Mennonite Communion Anxiety: Causes and Solutions - Marlin Sommers and Verlon Miller

One of the things I love about thinking about how Jesus views me and His children is the posture that He has. What's the posture? Is the posture one of, "I love you. I gave myself for you. I provided a way of salvation." Revelation 3:20, "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone will open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him, and he with me." It's an open invitation. It's one of fellowship and joy. It's not this angry God model that sometimes I think when we get in the assurance of salvation questions or communion anxiety, we're looking at it more not from that perspective of that invitation from Jesus. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

And so that brings it back to something objective, like, okay, do I maintain this confession and stick to it? And that is something that can be, again, that can be taken to the bank.

So, Verlin, you've been a pastor at my church for many years. And Marlon, you're the director here at Anabaptist Perspectives. And we wanted to do a roundtable discussion on communion and some of the unique things, I guess you could say, that come from our churches and our culture and what that experience is like for our people and some of the challenges, opportunities, and other things that go with that topic. It's a big topic. I'm sure there's many things we won't cover, but we want to hit at least a couple key points and hear from both of you in this episode. So let's start broad and say, why are we even having this conversation? Like, why does this matter to us?

And then also in that, lay some of the framework and groundwork for where we're going to go in this episode. Yeah, I think it matters because there's a lot of us, you know, in our circle of churches where communion brings a lot of anxiety, and I'm sure it does in many different church settings, but, you know, there's some particular things, I think, for us as Anabaptists. And I've watched, you know, I've watched that personally with people. Communion would bring up questions of assurance of salvation. And somebody says, "I don't think I can go along to communion because I don't feel right." Or communion would bring up questions about relationships and what's going on in the church.

And I can't feel comfortable moving ahead with communion. So, you know, I've watched those up close, been involved with some of those. You know, Verlin, over the last, I don't know, last number of years, you've hit some of these topics around communion and assurance and how to look at it in sermons and so on. So just, yeah, excited to discuss some of this more. Yeah, I would agree with that. In my experience, early on when I was a pastor, I discovered that there were people who really struggled with assurance of salvation.

And it was kind of a year-round thing. But when you got to communion, that was when it really got highlighted. And it's something I care deeply about because I believe that walking with Jesus is something that's positive and joy-filled. There's trouble, there's conviction, there's things you deal with. It's not like it's a perfect walk, but there is this thing of the main tenor of it ought to be one of joy and peace and of something positive that's happening. And so when I see people struggling with that, my heart goes out to them because what they're experiencing is very real. But often there are ways that that can be answered and help bring them to a better settled place of where they have that internal peace.

So that's one of the motivations for me over many years is I care deeply about that. I want people to be able to experience what Jesus has to offer. And one of the things I'd like to say is, you know, the communion is very important.

We ought to look at it. We ought to have a high view of it. And so, you know, the things that we talk about, in no way do they minimize that. They're coming alongside that, I hope, and helping to how do we think about it well? How do we think about what it really means to follow Jesus with a brotherhood in the context of communion?

So there's probably people listening that may not fully understand how the Anabaptists have traditionally done communion. We have a wide range of listeners. So I think it'd be helpful to start with that and also explain maybe how these Anabaptist approaches to communion do sometimes bring up these questions in ways that maybe wouldn't be as familiar in other denominations or other church backgrounds.

Yeah, start us off with that. So, you know, from fairly early on, communion became a once or twice-a-year event to be prepared for. And so one of those pieces of preparation, as we know it, is what we call council meeting.

And it's in that spirit of examine yourself before communion. And that happens in different ways. So for our congregation here, we would ask everyone to share publicly, talk about your walk with God, and express, you know, a desire to go along with communion.

In other circles, individuals may go and give an expression to the ministers in private or something like that as part of the council meeting.

But it always does serve as kind of this check-in. If you haven't talked about it before, you're at least going to say something here. And this has not been the case, you know, to the same extent here. But I remember in my childhood, council meeting was also really a check-in, like, okay, how do people feel about church relationships and policies and all of that? Whoa, so this is kind of a big bundle that you're describing. Yeah, yeah, and it varies at different places.

But when I was young, it seemed almost routine that communion would be delayed because an issue would be brought up that might need a couple more weeks to work through. You didn't even set a firm date for communion until after council meeting.

And so it was bringing together both that kind of personal examination, but then also, okay, are we getting along? Are we in agreement with what we're doing? All of those can, you know, understandably bring a lot of, just a lot of angst there.

But yeah, maybe you'd like to fill that out a little bit. Yeah, no, that's very accurate. That's very good. I think that a couple of pieces that come along with that is, if you want to just go to the short version of it, what people would be expected to say was, do you have peace with God? Do you have peace with your brothers and sisters? And are you in agreement with the church? You're willing to take communion with the church, and you want to do that. So that's kind of the simple thing boiled down. And so, yeah, that brings up a lot of questions of, what do I really think? Are things okay? And it, you know, then you pull in the verses of, you should examine yourself so that you don't eat and drink unworthily, eat and drink damnation to yourself.

And, you know, there's this very high view, very serious, where it really matters. And so the way you answer those three simple questions, it's not like you can do that just tritely. And I think that view is largely where a lot of the anxiety has come from.

Now, I think we should be clear that all of those are legitimate questions. Are we right with the Lord? We should be asking that. Are we right with the brotherhood? We should be asking that. Those things matter. So I think we need to think about them in a healthy way, however. Communion does not need to be a debilitating time. And I guess that's where the conversation's going. But I think these biblical things, we're right to engage in them. We should just do it well.

Yeah, because what we're saying is we don't think it's necessarily a good idea that it'd be so full of anxiety approaching this. Is that a right way of saying it? Like where people can, ah, this feels almost scary or it's a whole mixture of feelings. It doesn't have to be full of anxiety. Yeah, maybe that, yeah. It doesn't need to be.

Yeah, all I was just thinking is I hope that we can maybe reframe it, how to deal with the anxiety. Like I have come to appreciate that classic statement, right? I have peace with God and man. I have peace with God and my fellow man.

There's a lot that's summed up in there. But one thing, you can idealize peace to where it becomes, you know, peace with God, but it becomes sometimes more about my own maybe psychological unrest or something. It's not actually my relationship with God. It's my conflict within myself sometimes.

So how can we approach that? And then, you know, the peace. You know, Scripture says, be at peace with everyone as much as it lies in you, as much as it's in your court. Jesus said, you know, if you're going to the temple and you realize your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and take care of it.

So I see that as very important. And again, it's not that all your relationships are necessarily equally comfortable, but actual grievances, actual offenses are dealt with as well as they can be. But couldn't some of it also be, well, how do you decide if you're at peace? You know, and maybe that's getting into some of the assurance of salvation questions. But boy, I could imagine that being a bit difficult. And that could be anxiety-inducing. It's like, am I actually at peace? Well, yeah, I think so. And well, but really, maybe if I really think really hard, well, maybe I'm not. And then you can start going down that spiral a little bit, right?

I mean, sometimes you need an outside perspective and you hope you have a friend or mentor that can help you weigh some of those things. Tying into that just a little bit, there's, when we deal with these issues of assurance of salvation, there's often a flavor of perfection that we're demanding of ourselves.

And having a high ideal is good. We ought to strive to be like Jesus. We ought to try to be obedient and to walk with Him well. But the truth is that we're in a fallen world and the Lord is in the process of redeeming us and life is imperfect. One of the things that I have found helpful that I think we can talk about this more is, yeah, life isn't perfect. Relationships aren't perfect.

But God is always faithful. And it's one of the ways that while we strive for a high ideal, we can't do it unreasonably and beat ourselves up to the point that we can't function.

We repent. We go back to Jesus. We walk with Him. So you're getting right into that next question of, you know, what are those key truths we should be keeping in mind for approaching communion with joy and celebration versus anxiety, maybe stress, you know, some of these other words that we've been using.

What are those key truths? So I have a number of them that I think about. One of them is, and this goes a little bit into the assurance of salvation. And so I can't go very deep into that one right now that we don't have enough time for a lot of that. But 1 John 5:13, we have a verse there that says, it tells us that God wants us to, He says, "I've written these things that you may know that you have life and that you, if when you believe." He makes it very clear that's what God wants us to have. He wants us to be able to know that. We don't have to live with the question of whether or not we're saved.

And then if you go into that broader study, I love the book of 1 John for a study of the assurance of salvation. He talks about different things that are described. We can know that we are right with the Lord. The witness of the Spirit, the witness of obedience, the witness of brotherly love, those are all present there where we can know those are evidences in our life, maybe imperfect, but that's where our heart is. That's what we want. That's what we're striving for. And so just coming back to God wants us to know. He doesn't want us to live in that state of unrest and fear. He wants us to know.

One of the things I love about thinking about how Jesus views me and His children is the posture that He has. What's the posture? Is the posture one of, "I love you. I gave myself for you. I provided a way of salvation." Revelation 3:20, "I stand at the door and knock. Anybody, if anyone will open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me." It's an open invitation. It's one of fellowship and joy. It's not this angry God model that sometimes I think when we get in the assurance of salvation questions or communion anxiety, we're looking at it more not from that perspective of that invitation from Jesus.

I go back to the scene at the night of Jesus' betrayal and arrest when He instituted the Lord's Supper. My understanding is that the language He used, the wording that He used when He held out the cup and talked about the bread, they were hearing bridegroom talk.

They were hearing similar words to what a bridegroom would say in that culture of when through the betrothal process, I don't remember all the details exactly, but there was a point in sealing that commitment of a bride and a groom and their commitment to each other that the father would pour a cup of wine. He would give it to the groom. The groom would take it and offer it to his potential bride. And he would say, "This cup is the covenant."

And if she accepted it and drank from it, she now was agreeing to that covenant and he too would drink. My understanding is that's what Jesus' posture was. The disciples would have understood Jesus inviting them into a relationship of commitment, a relationship of fellowship. You know, marriages are imperfect and this analogy is going to have limitations, but it's one of the closest human relationships you can have. We know marriage is a type of Christ in the church. And I see that playing into this discussion. Just what's the posture I see Jesus?

It's inviting. He wants that relationship with His children. That's close fellowship. Yeah. And what I love about that point that I think is really important is it's this offer of, okay, we use the word communion. We use it for the Lord's Supper.

Sometimes we have it in songs or something, right? But it's not everyday English for us anymore. At least not for me. But it is about relationship, having something in common.

The communion in 1 Corinthians 10, it's translating kunonia, which often we put as, you know, English Bibles will put as fellowship or sharing or whatever. So this is Jesus' invitation to communion, to a relationship with Him. You know, yeah, Jesus is offering the cup.

And so this is approaching Jesus. And so what is His posture?

And this is just a little parenthetical. But that moves us outside of just saying, well, this is just a memorial, right? So we're doing this to remember Jesus. But it's not just, you know, us doing something, right? It's meant to be communion or fellowship with Jesus. Yeah. And I think that goes back to John 6. So we've been focusing on that cup. But if you go to John 6, you have Jesus talking about, "I'm the bread of life."

And that passage fascinates me as well. But once again, Jesus is telling them, "My words are Spirit and they are life. And if you come to me and you eat of the bread of life, you know, you don't hunger again." It's something that's deeply satisfying. And verse 63 of John 6, "It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are Spirit and they are life." And I think that for me, that's very helpful in the communion context of thinking about, here again, this is one of the places I don't want to minimize some of the other emphases. I want to bring this alongside and say, when we take communion, we're accepting the cup.

We're saying, "I want the bread of life. I want what Jesus has to offer in the fullest way of satisfaction. I don't ever want to hunger again." And there's that part of it where we're entering into communion with Jesus. In fact, if you go to, this is interesting to me as well, 1 Corinthians 10, that just prior to the instructions in 1 Corinthians 11 on communion, 1 Corinthians 10, it uses the word communion in a couple of different ways. And as I understand it, it's denoting fellowship and loyalty.

He talks about it. Why would you have communion with devils in talking about idol worship? And then he also talks about that communion within the church, which is also talking about fellowship and loyalty. Who's my object of worship? And so that's part of what the communion service is, I think, biblically from that text is, it's an act of worship. It's an act of coming to Jesus and saying, "I want what you have." And I take these emblems out of that response to Him.

My mind also went to that passage. I want to bring in this idea of jealousy here. And that actually should help to reframe what the fear is and what it's not, like this posture toward Jesus. There again, I have to define the word jealousy a little bit because as I would use jealous now, it's often like, "I'm jealous of something that somebody else has." Like, "I'm envious."

But the older meaning and used in the passage I'm going to read is jealousy is more like a possession. Like, God is a jealous God because He wants His people to be His people and not idol worshipers. A husband should be jealous of his wife because she belongs to me and this is not to be polluted elsewhere.

So right in that passage, the verbal one that you were referring to, he says, "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons."

Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? So that's that sense of, yes, Jesus is bidding us come.

And don't come insincerely by having these other loves and other gods that deny that. That is really good. Another word that I think ought to come into play, and that's just identity. What is our identity? And the communion service is a part of that. It's a part of us identifying with the Lord. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 11, he says, "As often as you take it, as often as you do this, you show the Lord's death." So He come.

There may be different meanings on what's there, but it's one of the ways that I take it that I think is a very plausible understanding is I am declaring publicly with my brothers and sisters, "This is my identity. This is my allegiance." And that's what you were talking there, Marlon, with the jealousy thing.

Kind of like, basically, what is it that you're worshiping? Yeah. Like, what's the focus on? Right?

So y'all are giving us some pieces on how do we approach communion with joy, with celebration, really, and saying, you know, what is our focus on? But some of this might be going back to, when we think of the anxiety part, going back to some of this language of, "Be careful you don't partake unworthily," or, you know, this sense of, "Be careful that you don't be in the wrong posture when you take this." And I think that can play into some of the things we've been saying with the anxiety, a communion anxiety phrase we've been using. Talk to me about that. Like, can you define that term for starters, this unworthily partaking? Sure. So before I do that, though, I think part of the significance of that is there is very strong warning there.

We have the wording about eating and drinking damnation to yourself. Well, none of us want that. And when somebody's wrestling with that, that becomes really big in their mind. What if I do this in the wrong way? What if, and the King James rendering of that is it unworthily? So I'd like to approach it from two different angles. I think they're both fair. The one is, if we take it just for what the word says, unworthily, there is a healthy way to think about that.

Now, we'll take a second look at what that could mean as well. But if we look at it, this means I have to come and be worthy somehow of taking communion, and I can't do that. If I do that unworthily, I'm putting my soul at risk. If that's the approach, I think one of the things we need to think about is that none of us can come to Jesus in a totally worthy manner. We are only worthy because of what Christ has done for us. And the very service that we're commemorating is saying, "I trust you, Jesus. You gave your life. You gave your blood.

You were killed. You were sacrificed as a means of atonement for me." What Jesus did, His work on the cross is death, burial, resurrection. That's what I'm identifying in. Outside of that, I can't come worthily. And so for me, it's one of those conflicting things that, yeah, we don't want to come unworthily, but when I become too focused on that, I tend to minimize the sufficiency of Christ's salvation, and I begin to transfer some things I shouldn't onto myself. Now, if there's things of where I ought to be, where I'm in sin, I need conviction, absolutely, I need to repent.

That's very clear. But in that unworthily sense that we often hear it and think about it, I would just say we've got to go back to Jesus. He's the only reason I can come in the first place. And so aligning myself with Christ, once again, it's going to be imperfect, but God is faithful. He promises to forgive. We keep saying yes to Jesus. We're following Him. And when we're doing that, that is worthily.

The second way that I think can be very helpful to think about it, and some other translations would give the meaning that we come in an unworthy manner. Rather than just saying coming unworthily, we come in an unworthy manner. And the context of that, I think, fits well with the rest of 1 Corinthians 11. You think about what he's instructing them, and he's warning them about they're taking communion selfishly. They're saying, "Some of you are drunk, and some of you are overeating. You're making a feast. You have brothers who don't have enough. You're not sharing with them." And you have this picture of a very dysfunctional, supposedly communion service, and he's reprimanding them for that.

And I think that's one of the other ways of understanding from the context that you don't come in a manner that dishonors God. You come caring about what the real purpose of the communion service is to commemorate Jesus' death, His sacrifice, and you care about your brothers.

I see that tenor coming through as well. And I would welcome you all's feedback on that, but that's my understanding. That is also a plausible way of looking at the unworthily. So if that is correct, then we should do all things decently and in order, including our communion service.

We don't do any disgrace to the broken body and blood of our Lord. We come soberly honoring Him and honoring our brothers as we come. Well, I mean, I'm completely convinced of the second interpretation there. And I think I've made that point at various places.

So yeah, I might like to say just a little bit about that and then circle in how that really does show why our Anabaptist emphasis on peace within the church is very fitting for communion. So like the basic flow of the second part of 1 Corinthians 11, when he addresses this, he says, "Look, you're coming together. You're gathering, not for the better, but for the worse.

And you're not coming to eat the Lord's supper." Why is it not the Lord's supper or the Lord's feast? Because each of you are eating your own feast, and some people are going hungry, and others are getting drunk. In other words, this is not the Lord's table. It's this group over there and this group over there, all in factions.

And he goes too far as to say, "You despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing." So like this disgrace is, in a sense, social, larger ramifications. And then he goes right in and says, "Look, this is what communion is.

This is the night Jesus betrayed. This is my body. This is my blood. This is the new covenant." Like you're proclaiming the Lord's death. Like this is absolutely serious. And then that's where you get, okay, because of this, because of all the realities here, to eat or drink this cup in an unworthy way is to be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourself, or else you're doing judgment to yourself because you don't recognize the body.

And he says, "Some of you are weak, sick. Some of you have died. We should examine ourselves that when we're judged, we won't be condemned along with the world." And then wraps it up and says, "So, practical upshot.

You know, when you get together, okay, if you're hungry, eat first so that you can wait for one another to share the meal together." So I think there's a huge thing in there about the recognition of the body. There's one Lord. And so there's one, back to chapter 10, he says, "Because there's one bread, there's one body."

So in other words, this dimension among the people is created because there's one Lord, which is to create this brotherhood and this body. So I don't think that recognizing the body there is talking about transubstantiation, as our Catholic friends say. I think it actually speaks to recognizing this body that's created because we are different people, but we have one Lord, and that creates a unity that creates obligations to each other.

Before we go on, can you define transubstantiation for, yeah, just so that's clear for those listening? I don't know if this will capture the nuances enough to be acceptable to our Catholic friends or not, but in my mind, just the idea that the substance of the bread and of the cup becomes literally the physical body and blood of Christ.

That insistence on a literalness there. So what you were describing instead just a moment ago was it's the body of Christ coming together in all of us as people, individual people, etc., coming together, and that's becoming, in a way, an expression of the body of Christ right there. Is that kind of what you were getting at? Or I'm making sure I'm tracking correctly. Yes, and it's a body created by a common Lord.

So if you talk about the horizontal and the vertical, the vertical creates the horizontal. Yeah. I'd like to go a couple of places with that. One is just a very practical story. A number of months ago, I was visiting another congregation, and before the service, one of the pastors came up and asked me about participating in the Lord's Supper. It would be later in the service.

And then a different pastor was there preaching, and he was handling a passage in a very different way than I would. And I was getting kind of worked up about this in my mind. And then I remembered, and it kind of gives me this jolt, you know, okay, you're going to take communion with this person.

And so that should affect the attitude there. And it did. And then after the service and in the fellowship meal afterward, you know, we talked about not all of those points. We talked about a few of those points in a very brotherly way and so on.

But again, it's that reminder, the way we treat each other is supposed to be directly because of this common Lord. And I'm going to open another can of worms here and let you guys deal with them. So like if you compare how Anabaptists think about communion, we do keep that strong horizontal emphasis. We keep this emphasis, examine yourself. What are your relationships with other people? We talk about excommunication, which also comes up in 1 Corinthians.

Christ is the Passover Lamb, and he says, "Cleanse the unleavened bread when there's blatant sin."

So people look on, or maybe in our communities, and they think about, well, Anabaptist view of communion seems to be about, okay, let's cleanse the church first, who's back to that unworthily phrase, who's become worthy or whatever. And to contrast that with another approach, which is other churches may be perceived as more welcoming, where there's not that emphasis as much. It's just communion's presented. You're asked to come forward to receive from the Lord. And I'm not saying it's necessarily that way. I mean, if you look at the Catholic Church and who's supposed to take communion and who's not, they have strict rules there and so on.

But you'll see this contrast presented between kind of, you know, get your act in order so you're fit to take communion, and here's the grace of God extended to give you healing. And I am definitely defending the basic outlines of our Anabaptist practice and the importance of these things, excommunication, brotherhood, and so on, and also wanting to really have and help shape our paradigm so that we convey this. Like the Lord is offering you the cup. Like take it.

Is there something about our Anabaptist emphasis on the examine yourself and examine your relationships with others and taking something like excommunication seriously? Is there something about that that needs to, or that keeps us from seeing communion as an invitation?

So possibly. I was actually, something I was thinking about, I think maybe part of the answer.

One of the things that I have felt from some of the focus on communion and only having it two times a year is that whenever you get to communion time, now am I right with the church? Am I right with the Lord? That's when it comes into focus.

The thing I would like to promote is that following Jesus and being right with the church is not a twice-a-year event. It's 365 days a year. And so this is year-long. I should be caring about how am I relating to my brother? What's my walk with the Lord?

It ought to be a daily walk with him. I ought to always be current. If there's issues with the church, I would idealize that they come up way before communion. They come up whenever they come up. So whenever there's an issue, that you address it. And I think that that is that posture of, I want to always be right. Now I get to communion, it's like, what do I have to take care of? I already took care of it because I'm staying current with everything. So going back to some of the early conversation we had about anxiety, for me, that's a big anxiety reliever, is I stay current with my walk with the Lord and my relationships with other people, not only at communion.

So when you do that, then excommunication or relationship problems or spiritual problems, those all matter. You know, it's not, I'm not saying we shouldn't do those things or care about them. I'm just saying I think we should always care about them.

So I don't know if that answers your question, but for me, that's part of the answer. But I'd be curious to hear you answer your own question. Well, I think for me, it comes back to some of the things we talked about earlier. Like, okay, this is scary because God is a jealous God. He wants us. He wants our loyalty. He doesn't want that divided out.

And so it's, in a sense, God being possessive of us rather than God demanding the perfection. He's demanding us. It's more of the, I see the warnings as more warnings against playing games or dishonoring rather than these warnings of, like it's not like, oh, I don't measure up, so I shouldn't take communion.

It's more like, am I willing to stop playing games and deal with the games that I've been playing that might block it? Or am I willing to deal with actual things where I'm wronging or mistreating other people in order to come there with honor?

And to me, that shift, to me, that difference in mindset, I think is significant. It's a little easier to answer the question of whether there's a game I'm playing that I need to quit playing than it is whether I meet some particular standard. I see what you're saying there. Yeah.

Intention and motive seem to be at play there as well, like you're describing. Is that another way of, or another possible angle? I mean, it's okay to come desperate, right? We are desperate. We need something. What's not okay is to come presumptuous or mocking God or whatever.

And again, if you are keeping current with things that come up, like you said, that addresses a lot of that. We're dealing with it. We're keeping an open relationship. I mean, let's just compare this to a marriage relationship. Like I don't have any anxiety that my wife is about ready to leave me or kick me out of the house because of this failure or that failure or whatever. And that's because I know who she is and I know something about our relationship. So there's not anxiety there. But that is not any kind of grounds for presumption. Like there's many things I could do that would be just totally an insult to the relationship.

Because I mean, the relationship's over, not necessarily. But you can't be presumptuous coming in there, you know, openly flirting with other loves and so on. And I guess my point is those are things you can identify. And that just feels in a different, feels to me in a different category or approach than a, am I the perfect husband, right?

Like I know that my acceptance does not depend on me being a perfect husband. I also know that there's certain actions that if they're persisted in would basically be repudiating the marriage, right? That, again, that jealousy would come into play.

So for me, thinking about peace with God, so we should always be striving for growth, but it's not the, I'm trying to create, you know, okay, I achieve some level of perfection so that I'm accepted. But there is such a thing as, you know, provoking the Lord to jealousy, and we should not be presumptuous about how jealous we might make him before the repercussions become more serious.

So with all of this conversation, a piece that comes up, and this might be broadening it out or taking a slightly different direction, but I think it really fits here. How do we approach this when there's fears about assurance of salvation, right? Like that's a big one. You know, what do we offer those who are struggling? How do we think about this? Like it seems like this can come up in the context of this communion anxiety that we're describing, but it could be broader than that.

How do we even begin to wrestle with that? And especially helping others who may be struggling with that as well. I think at a very basic level, we have to think correctly about what it means to be a Christian. We think correctly about who God is and his character and the role that that plays in our assurance of salvation. Then we also have to think correctly about ourselves and our role in that accepting Christ's work on the cross. And so the two of them together, when we don't think about them correctly, that's when we end up with struggles about assurance of salvation. So there's a few things that I think would be helpful. We mentioned a couple of them already.

Just one of them, God's posture towards us. It's one of love. He is a God of love. He's a God of judgment. But his overriding thing, if you look at the theme of scripture, if he was primarily a God of judgment, the world would have been gone a long time ago. But he's a redeeming God. And from the time of the fall of man, he set things into motion in the timeline on earth. He already knew it. In eternity, he just is. So he had all this worked out. But in the timeline of humanity, he set things in motion. And for the next 2,000 years, 3,000, 4,000 years, that's what we saw developing in the Old Testament story where the fullness of time, Christ came.

When God got everything in the right order that he wanted, and I could look at that and say, "God, you sure took a long time. Why in the world did you spend all that time?" But God knows what I don't. He knows way more than what I could ever even think of not knowing. And so it was the right time. He did it his way. But God's a redeeming God. If it was just justice and judgment, we wouldn't have had to go here. So I see the theme is it doesn't minimize that he's a just, righteous, holy God. He is that. But the theme is one of redeeming love. He sent his son. And so that posture that we talked about of him having that invitation to us, that he wants a restored relationship.

I look at the Garden of Eden and what he created. I say he created a perfect place for man. He walked and fellowshipped with man. That's what he wanted. That's what he's going to get in the end. When he's done with his redemption, once again, humanity, his children will be walking and fellowshipping and worshipping him. That's what he wants. So I think just making that foremost in our mind that, yes, we have utmost respect. We have a godly fear. He is an awesome God. We don't take that tritely, not in any way, but he's a redeeming Lord. And that is the story of scripture. That is the gospel. That is the good news of why we're even Christians, of why we have hope for a resurrection and of being with him.

So for me, that's just a baseline. And I would follow that with saying God is faithful. He is always faithful. We can always trust him. We can always understand him. But he, as I said earlier, he knows more than I do. So even though I think things should happen differently in my life sometimes, I can trust him that he knows, and it fits into his big plan in a way far better than what I could even imagine. I have seen that lived in my own life story where he did things just I didn't like what he was doing, but the end result was, wow, God is an awesome God.

And he truly is worthy. He is faithful. So along with that faithfulness, I want to give you an opportunity to respond, Marla. I think you're thinking something there. But in that faithfulness, where is Jesus now? He's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us.

He knows he was here on earth. He knows what we're going through. He knows our struggle. He encountered them all without sin, which none of the rest of us do, but he did that. And so now he's at the right hand of the Father advocating for us. He's our intercessor.

And once again, we come to the Lord because of Jesus. So when I hear words like in Hebrews where we come boldly to the throne of grace, it's not be with any arrogance. It's not with any self-confidence. It's with Christ confidence. I can come boldly because of what happened when Christ died in that veil of the temple that separated the Holy of Holies. This was the presence of God. No, you don't dare go there. Only the high priest once a year. That thing gets ripped from top to bottom.

And we have open access because of Jesus. But I get no credit for that. So no arrogance, no self-confidence, Christ confidence. But I can come boldly and I can approach the throne of grace. Those passages in Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 10 develop that. Just read this one verse from Hebrews 10:22. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.

That's what he wants. He's telling us to draw near. That's in the context. He's talking about the veil being torn. So when I look at assurance, I'm thinking about my relationship to God. I trust him for his work on the cross. I rest in that and I come to him with that confidence.

I really like the way you develop that framework. Like this is the heart of God, the heart of the Father, the heart of Jesus as the intercessor.

And like I kind of want to put the pieces I want to put, I want to put inside the way you develop that framework of how God is looking at us.

And one is the confession that Jesus is Lord is something we can take to the bank. You know, our feelings go different ways. But just thinking about these things in Romans 10, if you confess with your mouth, Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. And that's not just confessing sin there. It's this declaration, Jesus is Lord. Therefore, of course, I'm his servant. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

And so that brings it back to something objective. Like, okay, do I maintain this confession and stick to it? And that is something that can be, again, that can be taken to the bank. You know, sometimes the way these questions are put is, well, do I really believe? Do I have the confidence in it? You know, it comes back again to this very introspective.

And there's a point to introspection, but I don't know, think about wedding again, I guess. Like, okay, you can maybe have your questions about whether you feel like you love this person or whatever, but like you said those vows, we heard you, right? You did it.

And it creates a reality. And there's something similar there with that confession that, you know, Jesus is Lord. And that's loyalty language. Yes, there's times when that is insincere and it's a, you know, empty words. But if it is, that's going to become obvious by how you're treating other people, by not caring about obedience, whatever.

Right? It's not going to be by, I'm feeling distressed today. That's not what means your profession was insincere, right? If that lordship was insincere or mocking, it's going to become obvious by just a disregard for how God wants us to live and how God wants us to treat other people and so on.

That sincere confession, you know, I'm the servant of God. I'm here to serve Jesus. That can be taken to the bank. And it's within the whole framework of everything you said about God's attitude, Jesus' ongoing intercession, and so on.

Alongside that, one of the things I have come to see with just a little broader scope, you know, we all start with our experience. That's what we know first. So for me, as a young man, I had a very, very clear point of conversion. I can tell you the day. I can take you to the place. I can take you to within a few feet of where it happened. That's where I met Jesus and my life was changed.

A very, very clear. So I personally have never struggled with the assurance of salvation because that was just there. I've encountered people who believe, but they can't give me a date and time and place. It's something that happened more over time. It was more of a gradual recognition. And so two things, if that's the story of people, then I would say two things. One is the big question is, do you believe Jesus?