When we come to commune with the Lord here, we are coming as we are. We have confessed all known sin at the beginning of the service, but as we come here to fellowship with the Lord, we still have all our difficulties, all our sorrows, all our troubles, and all our perplexities. In other words, when we sit down to commune, we are not doing so as somebody else. We were summoned to this Table, and we are the ones who show up.
The cancer is still there. The financial troubles weigh on you. A loved one is still walking far from Christ. You do not know how to talk to a complicated teen-aged son or daughter, and you know that you need to talk to them. Your studies overwhelm you. And yet here you are.
The thing we must recognize is that when we commune with the Lord Jesus, we are communing with someone who is at home in our difficulties. We feel like our perplexities are a vast mountain range where someone abandoned us in the middle of the night. We are lost and do not know what to do. And then we feel like we have the additional complication of communing with Jesus in a right-hearted spiritual way—just one more thing that we don’t know how to do.
But Jesus is a mountain-dweller. He lives in these hills. He knows the way. He traces all the paths, and guides you in them. Not only does He prepare a Table for you in the presence of your enemies, He prepares a Table for you in your canyons and crevices.
So do not think of communing with Christ as one more thing that you don’t know how to do. Think of it as communing with your guide and escort, one who not only knows every canyon in these hills, but every blade of grass in these hills. Why would you not want to talk with the one who is leading you out?
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.