Are You Dissatisfied with Life? Take Communion

The Lord’s Supper Is a Gift

At some point or another, all of us experience dissatisfaction in life and unmet expectations. Something has gone awry. We lose our job. We fail at something. A dear relationship has been fractured. We might even experience confusion over something such as our personal identity. We don’t know who we are. We have no idea what our life purpose is. So we all, at various points, experience these kinds of frustrations and disappointments and confusion in life.

And the Lord’s Supper, thankfully, helps us to deal with all this. The Lord’s Supper is a gift where Christ himself presents himself to us, and he wants us to think about who he is and who he is to us. We are hungry and thirsty people. We will always hunger and thirst for something, whether that’s spiritual, emotional, or something material.

The Water and the Blood

Kevin P. Emmert

Today’s culture tells us the only way to gain significance and purpose is through a self-fabricated sense of identity. The Water and the Blood offers an alternative way through Christ, visible through the sacraments.

And in the Lord’s Supper, the Lord trains us to hunger and thirst for him. He alone, as our Creator and Redeemer, can satisfy our longings. We are meant to hunger and thirst for him because we are created for him, and he gives himself to us in this moment—this meal where we celebrate, recall him, and feast on him. The Lord’s Supper also helps us to deal with our disappointments. When you think about the supper itself, it’s a meager meal. It’s small. For many people, it’s just a piece of bread or a wafer and then a small cup.

The Lord’s Supper is a gift where Christ himself presents himself to us, and he wants us to think about who he is and who he is to us.

But the Lord that we meet in this moment is great. He’s the Creator and Redeemer of the world. He is infinite, and we are finite. He alone can grant us all that we could ever long for, and he helps us to deal with our disappointments and frustrations in life because he is the one who can truly satisfy us.

And in this meal, he also helps us to deal with our confusion. He alleviates our anxieties, because in this meal he reminds us of who we are. When we remember him, we also remember who we are in him. He comes to us and he trains us to think continually on him. Actually, he is the one who remembers us. He joins himself to us more closely in this meal as we commune with him, and therefore strengthens the identity that we have received in him in baptism.

Kevin P. Emmert is the author of The Water and the Blood: How the Sacraments Shape Christian Identity.

Kevin P. Emmert (PhD, London School of Theology) is an academic book editor at Crossway and the author of John Calvin and the Righteousness of Works. He is married to Ashley, and they have three sons: Jack, Charlie, and Noah.

10 Key Bible Verses about the Lord’s Supper

May 30, 2024

Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them.

Podcast: Are We Undervaluing the Lord’s Supper? (Tim Chester)

January 27, 2020

Do evangelical churches undervalue communion? What's the significance of the fact that Jesus gave us the physical elements of bread and wine?

Dear Pastor . . . Don’t Undervalue the Sacraments

Kevin P. Emmert

January 04, 2024

Many pastors and churches today grant the sacraments a low status in public worship, but the sacraments have played a vital role in nourishing God’s people throughout church history.