Five Ways The Devil Can Bind Our Worship
Psalm 99:1-4 The Lord reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved.
[2] The Lord is great in Zion; and he is high above all the people.
[3] Let them praise thy great and terrible name; for it is holy.
[4] The king’s strength also loveth judgment; thou dost establish equity, thou executest judgment and righteousness in Jacob.
[5] Exalt ye the Lord our God, and worship at his footstool; for he is holy.
[6] Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among them that call upon his name; they called upon the Lord, and he answered them.
[7] He spake unto them in the cloudy pillar: they kept his testimonies, and the ordinance that he gave them.
[8] Thou answeredst them, O Lord our God: thou wast a God that forgavest them, though thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.
[9] Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at his holy hill; for the Lord our God is holy.
Worship is important to the church. As a matter of fact the church is powerless without worship.
Worship is important to the soul. Worship is how we go into the presence of God.
If we don’t worship, we can not go into the God’s presence.
If we don’t go into the presence of God we can not grow spiritually, therefore we shall surly die. (spiritually speaking)
That’s why when we come to the house of God it is imperative that we worship.
We need to get our minds off the busy day that we had and get our minds on God.
We can’t worship God if our minds are everywhere but here.
Worship is important. We have to have worship.
Worship is what brings revival. It brings the power of the Holy Ghost and with the power of the Holy Ghost comes deliverance, peace, and victory.
That’s why the devil wants to hinder our worship.
He will do whatever it takes to distract you to the point that when you get to church you don’t feel like worshiping.
That’s how he robs us of our blessing.
Because worship is what gives us the strength to get up and go on.
If we don’t worship we become weak and frail and easy to whip.
So the devil wants to hinder our worship.
There an old song that we sang when I was a boy: “We have come into His house and gathered in His name to worship Him.”
And that is exactly why we have gathered here tonight and there’s not a problem or a devil that’s going to stop us from worshiping God.
This is God’s house, and He’s worthy of all we can give.
Question: Why did I come to church tonight? What’s my purpose?
Did I come to worship God or did I come for some other reason?
One way the devil can bind our worship is through preoccupation
If he can preoccupy your mind while you are at church he can bind your worship.
In other words if your mind is on something besides God, you can’t worship the Lord.
How many times has this happened to us?
We know that we ought to have our minds on God but for some reason our minds are on where we’re going to eat lunch after Sunday school.
Or whether or not we left the stove on or unplugged the iron.
Or we might be sitting there thinking about the argument that we just had with our spouse.
Or we might be thinking about what time the game starts, sure hope the preacher has a short one today.
Understand: the devil will fill your mind with anything that will stop your worship.
Sometimes we even get preoccupied with what everybody in the church thinks about us.
Am I dressed the right way? Do I fit in? Do I look out of place? Does my hair look OK? Is anybody staring at me?
Don’t forget the reason we’re here! We didn’t come here to please one another; we came here to please the Lord.
The Bible says in Acts 2:1 that on the Day of Pentecost that they were in one accord.
They were not preoccupied. When they came to that Upper Room they had there minds on God.
They were worried about the races. They weren’t worried about lunch.
They were only concerned about pleasing God.
They were hungry for God to manifest Himself among them.
And when we come to Gods house; if we would somehow occupy ourselves with God and not preoccupy ourselves with something else we would see a greater outpouring of the Holy Ghost.
All of our attention has to be on God.
We can’t be looking at everybody else and focus on God at the same time.
We can’t scan the church to see who’s here and who isn’t and still have our minds on God.
We can’t be thinking; oh man, so and so needed that, I sure hope he’s listening and still have our minds on God.
The devil will use any device necessary to preoccupy your mind because that will keep you from worshiping God.
If we would focus on worship the way we focus on other people, there’s no telling what would happen in this place.
I mean, you let somebody walk in this church, sit down, raise their hands and start praising God, we’re all looking at them, (preoccupied) because we know that they are living in sin; they know they’re living in sin and don’t care.
But we fell for the trick of the devil. The service died because we were preoccupied looking at them instead of looking up to God.
We have to stop allowing the enemy to distract us. If we will go ahead and worship God instead of looking at them wondering why they even bothered coming to church in the first place.
We would have a move of God and when God moves they will pray through or get up and leave.
We are not going to get caught in the devil’s trap.
We’re not going to look at what other folks are wearing. We’re not going to look at their reputation.
We’re going to keep our eyes on Jesus and worship Him and have a move of the Holy Ghost.
A second way the devil can bind our worship is through prayerlessness.
If the devil can keep us from praying, our worship is nothing more than a ritual.
The devil’s favorite tool to keep us from praying is to get us to think that we’re too busy to pray. [We’re too busy not to pray]
The devil will use any tool; he will use the TV, your play time, you job, or even sleep; but if he can he will hinder your prayer life, because that will bind your worship.
The devil knows that if you’re not praying you’re already whipped.
But when you pray it puts the devil in a panic mode. Because he knows that God answers prayer.
That’s why the devil tried to hinder prayer in the Bible in every way he could.
In Acts 19:15, it was the demons that cried out and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know”.
You know why they knew Paul, because he prayed?
When we don’t pray it makes the devils job easy.
Prayer prepares us for worship! It tunes us in to the Holy Ghost frequency channel.
We become aware and sensitive to what God wants and we are able to flow with the Spirit.
When we pray, we understand what God is trying to tell us because we are tuned in to the right station.
The more we pray the more we know Jesus and worship becomes a natural part of our lives.
And the devil wants to bind that because worship will make you an overcomer.
You will overcome whatever the devil throws at you if you will be earnest, fervent, and consistent in prayer.
Prayer gives us liberty to worship at home and at church.
A third way the devil can bind our worship is through pride
Pride is a disease that makes everybody sick but the person who has it.
Somebody who’s proud is always looking down on other people.
But as long as they are looking down, they cannot see God because He is up, so they miss out on the higher and better aspects of life.
Because the Bible says that all good things come down from the Father above.
God hates pride! He said in Proverbs 8:13, pride and arrogance, I hate.
Pride will build a wall between you and God.
Psalm 138:6 Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly: but the proud he knoweth afar off.
You can’t be close to God and be full of pride.
We can’t be arrogant and be close to God. We can’t start thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think and be close to God.
Pride is a spirit that we have to get rid of so that we can be close to God.
But it’s hard to crucify the flesh. So how do you do it? Through prayer!
James 4:6 says that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
The humble can worship the Lord.
When we humble ourselves in the house of God and we worship, God will respond to that kind of worship.
Then He makes us glad. Then we can rejoice.
A fourth way that the devil can bind our worship is through prejudice
The devil has used this tool a lot in order to bind the worship of some good people.
To have prejudice means that somebody has prejudged somebody else or something else without sufficient facts to make an accurate judgment.
It’s sad to say, but it happens in a lot of churches. Folks come to church and they have prejudice against somebody else.
We can not fall into the devils trap and prejudge somebody who doesn’t fit into our predetermined mold.
We cannot get caught judging somebody’s spiritual condition. It doesn’t matter how they look.
We can not get preoccupied with prejudice because that will bind our worship and if our worship is bound that will hinder our revival.
I understand that some folks don’t intend to change but I also understand that if we allow ourselves to become preoccupied with it that it will hinder revival.
That’s exactly what the devil wants.
So that’s what we are not going to give him. We will just continue to worship without prejudice.
Anybody who wants to worship with us can. Because if we, the church, worship without being preoccupied, God’s going to move.
And when He moves there’s a chance that if they are in the service that He can move in their lives.
Can I add something? We cannot be prejudice about how we think everybody ought to worship.
Everybody worships different. If we didn’t, we would all be puppets on a string.
What good is that to God?
God wants us to worship Him because we want to, not because we have to.
It doesn’t matter how we worship just so we worship.
Let’s leave the judging to God. 1 Samuel 16:7 tells us that man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
Everybody has their own unique relationship with God.
It’s our responsibility to come to church with the purpose the desire to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
All prejudices have to be put aside and crucified.
A fifth way that the devil can bind our worship is through presumption
What does presumption have to do with? It has to do with overstepping, taking for granted.
If we ever reach the place to where we start thinking that God is here just because we showed up, we are badly mistaking.
The devil would like for us to think that we can have church with or without God.
That we can replace God with social activities or whatever.
But we can not replace the presence of Almighty God. If God is not here, then we may as well stay home.
Because it would be a waste of our time to come to church and God not be there.
This church depends on the presence of God.
Lives are at stake! Families are at stake! Marriages are at stake!
We must have the presence of God in this church.
Not only do we need his presence in this church, but we need to experience his presence in our lives.
According to Matthew 3:3; we must prepare the way of the Lord, instead of presuming that He’ll show up just because we’re here.
The name on the building doesn’t guarantee that God will be here.
So we have to prepare for the presence of God. How? We need to remove all the unsightly things from our lives.
Preparation is not in the buildings or our personalities or talents, it’s in our individual hearts.
Preparing the way means that the crooked places must be made straight (Isaiah 40:4), that all sin be removed from the camp.
We may have to repent, but whatever it takes to make sure that the presence of God is here is what we ought to be willing to do.
When we make preparation, there will be a revelation of the glory of God.
Conclusion:
There are a lot of folks who want to know who Jesus is and they do want to experience His presence for themselves.
They are hurting. They are suffering and struggling with life. Just trying to live from one day to the next is a burden.
What they need is a church where they can come and worship with liberty.
They need a church where they can come and feel the presence of God and receive His touch in their life.
They need a church where their spiritual needs can be met.
When we worship in spirit and in truth, we are preparing the way of the Lord.
When His way is prepared, He steps comes into the service and does a great work in the lives of people.
And the devil can’t do anything to stop it. He can not stop them from being delivered, set free, cleansed or made whole.
We can not allow the devil to bind our worship, especially now when the need is so great and Jesus is about to return.
We must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
