8 Ways Satan Keeps You From Worship
Satan wants to keep you from
worshipping the One he hates. He wants to keep you from doing the right thing,
whether that is spending time alone with the Lord in Scripture and prayer,
attending and participating in public worship services, or any other thing that
will draw you closer to the Lord. Here, courtesy of Thomas Brooks, are eight
ways Satan will keep you from worship.
Here’s how I would encourage you to
use the list. Think of the times that you decide to stay in bed instead of
getting up to read the Bible; think of the times you scrapped family worship
for no good reason; think of the times you stayed home from church instead of
going to worship. Think of those things, and see which of these temptations is
the one Satan brings to you.
1.
He makes
the world look beautiful, attractive and desirable. Many people profess Christ and see him as desirable for a
time. For a while they enjoy private and public worship and do it all with
enthusiasm. But before long Satan presents to them worldly things and makes
those look more beautiful and desirable than Christ, and many souls are drawn
away. “Where one thousand are destroyed by the world’s frowns, ten thousand are
destroyed by the world’s smiles.”
2.
He makes
you aware of the fact that those who worship the Lord have often faced danger,
loss and suffering. There are many men who would obey
the Lord and worship him, except that they fear the consequences. Satan loves
to present the high cost of obedience. This was the case for many in Jesus day:
“Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of
the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the
synagogue” (John 12:42).
3.
He gives
you an awareness of the difficulty of worshipping well. Satan will whisper, “It is difficult to pray well, it is
hard to spend time with the Lord and to persevere until he speaks to you
through his Word, it isn’t worth the effort of going to church and being warm
and friendly and engaging with other Christians.” Whatever God tells you to do,
Satan will present it to you as a great burden or as something you do poorly,
and in this way he will keep you from it.
4.
He leads
you to wrongly understand the implications of the gospel. Christ has done everything for you and given everything
you need in his death and resurrection. There is nothing left for you to do but
rejoice in Christ and to serve him out of the joy of salvation. But Satan will
lead you to make wrong inferences from what Christ has done, encouraging you,
for example, to believe Christ has freed you from the need or desire to spend
time with him or to gather with other Christians. He will allow you to see the
gospel, but do all he can to make you understand it all wrong.
5.
He shows
you how many of those who follow Christ with obedience are poor and despised. Satan will ensure you see that those who are most
interested in worshipping God are the poorest and most despised of all. You can
see echoes of this in John 7: “The Pharisees answered them, ‘Have you also been
deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But
this crowd that does not know the law is accursed’.”
6.
He shows
you that the majority of the people in the world, along with the great and
mighty of the world, do not worship the Lord.
Satan will ask, “Don’t you see that the great, the rich, the honorable, the
intellectual elite, the wise, the most honored, and the sheer majority of
people do not trouble themselves with worshipping the Lord? You would be much
better off to be like them. After all, why would you think that you, of all
people, have this figured out?” To have success here he will intentionally draw
your attention away from Exodus 23:2 and many similar passages: “You shall not
fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit, siding
with the many, so as to pervert justice.”
7.
He fills
your mind with unimportant and distracting thoughts while you are attempting to
worship. He afflicts you with so much
distraction and futility that you are tempted to say, “I have no desire to hear
from the Lord in his Word, no desire to speak to him in prayer, no desire to
spend time with other Christians in worship services.” He crowds out the very
thought of worship by the sheer weight of lesser concerns.
8.
He
encourages you to take comfort in past performances of your religious duties
and in that way he convinces you to stop trying. He reminds you that in the past you read so much and prayed
so much and spent so much time in worship. And having reminded you, he
convinces you that you have earned the right to coast for a while. “You already
know this. You’ve already done this. You’ve already prayed this. You’ve been to
better worship services than this.” And through it all he inclines you to rest
from worship.
Source: http://www.challies.com/reading-classics-together/8-ways-satan-keeps-you-from-worship
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