Why Communion Matters: How to Experience the Lord’s Supper With Deeper Meaning and Spiritual Growth

I’ve been a Christian since 2012, and in the last five years especially, I’ve noticed how easily we lose reverence for communion—reverence the early church seemed to understand so well. This article is my attempt to help us return to that holy awe.

My Introduction to Communion

When I was a new believer, I had no idea what communion was. I remember sitting in church, watching the communion trays being passed around, and whispering to my brand-new husband, “What are they doing?” He gently leaned in and explained, “This is communion. We are remembering Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. This is the new covenant between us and God, and Jesus will return for us.”

So I drank the juice and ate the little cracker with joy and gladness in my heart, even though I didn’t yet understand the full meaning behind it.

Over the years, as I’ve grown in my faith and walk with Jesus, communion has become so much more than what I had been accustomed to in a Sunday morning service. For a long time, I participated in communion exactly the way the church taught me, almost as a familiar routine. But in recent years, God has opened my eyes to deeper reflections, personal, intimate, and Spirit-led, that I want to share with you here.

There are many theological positions on communion—real presence, transubstantiation, symbolic, and everything in between—but I don’t want to dive into those in this article. Instead, I want to offer a personal reflection on what I’ve come to experience in the Lord’s Supper and what I intentionally meditate on as I take it.

My thoughts on communion reflect what the Holy Spirit has revealed to me over the last several years, and I pray they help you move beyond “muscle memory” and into a deeper awareness of Christ’s presence, sacrifice, and covenant love. My hope is that communion becomes not just something you take, but something you experience.

The Grocery Store, the Tortilla Crackers, and “Our Daily Red”

I jumped in the car and went to the store for some groceries we needed for the week. My husband had been experimenting with homemade whole-wheat tortillas, but they kept turning out more like crackers than the pliable taco blankets we were hoping for. While I was browsing the aisles, I noticed a bottle of wine labeled Our Daily Red. The illustration on the bottle immediately caught my eye—hands raised with wine glasses gently clinking together, giving off a Scripture-inspired, almost biblical vibe.

Right away, I thought of my husband’s “cracker tortillas,” grabbed the bottle, and said to myself, “I’m going to take communion with this.” It wasn’t some spiritual nudge or moment of divine direction (I don’t think), just a simple, unexpected inspiration sparked by the label, the imagery, and the timing. Even though I’ve always known communion to be something practiced with other believers, like the early church gathering around the Lord’s Supper, the idea of taking it alone didn’t feel strange to me in that moment.

The Bible describes communion as a shared supper within the body of Christ. In 1 Corinthians, Paul corrects the church for taking communion improperly. Some were overeating, some were getting drunk, and some were even experiencing judgment because they treated the Lord’s supper carelessly. So I knew communion carried a seriousness, a reverence that mattered.

Yet despite all of that, I went home, sat on my closet floor with a simple cracker and a glass of wine, and took communion alone. And honestly, that small, inspired moment sparked something in me. It marked the beginning of a quiet transformation, shifting my heart and mind toward a deeper understanding of what communion really meant.
It showed me that I had been treating communion as a habit, and that there was a deeper experience waiting for me beyond what I had always known.

Searching Scripture and the Early Church Fathers

I started reading the early church fathers and searching the Scriptures for everything I could find on communion. I was fascinated by the different positions Christians have held throughout history, and I genuinely appreciated the depth and reverence found in early Christian writings. I wasn’t trying to dismiss what the early church taught, far from it. Their words opened my mind and gave me a fuller picture of how believers before me understood the Lord’s Supper.

But even with all that rich tradition and teaching, I still wanted the Holy Spirit to shape my thoughts and understanding as I took the bread and the wine—the new covenant, the Lord’s Supper—in these quiet, personal moments. I wanted to know what God wanted me to think about communion today. I wanted to take on His perspective and experience it in the way He intended for me.

That might sound irreverent to some, but I genuinely believe the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, just as Jesus promised. And when we ask, knock, and seek, God reveals mysteries and truths to us personally and intimately.

Insight #1: “Do This in Remembrance of Me” & “This Is the New Covenant in My Blood”

As I searched the Scriptures, two things stood out to me in a profound way. The first was Jesus’s own words at the Last Supper. In Luke’s account, Jesus takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and says, “Do this in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19). He is sitting with His disciples on the night before His death, speaking directly about what is about to take place; His body broken, His blood poured out, His sacrificial death on the cross.

In the Old Testament, the covenant was given to Moses, and sacrifices had to be repeatedly offered for the people’s sins. Year after year, sacrifice after sacrifice, they were reminded that blood was required to cover their sins. But at the Last Supper, Jesus held the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). This wasn’t a ritual without meaning; this was an announcement, a declaration, a new covenant, sealed by His own blood.

The old covenant required ongoing sacrifices; the new covenant is a once-for-all sacrifice. Jesus didn’t merely cover our sins; He bore them, removed them, and dismissed them completely. We no longer offer a bloody sacrifice because Jesus offered Himself as the final one.

So when we take the cup and break the bread, we remember that Jesus paid it all. We are under His blood and the new covenant of grace. Every single time we gather with other believers (or even participate in communion alone), we are remembering that Jesus went to the cross for us, once for all.

Let’s Pause and Stand in Awe for a Moment

Can we just stop for a moment and be in absolute amazement and awe at how intimately involved God was—and still is—in the plan of salvation and reconciliation? The unity of Scripture from the Old Testament to the New Testament is breathtaking. Everything in the Old Testament is a shadow of what was to come, and everything in the New Testament is the fulfillment of those promises.

I love seeing how Scripture fits together with such harmony and purpose. For me, that unity brings even more validity to our God and Creator. It reminds me that none of this was random. None of it was accidental. God has been weaving the story of redemption from the very beginning, and communion is a beautiful reminder of that divine continuity.

Insight #2: “We Participate…” — Communion as Death to Self

My second insight came from Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 10:16, where he writes that “the cup of blessing… is a participation in the blood of Christ” and “the bread that we break… is a participation in the body of Christ.” That word participate hit me deeply.

When I take communion, I’m not only remembering the sacrifice of Christ for me (and for everybody else), but I’m acknowledging that I participate in laying my own life down—dying to self, taking up my cross daily, and following Jesus just as He followed the Father. Our participation is not passive. It is participation in our own deaths. We get to live a transformed life in Christ because of His death on the cross.

When we come together for communion, we are choosing to live out this death to our former ways —greed, selfishness, hypocrisy, covetousness —and instead put on our new lives in love, humility, consideration, kindness, and goodness. We join in unity with the body of Christ and serve one another, living in the reality that Christ died so we could live. Therefore, we participate in His death by dying to self and serving others.

Paul also urges believers to examine themselves before taking communion (1 Corinthians 11:28), and this matters. We come with pure conduct and a good conscience, so we aren’t drinking the cup in vain. We pause to examine our hearts, ensuring that bitterness, envy, unforgiveness, or hatred have no place in us. And if they do, we confess them before taking the cup. We remember that, as Christ has forgiven us, we must forgive others.

Communion isn’t just symbolic. It is an active declaration and an invitation to commune with Christ and with His body. It’s both remembrance and participation—honoring His death while living out ours.

Conclusion

Praise God for sanctifying us. Our walk with Him is continually evolving, growing, and unfolding into deeper truth. For a long time, I viewed communion in a mostly ritualistic sense, never really considering that it could be an active, personal experience in my spiritual life. But now, I’m so thankful that God has opened my heart to a greater understanding of the Lord’s Supper.

This revelation isn’t just meant for me. It’s for anyone who shares in the cup and breaks the bread. Communion is an invitation for all of us to remember, participate, and experience Christ in a deeper way. I pray this sparks an awakening in your heart the way it has in mine—and that as you seek Him daily, God continues to give you deeper understanding, richer insight, and greater awe for the new covenant we share in Christ.

Tell me below what you think of communion, and how it impacts you to partake of the cup and bread in the comments below.