03: How to Resist Temptation

Wow, human people.

Thanks so much for joining us this morning.

It is so great to be back together again here in this space.

This is only our second time gathering together here as a church.

And yeah, it's pretty crazy.

I get to take my mask off, and it feels incredible.

So I'm sorry for all of your ears that start to hurt right here.

But thanks so much for joining, for registering, for signing up.

This is one of those times where like everything is weird.

So we're sitting with masks on in church.

You all get an exit row this morning because the pews are so far apart.

As uh it seems as though uh terrible events just keep getting added and and we keep learning new names that are uh being added to a list.

Uh Rachard Brooks this past weekend, um, and the the heartbreak of the type of moment that we find ourselves in uh in the history of our nation that we find ourselves in.

Uh so with that before we begin, I wanted to read a passage of scripture and pray uh for our country um and uh for the injustice that we see.

This is from Isaiah chapter 1, verses 16.

Isaiah 1:16

It says, and this is Isaiah speaking to Judah and Jerusalem, and he's kind of rebuking them.

He says, Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.

And then he says this Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.

For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, justice comes from you.

And let us remember this morning the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you have accomplished your justice on the cross, that our ultimate hope for justice in the world comes from Jesus, you being our King, the King over our hearts and the King over the world.

There is not one square inch in all of creation over which you don't claim mine.

Father, we pray that that reality, uh you would hasten the day when we can walk in that, uh, not just by faith, but by sight.

We pray that you would strengthen our hearts now to walk in it by sight.

Lord, we excuse me, by faith.

Lord, we pray that uh uh we would remember that you are the God, that when you call us to reason with you, you promise that you will make our sins white as snow.

Father, we pray that you would work that in our hearts today by your spirit and by your word and by our assembling together to worship you.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and read today's scripture for uh or read the scripture for today.

I forget the I forgot the order.

I had you sit down, but we should stand again for the reading of the word of the Lord.

This is James 1, verses 12 through 18.

James 1:12–18

It says, Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial.

For when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

All right, well, welcome.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Uh there are two ways that you can get connected here at Redemption Church.

We gather large on Sunday mornings, which we actually do now, and we gather small in each other's homes throughout the week in things called redemption groups, which we also can do now.

Uh this has been so crazy to not be able to get together.

Um today we're going to get to do something uh which is wonderful and such a part of the church.

Now that we're assembled together, we are in the context in which we'll take communion together.

Uh we haven't done that since we've been just live streaming.

Uh, but together we we take communion as we're assembled.

And uh communion by its very name, we see that it this is to be taken place in the assembly of the church, and so what a joy that we'll get to uh partake of that today.

Uh hopefully you got your your pre-packaged communion cups, very holy.

Uh you can tell our denominational affiliation or lack thereof by our communion cups this morning.

You can get those on Amazon, by the way, if you want to play at home.

Um this uh a couple of announcements before we get started.

VBS, uh this year for Vacation Bible School, we're not able to host in person.

Uh, but Julie, our kids director, want to wave.

There's Julie.

Uh woo! Yeah.

Uh has uh partnered with some other churches that have put together a five-day-long online like course with crafts, and it's an hour each day, and there's crafts associated.

So if you're looking for a way to keep your kid entertained um and inform them about scripture and the gospel, uh you can sign up on our website to do that, uh, as well as in our app.

Um also, next week we'll need to continue registering for church.

But since we filled up so quickly on this kind of test run week, next week we're going to be offering two services.

So we'll have a 9.30 a.m.

and an 11 a.m.

So if you're watching from home uh and you're like, hey, that looks pretty fun, I'd like to be there, you will be able to be, uh likely, uh, at either the 9.30 a.m.

or the 11:30 a.m.

or excuse me, or the 11 a.m.

Uh, but for today, church is very exclusive.

Um, you guys got the hot ticket, so congratulations uh for acting fast.

All right.

Let's go ahead and jump into today's text.

Um there's this phrase that's kind of common in Puritan literature, um, where they talk about besetting sins.

And a besetting sin is something that you may have been trying for years to overcome in your life.

Uh, and I think it's uh one of the most discouraging experiences of the Christian life is the experience of besetting sins.

And we develop all kinds of language in order to understand them or justify them, perhaps.

Um, you know, in church culture, the Enneagram is really big.

Um the Enneagram is something that the Desert Fathers invented.

Uh it's kind of a joke that I have where if you don't know where something came from in Christianity, you just say the Desert Fathers invented it.

Um and then everybody's like, oh, the Desert Fathers.

Interesting, this must be pretty cool.

So we uh uh but that can become a way where we say, look, it doesn't really matter, I don't really need to change because this is just my personality.

Sure, I lash out at people, but I'm just a straight shooter.

Sure, I don't engage with people, but I'm just amicable.

You know, we develop these ways of talking about besetting sins so that we just ignore them and they remain parts of our lives.

We just sort of resign ourselves to these sins that are so constant.

And we can find ourselves in our Christian lives just going on this roller coaster ride of our own weaknesses, getting tossed about with situations that we don't feel like we can engage in, and so we ignore these parts of our life, uh, or we can't resist engaging in anger and out of places of pain in our hearts.

Uh, and so we seem to leave a trail of chaos wherever we go.

And these patterns, if we look at our lives, are repeating themselves.

This is a symptom of what the Puritans called a besetting sin, something that's deeply a part of us that we would like to just resign ourselves to.

On this roller coaster of weakness, it starts to lead to this question of am I even saved?

Is there it has is the Holy Spirit actually working in me?

Can I understand that I have any confidence of my own salvation in Christ?

And then that type of thinking, uh, it causes us to kind of ignore the reality of the sin in our hearts, but then just try and mitigate the appearance of that sin in our lives.

Now that starts to make church a really scary place.

Because here we talk about sins by name and things come up, then all of a sudden church starts to feel like the last place you could ever legitimately be yourself, legitimately face the reality of what's taking place in your own heart, because the last thing you would want to do is be exposed.

Because if there's a sin that you just can't conquer, and then you find that you just need to resign yourself to it in order to get by, then how scary is the place that's calling out those sins by name.

So we distance ourselves from community, we live in fear, and our relationship with God becomes disjointed because of these besetting sins in our life and our reaction to them.

This morning, as we follow the texts of the book of James, I want to invite you into these besetting sins in your life.

I want you to consider the patterns that might have been around that you may have just considered part of your character or part of who you are, the way that you view the world.

I want to invite you into those things to no longer resign yourself to them, but to re-engage with the battle against sin in hope.

James describes how we do that, and he gives us three points.

So that's the three points for our sermon today.

Uh the first one is be steadfast.

Be steadfast.

The second one is locate your sin.

I bet, by the way, that's gonna be the most helpful one.

And the third one is renew your desires, which is both the outcome that we're aiming for in combating our sin and the means of combating our sin.

So be steadfast, locate your sin, and renew your desires.

Let's go ahead and jump in.

James 112.

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

Okay, so the first ingredient that James shows us is to remain steadfast.

And he motivates us to remain steadfast with this promise of the crown of life.

It's a promise from God that will receive the crown of life for those who love him.

Now, this is not a crown like you give a king, like King Friday or Prince Tuesday.

That's from Daniel Tiger.

You can tell the age of my son.

Uh but this is a cre this is a victory wreath.

So this is something that you would receive if you had won a race, if you were an athlete and won a race.

And so what's being said here, uh, what James is saying here is this is the crown that's promised for your steadfastness that you'll receive over a lifetime of steadfastness.

At the end of the race, you receive this crown.

Now, many of you, when I said steadfastness, you thought, okay, well, I'm out.

Uh how do you combat sin?

Well, you be steadfast in the face of sin.

I'm out.

Anybody know the reference?

Nope, not a lot of Seinfeld fans.

Okay.

The uh uh so remain steadfast in the face of sin.

Uh okay, well, I can think of these besetting sins in my life, so I know that I'm not remaining steadfast in the face of sin.

But look at what the reward is.

The reward is for steadfastness over a lifetime.

So here's the question: when do you start being steadfast in the face of sin?

Right now.

You can look back in your life and think, I haven't been steadfast.

Okay, well, start.

Start being steadfast in the face of sin right now.

This is something where you can just do it.

You can just start doing it.

And you can even think, you know what?

When this sin comes up, that's been a besetting sin in my life, I'm gonna commit myself to start being steadfast in the face of that sin.

And you know what?

Be steadfast in the face of it.

Even commit, like right now, think I'm gonna be steadfast in the face of this sin even badly.

I'm gonna do a bad job of being steadfast in the face of this sin.

Think of it like this I've been approaching this sin with the same strategies over and over again in my life, and it's not working.

So I might as well not try and be steadfast until I can get that strategy worked out where I'm actually able to fight this particular sin in my life.

Well, I want to encourage you, just start fighting.

Continue with a full heart towards the bad strategy that you're working out.

You know, if you uh think of it like repentance or confession.

Sometimes it works best where you just repent and you just confess, and then all of a sudden you'll find now I'm in over my head.

You know what?

I said it, it's out there, and now I don't really know how to navigate in this relationship anymore.

And then you're gonna have to trust God to work with you to just navigate through that relationship.

So, in encouraging you towards steadfastness, what I what I want you to hear is, all right, you know what, in fighting this sin, I'm just gonna go ahead and get in over my head.

I'm I'm gonna start, I'm gonna make steadfastness a practice that I will resort to for the rest of my life.

And at the end of that, you receive the crown of life.

Don't hear steadfastness and think, well, that's not a part of me.

It obviously hasn't been a part of me because I've resigned to this sin so often.

Be steadfast.

Start now.

Even be steadfast badly.

Now, in order to be steadfast in a church context where it's not scary, uh, and it'll still be scary, but where it's not prohibitive, where you're hiding from the sins that have been besetting sins in your life, we need to create a type of church culture which actually supports steadfastness against sin rather than hiding our sins from each other.

Now, Ray Yortland, in his this tiny little green book called The Gospel, uh, which can you, that's bold, right?

You wrote a book, what's the name of your book?

The Gospel.

Uh, but it's about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It's about it, it isn't it.

And he's uh describes this equation, this is the second time referencing an equation from one of his books, uh, of the church culture that allows for steadfastness to continue.

And he says it's three ingredients it's the gospel plus safety plus time.

That's what we need to have with each other.

The gospel plus safety plus time.

So the gospel.

What he means is multiple exposures to the happy news of the gospel from one end of the Bible to the other.

In order to be steadfastness, that's what you need.

You need multiple exposures constantly to the happy news of the gospel.

In order to be steadfastness, you need to be hearing Jesus paid for this.

Remember, he really died on the cross, he really came back to life, that really covers my sin.

I'm safe and secure in him.

You have to know that.

And you have to be able to see it throughout the whole narrative of scripture, that it's all pointing towards this redemption that has been truly accomplished in Christ.

You've got to hear it repeatedly because you'll forget, and so you have to hear it again.

That's why we have news in the church, but our news is really old news.

It's like 2,000-year-old news.

But we keep saying it over and over again because we keep forgetting.

You need to remember the gospel.

The next is safety, and that's the safety of non-accusing sympathy so that you can admit your problems honestly.

Kyle Boyd, who preached similarly to this a couple weeks ago, one of our elders, he uh shared, we want to develop a no-flinch policy.

That's when somebody confesses to you, it's not like, ugh, whew, that's a nasty sin.

You're catastrophic in a whole new way that the gospel can't approach.

No, we have a no-flinch policy.

We confess to one another, and it's like, yeah.

You know what?

As broken as we are as people, makes sense.

And then in that type of environment where we're expecting to discover that we're each dead in our trespasses and sins outside of Christ.

Then we're creating an environment where we take the veneer off, and this isn't a place where you need to hide from your sin, but you're able to remain steadfast in engaging it.

It's a culture that supports steadfastness.

And the final ingredient is time.

Time, and I love the way Ray Ortland puts this.

He says, enough time to rethink their lives at a deep level because people are complex and changing is not easy.

Can I get an amen?

People are complex.

Changing isn't easy.

You know what this takes?

Time.

I was in a ministry in college called the Navigators.

What, what?

They worked for the Navigators.

And uh the uh uh every year you recruit freshmen to the ministry.

And every year we somebody would say the same thing.

We'd recruit a bunch of freshmen dudes, and they it would be somebody would be like, they aren't into scripture memory.

You know, they don't even care about studying the Bible.

And then uh we would talk and be like, look, we aren't here to recruit pre-made disciples.

The church isn't so that we can go gather up a people, a bunch of people who get it already.

The church is so that we can grow and discover this in the context of community because that's where our real change happens.

And if you can't show up messed up and describe how messed up you are, then you have no hope of being steadfast in the face of your messed upness, in the face of your sinful desires.

The Bible describes you as far worse than you probably think you are.

So we're gonna need an environment that is patient in our changing.

Okay, so that's step one, be steadfast.

When are we gonna start being steadfast?

Great.

Step two, locate your sin.

This will probably be the most helpful.

James 113 says, Let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.

For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

James is so good at this.

Uh he hits on the common things that we may not articulate, but we would think to ourselves, and especially in a circle like ours, especially in a church community like ours, because you guys have a pastor that love to talk about God's sovereignty.

I love to talk about God's sovereignty, which means you hear a lot about God being in control of everything.

How many things?

Everything.

And so that can cause us to view God as static and disengaged, and our lives as sort of pre, they are predestined, but as fixed and as though we aren't real agents acting in our lives.

But James is saying, look, the sin that takes place in your heart, don't try and play this game where you outsmart God and you say some, here's something that I would say in my heart.

You know, God is probably wanting me to have this besetting sin in my life as a way of keeping me humble before him so that he can really work in me and use me.

No, no, don't try and outsmart God.

That's not the type of thing sin is.

God did not create a creature in his image so that he could then allow that uh so that he would then desire to see that image distorted.

This is not in line with the revealed will that God has shown us.

He wants us to be making war against our sin.

And where is the location of that sin?

It is not in God, it's in you.

It's in our hearts.

There's an ontological reality of where sin exists and it's in us.

And that's so important to recognize right off the bat.

We don't want to try and outsmart God in locating our sin.

The story is more complex than that.

At least it's more complex than the simple story of God made me do it because he's sovereign, so it must not matter anyway.

No, it's much more complex.

We need to locate our sin in our hearts, in our circumstances, and in our particular life story.

That's what I mean when I say locate our sin.

James 1, 14 to 15, he continues.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Okay, now first of all, we've got to recognize this is a strange way to phrase this.

He says we are lured and enticed by our own desires.

When you think of fishing, somebody else is doing the luring and enticing.

If you're the fish that takes the bite, then the lureing and enticing is being done by the fisherman who's fishing.

But he's saying you're being lured and enticed by your own desires.

This is a strange way to put it.

What he's recognizing is that there's the origin of sin is not in the things that we are tempted by.

The origin of sin is in the desires of our own hearts.

And we, our hearts, but because we are born into sin, are disposed in such a way where we want to be lured and enticed.

We want to be tempted towards sin.

The origin is in our hearts.

This is so important to recognize.

James pulls us inward and he shows us that the disordered desires of our hearts are the origin of sin.

And then this sin, when it is conceived, which means it integrates into our story, produces sin in the real world and actual tangible events and thoughts, real things of sin, and then that grows into, it matures into death.

So we have a desire in ourselves, which when manifests leads to death.

That is the pattern of sin.

It is human originated in the way that sin takes place.

Now, why this language?

Why does he uh describe the desire is taking place within us and then and then it's luring us towards outward things rather than it's an external lure that we just get taken in by?

Well, you need to consider the type of world that we live in.

We live in a world full of good things.

God created the world good, he's arcing it towards a glorious redemption.

It is currently corrupted, but uh but but that's by our sin and by the results of our sin in the world.

And so when you look out into the world, you're seeing a bunch of good things.

Your eyes are getting filled with goodness when you look out into the world.

So that means when you look at the beauty of a woman, the problem isn't the beauty of the woman, the problem is your lustful heart.

When you look out at success, the problem isn't success that someone else is experiencing, the problem is your covetous heart.

When you look out at money, the problem isn't money, the problem is your greedy heart.

Do you see?

We're looking out at a bunch of good things, but then by our own desires, we twist them into evil things as we turn them into tools just for our own satisfaction, for our own self-actualization.

Just something they can never do, they can never actually provide.

So that's why we see this weird kind of inside-out language.

Now, when the sin conceives, that means the the particulars of that good thing in the world you twist to bring into reality as a part of the a twisted and broken narrative in your own life.

So I grew up in Florida.

Uh I'm a what's called a flow rida, is the preferred nomenclature.

And we uh so at night, and we also had TV uh growing up, which is just like Netflix, but executives choose what you get to watch for you.

And uh you get to watch commercials.

And one of those commercials in Florida was frequently for fishing lures.

Uh there was a lot of fishing lure infomercials at night, and they were absurd in the promises.

It's like it would start out in black and white.

Are you tired of going fishing and not catching anything?

And yeah.

And then uh it would be like, here's this lure.

The mega the mighty bite was the one that I remembered.

Any nope, don't use this in Colorado again.

And the Mighty Bite had uh what made it irresistible to fish was that it had a bite taken out of the middle of it.

So it swam like a wounded fish.

And a wounded fish swimming in as a lure in front of another fish was irresistible.

And so you'd cast and it would just keep coming in.

You couldn't, it was like Peter pulling up the net.

And uh that was the promise anyway.

I never got one.

Here's the point the ways that we look at the temptations in our life are mapped perfectly to our desires when they lead to sin.

You know, the wounded fish is mapped perfectly to the desire of the fish.

In the same way, the the wrath that that you can't hold back is mapped perfectly to real desires in your heart, which means you need to learn and engage with the narrative that the particulars of your sin are entering into.

So many of us, when we try and locate our sin, we locate it generically.

We say, oh, you know what this sin is?

This is just a sin of lust.

And so then I need to combat this lustful tendency that's in my heart.

And then God has a generic grace for lust.

But that's not the way our sins are.

Our sins are particular, our sins have real desires.

You typed something particular into the search bar.

Wasn't generic, it was real words with something that you wanted to see.

So, what does that mean about your desires?

You yelled back at somebody with a particularly cutting remark, and you wanted to cut them in this exact way.

That's what mapped on to your desire.

Why?

What narrative did that fit into?

In exploring that, then we're able to actually name the desires of our heart.

We're able to see them laid bare.

John Owen says it like this says, and he says it in as many words as possible because he's John Owen.

Says, and indeed, one of the choicest and most eminent parts of practical spiritual wisdom consists in finding out the subtleties, policies, and depths of any indwelling sin.

To be able to say, at its most secret, into a common frame of heart, imperceptible actings, to be able to say to it, this is your old way and course.

I know what you aim at.

And so to be always in readiness, this is a good part of our warfare.

This means we need to have real understandings of our stories, real understandings of the particulars of our sins.

What happens?

What's the pattern?

You know, you're feeling this certain way, you're feeling particularly insecure, and so you've got to lash out at someone, or you've got to hide for a week and not answer any emails, or you've got to go search for something you shouldn't be searching for.

Or uh, you know, what is the way that this particularly manifests in your life?

Get to know those patterns.

So all of a so here's what it looks like.

That temptation shows up, and you say, You again.

You know what?

It's been you, this particular temptation, for the past 10 years.

This same one over and over again.

I know your shape.

I know exactly what you're after.

And you know what?

This desire that you're showing me, I know you can't satisfy it.

I know you can't provide it.

Do you know your sin at that depth?

Are you that familiar with it?

Or is it just something generic?

If it's just something generic, then I it's likely that you're also experiencing a pretty generic grace.

You know, Jesus didn't die for hypothetical sins.

And Jesus is not here to accomplish a hypothetical redemption.

The way that he died involved real nails, actual betrayal.

The accusations were truly false and said out into the world so that they they vibrated the air and then that went into other people's ears.

And then the nails really went through him and he really died.

Why?

Did it really have to happen?

Because our sins are real.

And that means he's calling us towards a real engagement with them.

All right, finally, once we've named these desires as they actually are in seeing the particulars of our sin, then we're able to renew our desires.

James 1, 16 through 17.

He says, Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Here's the deception of our desires.

What our desires say is, goodness won't really come from God.

Or if it would, he would never actually give it to me in the first place.

But don't be deceived.

Every good and perfect gift comes from one origin.

Every good and perfect gift comes from God.

So these desires that get twisted, we are creatures that are built to be in a relationship with the living God.

To experience his goodness in the good world that he put us in.

To even rest in the comfort of his salvation that he gives to us freely in Christ.

Don't be deceived.

Don't be deceived that you can't experience the goodness that God desires.

And so resign yourself to your sin.

Let us have our desires renewed.

So we begin by seeing the goodness comes from God and his steadfastness towards us.

So that means our lust will not provide us the transcendent experience that we desire.

That means our wrath will not accomplish for us the justice that we desire from God.

That means that our gossip will not provide us the vindication that we really want in our hearts.

You see, those desires, when named, what you start to see is that desire isn't really bad.

To desire vindication, that's not bad.

But you can't get it for yourself.

To desire justice, that's good.

Your wrath can't accomplish it.

When you start to understand the shape of your desires, you're starting to understand the longings of your heart toward God.

Now I'm ripping off a book right now that I just read on sexual sin called Unwanted.

And I I I've referenced it before, I still recommend it, but it's been very helpful in interpreting this as well.

So if you'd like to look that up, please do.

Finally, James 1, verse 18.

James 1:18

Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

Here's where we see the ultimate renewal of our desires, the ultimate place where they might be renewed.

God is unchanging.

Where you aren't steadfast, he is perfectly steadfast.

He never changes.

And what does this unchanging God accomplish?

By the word of the truth, which is the gospel.

He makes you a new creation.

He does that in you by the work of his spirit, by what he accomplished in atoning for your sin on the cross.

So where do we ultimately rest?

What continues us in our steadfastness towards fighting our sin, not resigning to them?

It's remembering God made me a new creation.

I'm gonna take his word for it, not just the word of my experience.

It's remembering that God is ultimately steadfast.

So when you see that you've caved to sin again and you haven't been steadfast once again, you'll remember when am I going to start practicing steadfastness?

Now.

Time to repent and get in over my head.

It's the steadfast love of the Lord that it allows us to be steadfast, do the work to locate our sin and have our desires truly renewed.

Okay.

No questions today.

Great.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, I pray that your word would work in our hearts, that we would be able to be steadfast together, that you would allow us to locate the particulars of our sin, to learn the narratives that they take place in.

Lord, we aren't generic people, but you've worked particular stories.

And I pray that your redemption would be made known in practical ways, and that the multifaceted nature of your glorious work in your church might be shown as we engage to do battle by your spirit with the particular sins in our hearts.

And Lord, we ask that our desires would be renewed towards you.

And that we might be able to look out into the world and see the goodness and see the order that you have intended for us to experience that goodness and to bless it and not distort it by our sin.

Father, we pray that you would work these things in our hearts in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay.

Now we're going to take communion.

And before we do, I want to read this passage from 1 Corinthians 11.

It says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he also took the cup after supping, 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 Lord was steadfast and loving us even unto the death of his son, that we might be rescued in him.

You have your little communion cup.

Take this time.

And examine your heart before him.

Confess before him the sins that you would that are have been besetting, ones that you might have resigned yourself to and ignored.

Ask the Lord to help you in engaging those.

As we take communion together, which you can just do in your seat, we'll take communion together and proclaim the death of Jesus until he comes back by this act.