He was SERIOUS when He said “This is my body…”
I do encourage you to let it be the Lord Jesus who guides you in this matter, and I pray that you earnestly seek for Him to do so, in the same intensity with which you probably did when praying about that “baptism in the Holy Spirit.”
But, apart from the words Jesus actually CHOSE to use over the bread and wine, and
apart from the fact that ALL of the ancient Churches taught that He, in his risen body and blood, was somehow in the Eucharistic bread and wine, and was somehow eaten (without saying specifically HOW they understood it happening, and
apart from the fact that until the Reformation NO Churches ever taught the limiting version that Evangelical Protestants now teach about the Eucharist…
Apart from all that, all I can say is the deeper my yearning grew to draw closer to Jesus, and to see Him and be united with Him, the more wonderful that teaching and promise became to me. It gave so much more meaning to things like:
“Christ IN you, the hope of glory,”
“that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and _I_ IN them”,
“my Father will love him, and we will come to him and take up RESIDENCE with him”,
“The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood resides IN me, and I IN him.”
“The one who remains IN me – and I IN him – bears much fruit, because apart from me you can accomplish nothing.”
“By this we know that we are IN Him.” (and there are SO many more such intimate passages)
One can say that some of these “in” passages are merely figurative or somehow “symbolic” and not to be taken literally. But some of them do NOT easily suggest that it is only symbolic use of language, especially something like “Christ IN you, the hope of glory.”
“And by this we know that He abides IN us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.” If you believe that when you experientially receive the Holy Spirit He is truly and LITERALLY within your body, mind and spirit, it OUGHT to make it logical and rather easy to both accept and WANT Jesus (through His Spirit) also be truly and literally within us: body, mind and spirit: why should not what He said at His sacred meal be one of the means by which He causes that to happen.
The fact that Christ may dwell in you “by faith” is wonderful, but why should you restrict that becoming true in other events as well, especially since He and His apostles spoke so boldly and scandalously about it in John 6.
Good doctrine makes good EXPERIENCE possible: whether it regards to being “born again,” “filled with the Holy Spirit” or “This is my body…”. “Be it done unto you according to your faith!”
As I said above, “all I can say is the deeper my yearning grew to draw closer to Jesus, and to be united with Him, the more wonderful that teaching and promise became to me.” It is not simply about discussing IDEAS: it is all about actually EXPERIENCING something supernatural, intimate and wonderful. That is why I find some kind of parallel between the Lord’s Supper and spirit-filled married disciples joining together to become “one flesh” in the sexual union that God invented for them to “know” each other.
