Chapter 31 - The Lord's Supper

Chapter 31 helped us better understand “The Lord’s Supper” using 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Mark 8:1-21
Matthew 26:17-30
John 6:25-58
1 Corinthians 11:17-34
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 27:32-56
Luke 22:14-22

Invocation:

“Father, it is humbling to be died for. …” (The Prayers of Peter Marshall)

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 31 was “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” by Isaac Watts. (If you are not familiar with the song, just Google the hymn name and you will get multiple sources to read and/or hear it, as well as its history.)

Benediction:

“Father, let the mystery of your love, as portrayed in the bread and the wine, melt the coldness of my heart and soften the stubbornness of my will. Let it make me wholly yours. Amen.”

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of A. W. Tozer, Julian of Norwich: Showings, Frederick Buechner, Jurgen Moltmann, William Barclay, Thomas Howard and Martin E. Marty. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Then our Lord put a question to me: Are you well satisfied that I suffered for you? …for if I could suffer more, I would.”
• “A sacrament is when something holy happens. …Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, any place, and to anybody. …If we weren’t blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.”
• “The mysticism of the passion (of Christ) …can be summed up by saying that suffering is overcome by suffering, and wounds are healed by wounds. For the suffering in suffering is the lack of love, and the wounds in wounds are the abandonment, and the powerlessness in pain is unbelief. And therefore the suffering of abandonment is overcome by the suffering of love, which is not afraid of what is sick and ugly, but accepts it and takes it to itself in order to heal it.”
• “…the only definite instruction regarding the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is: ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ …The Risen Lord is universally present. He is not present in the sacrament any more than He is present anywhere else. …He is not specially present, but we are made specially aware of His presence. ..But the sacrament is the place where memory, realization, appropriation end in encounter, because we are compelled to become aware of Him there.”
• “…the thing that lies at the root of all life; namely, the principle of exchange. My Life for Yours. …We are receiving life by chewing and swallowing the life of something else. …We are participating in the holy mystery. …This food really is exchanged life; but it is only in the eucharist vision that this becomes apparent. …we have no life except that we owe to the laying down of some other life… .”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 31 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John

Chapter 30 - The Lord's Prayer

Chapter 30 gave us a multi-faceted view of “The Lord’s Prayer” using 7 Bible passages, as follows:

Matthew 26:40-41
John 16:23-24
Luke 11:1-14
Matthew 6:6-15
Luke 18:1-8
John 17
John 12:23-28

Invocation:

“Lord Jesus! Reveal me to the Father. Let His name, His infinite Father-love, the love with which He loved Thee, according to Your prayer, be in me. Then shall I say aright, ‘My Father?’ Then shall I apprehend Your teaching, and the first spontaneous breathing of my heart will be: ‘My Father, Your Name, Your Kingdom, Your Will.’ Amen.” (Andrew Murray in With Christ in the School of Prayer)

Prayer:

“The only lesson that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them was how to pray. And recorded in the Lord’s Prayer is the model which Jesus incorporated to teach them how to have sweet communion with the Father. Let is shape your prayer life, and be the model of communion for you.”

Hymn:

The hymn for Chapter 30 was “The Lord’s Prayer”.

Benediction:

“Father, what can I say in this hour but to cry out as these disciples cried out, Lord, teach me how to pray. Teach me my need. Tear away this veil from my eyes that makes me think I have any adequacy in myself. …Give me rather, this conscious sense of dependence, this awareness that nothing I do will be of any value apart from a dependence upon you. In Jesus name. Amen”
(Ray C. Stedman in Jesus Teaches on Prayer)

Meditation Selections:

The meditation selections included excerpts from the writings of Evelyn Underhill, Georgia Harkness, Oswald Chambers, Frederick Buechner, Andrew Murray and Norval Geldenhuys. (Googling their names may give you some insight into their backgrounds and experiences, if that's of any interest to you.)

Some of the interesting quotes from the meditations included:

• “Every just man, says Osuna, needs the seven things for which this prayer – or this scheme of prayer – asks.”
• “It is not part of the life of a natural man to pray. …Prayer is the way the life of God (in us) is nourished. …We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God himself.”
• “According to Jesus, by far the most important thing about praying is to keep at it.”
• “In true worship the Father must be first, must be all. The sooner I learn to forget myself in the desire that He be glorified, the richer will the blessing be that prayer will bring to myself. No one ever loses by what he sacrifices for the Father.”
• “The prayer for bread and pardon must be accompanied by the surrender to live in all things in holy obedience to the Father’s will…”

What do any of these quotes (or any of the meditations in Chapter 30 not quoted) mean to you? Please post your responses to the blog site:
(http://lhcndeeperlifeclass.blogspot.com/).

Thanks for your participation.
John