you and your household’s consecration by the New Covenant in Jesus’ body and blood.
All the way through the Service you’ll notice opportunities and directions for focusing on “us”: The Body of Christ; Jesus’ whole Bride; the worldwide Church. That’s intentional. At the heart of Lord’s Supper abuses over the centuries has been the temptation for twisting the celebration to be for me and Jesus or for me and those in the Body that I like or want to be associated with. Some priests only shared communion with those wealthy-enough to make it worth-their-while, having “lesser clergy” serve the common people. In other generations, Germans were served separately from the Irish who ate and drank apart from the Italians who kept themselves separate from the Spanish and away from the Africans and at a distance from Middle Easterners and far from Far East Asians, etc…
But there’s one loaf and one cup: “One Body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, Who is over all, in all, and living through all.” (Ephesians 4:4-6) So, as you worship and as you – by faith – prepare to eat Jesus’ body and drink Jesus’ blood, allow yourself to miss the others you’re used to seeing around the congregation when you normally eat and drink. Take time to pray for different ones as their faces and names come to your thoughts. Let this “eating and drinking apart” nurture your hunger and thirst for that coming day when we will eat and drink together again, and for that coming day when we will eat and drink with the Lord Jesus Himself and all the saints across time and place who have – with us – trusted and followed God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the holy, holy Holy Spirit, entrusting our lives and those we love (and all the world) to His grace, goodness, and loving plans and purposes.
God loves you, my brothers and sisters in Jesus. That’s why He sent His Son to die on the cross, because He refused to live life without us. It’s been His desire since the Beginning to live life with us, his sons and daughters by faith. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has fulfilled God’s desires by the cross and the empty tomb!
As has become our habit, below is the “Let’s Worship the Lord” button below to access the “One Drive” folder containing our Worship Materials for today. Won’t you print-out enough copies of the Worship Script so that everyone can have one? And then prepare yourselves as you’ve grown used to doing and according to my cover letter that you’ll find there.
I love you in the Lord, my brothers and sisters in Jesus. I am yours in Jesus’
Love,
Pastor Ben Willis
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