Summary:

The devil wants to hinder our worship because worship brings revival. It brings the power of the Holy Ghost and with the power of the Holy Ghost comes deliverance, peace, and victory.

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 cannot go into the God’s presence.

If we don’t go into the presence of God we cannot grow spiritually, therefore we shall spiritually speaking die.

That’s why when we come to the house of God it is imperative that we worship.

We need to get our minds off of everything else 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 you of your blessing.

Because worship is what gives you the strength to get up and go on.

If you don’t worship you become weak and frail and easy to whip.

So the devil wants to hinder your worship.

We all know the song: “We have come into His house and gathered in His name to worship Him.”

And that is exactly why we have gathered here today and there’s not a problem or a devil that’s going to stop us from worshiping God, right here and right now.

This is God’s house, and He’s worthy of all we can give.

I want to ask you a question, Why did you come to church today? What’s your purpose for being here?

Did you come to worship God or did you come for some other reason?

One way the devil can hinder our worship is through preoccupation

If he can preoccupy your mind while you are at church he can hinder 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 you?

You know that you ought to have your mind on God but for some reason your mind is on everything but God when you come here to worship. You are too busy thinking about other things.

You might wonder whether or not you left the stove on or unplugged the iron.

Or you might be sitting there thinking about the argument that you just had with your spouse.

Or you might be thinking about what time the game starts, sure hope the preacher has a short one today. Or you might be paying attention to your phone, or to your neighbor in the pew, or writing out a to do list or one of the many other things that can get done while you are sitting in the pew.

Understand: the devil will fill your mind with anything that will stop your worship.

Sometimes you even get preoccupied with what everybody in the church thinks about you.

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. And when you are here to please the Lord, you know what happens? When you come here and are in worship with him, nobody else is paying attention to you, because you are doing exactly what you came here to do.

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 their minds on God. 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 you come to Gods house; if you would somehow occupy yourself with God and not preoccupy yourself with something else you would see a greater outpouring of the Holy Ghost.

When you are in worship all of your attention is to be on God.

You can’t be looking at everybody else and focus on God at the same time.

You can’t scan the church to see who’s here and who isn’t and still have your mind on God.

You can’t be thinking; oh man, so and so needed to hear that message that the Pastor just spoke, I sure hope he’s or she is listening and still have your mind on God.

The devil will use any device necessary to preoccupy your mind because that will keep you from worshiping God.

If you would focus on worship the way you focus on other people, there’s no telling what would happen in this place.

Let’s be serious, we know we all sin, we all have things that we do that aren’t right. But, let somebody walk in this church, sit down, raise their hands and start praising God, when you know exactly what they did the previous week and what happens you’re looking at them, you’re preoccupied with them being here because you know that they had a sinful week and that person knows that they had a sinful week, but they don’t care they came here to worship. Why, because God is a forgiving God and they can come here and worship and pray and talk to God about the terrible week they had and leave here feeling the holy spirit because they came here and worshipped. They didn’t care about who was looking at them or was judging them. They left all of that preoccupation outside.

But if you were focused on that person instead of your worship you fell for the trick of the devil. Your worship died because you were preoccupied looking at them instead of looking up to God.

You have to stop allowing the enemy to distract you. If you will go ahead and worship God instead of looking at others and wondering why do they even bother coming to church in the first place.

You would have a move of God and when God moves that person will pray through or get up and leave. Do not get caught in the devil’s trap.Stop looking at what other people are wearing. Stop looking at their reputation. Keep your eyes on Jesus and worship Him and let the Holy Ghost move you.

Another way the devil can hinder your worship is through prayerlessness.If the devil can keep you from praying, your worship is nothing more than a ritual.

The devil’s favorite tool to keep you from praying is to get you to think that you’re too busy to pray. The truth is you’re too busy not to pray!

The devil will use any tool; he will use the TV, your play time, your job, or even sleep; but if he can he will hinder your prayer life, because that will hinder your worship.

The devil knows that if you’re not praying you’re already defeated.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 Ghosts 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 hinder 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.

Another way the devil can hinder 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.

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.

Another way that the devil can hinder our worship is through prejudice.

The devil has used this tool a lot in order to hinder 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. People come to church and they have prejudice against somebody else.

We cannot 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, who they love, the color of their skin.

We cannot get preoccupied with prejudice because that will hinder 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 are going 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 in this church.

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.

Another way that the devil can hinder 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 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 cannot replace the presence of 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.

There are a lot of people who want to know who Jesus is and they 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. We need to be that church. A church where we worship in spirit and in truth, a church where everybody feels accepted and not judged and stared at. We need to remember that we are preparing the way of the Lord.

When His way is prepared, He comes into the service and does great work in the lives of all the people that are here to worship. all of the people that aren’t preoccupied, all of the people that are open to him.

And the devil can’t do anything to stop it. He cannot stop them from being delivered, set free, cleansed or made whole.

We cannot allow the devil to hinder our worship, especially now during these times when the need is so great.

Start coming to church to worship, not just to sit in the seat so you can say you went to church. Come and worship Him in spirit and in truth and see how he moves in you, how he moves in others and how he moves in the church.

Amen

‒ Pastor Pam