Welcome to the John Mark Comer Teaching's Podcast by Practicing the Way.

This teaching was first given at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Oregon

as a part of the eating and drinking practice.

There is a time and a place for the quiet introspective work of repentance over

your sin and meditation on its cost to Jesus at the cross. Absolutely, don't

miss read me, but listen carefully. We are to do that work before we come to the table, not at the table.

Paul is explicit about this.

Again, 1 Corinthians 11, quote,

everyone ought to examine themselves.

There's that language of introspection, examine themselves

before they eat of the bread and drink the cup. Now again we read that and we imagine communion

in our practice where you walk down from the

back aisle to the cracker and the juice at the front of the stage right and we

think before like en route down to the front of the stage it's not what he's saying

this was a meal on Sunday night with 50 or 60

rowdy Corinthians in some wealthy person's backyard, right? So he's saying

before you show up Sunday night, before you get off work and you show up for the love feast with your

church first examine yourself take a little time that morning during the week is

there anything in my life that is out of sync with my apprenticeship to Jesus and my crossways with anybody else in the community

and I need to make things right, do that hard work and then come to the table.

The table is what comes after that hard work of repentance and the right heaviness to that

moment. The table is what comes after. Then you celebrate because of my repentance on my part and more importantly because of the mercy of God through Jesus death-bound resurrection

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