Whether we feel victorious or redeemed or gloriously blessed or seated in the heavenly places with Christ - or not, is irrelevant. How you feel and what is going on in your life does not affect the historical fact or spiritual truth of Jesus' victory or its efficacy for your sin. The proclamation and glorification of Jesus' victory is not based on what you do but on what Jesus has already done.

No matter how inadequate or worthless you feel at communion, no matter how many times you have let the Lord down, no matter how prayerless and faithless you have been, Jesus is glorified when you take communion. For you come to communion not to show forth who you are, or what you have done for God or even how diligent and disciplined you have been in His service. You come on the basis of your need for Jesus. And no matter how long we have been serving God - a day, a decade or a lifetime, our desperate need for Jesus, His grace, His forgiveness, His love, His comfort, His guidance, does not diminish.

The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, written way back in 1662, states so well the basis of our participation in communion:

'We do not presume to come to this, Thy table, trusting in our own righteousness but in Thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs from under Thy table. But Thou art the same Lord whose nature is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord so to eat the flesh of Thy dear Son Jesus Christ and to drink His blood, that we may evermore dwell in Him and He in us.'