8 Ways Satan Keeps You From Worship

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I found this on the website: challies.com/reading-classics-together/8-ways-satan-keeps-you-from-worship
I haven’t looked at the rest of the site so I am not sure if it is a site that is anti-Catholic or not. Too many of those, but I did come across this and thought it was so so true.
8 Ways Satan Keeps You From Worship
June 27, 2013
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.
 
I did come across an article on that site that talked about protestants converting to Catholicism and visa versa. The writer seems like he does not understand the Catholic religion and is critical of our closeness to God without realizing that he is being that way. My own personal views on why protestants convert to Catholicism is because they want to be closer to God and worship him in a better way than they had before. These people know what they want, they aren’t being deceived by Catholicism. Many people leave the Catholic church because they don’t like the ‘rules’ of the church and plan on meeting God halfway or not at all to make their life ‘easier’. I feel sorry for people who do this because they don’t understand that we have to go all out of our way to meet with God on his terms alone. This is a challenge we all must face and every day of our life we must do our best to prepare ourselves for our eternal life in heaven with the Lord Jesus. But the choice is ours. I never heard the Catholic church say that someone is going to hell if they are of another religion. I think God will judge us by works (another story) and what’s in our hearts.
 
smaw8 said:
I did come across an article on that site that talked about protestants converting to Catholicism and visa versa. The writer seems like he does not understand the Catholic religion and is critical of our closeness to God without realizing that he is being that way. My own personal views on why protestants convert to Catholicism is because they want to be closer to God and worship him in a better way than they had before. These people know what they want, they aren’t being deceived by Catholicism. Many people leave the Catholic church because they don’t like the ‘rules’ of the church and plan on meeting God halfway or not at all to make their life ‘easier’. I feel sorry for people who do this because they don’t understand that we have to go all out of our way to meet with God on his terms alone. This is a challenge we all must face and every day of our life we must do our best to prepare ourselves for our eternal life in heaven with the Lord Jesus. But the choice is ours. I never heard the Catholic church say that someone is going to hell if they are of another religion. I think God will judge us by works (another story) and what’s in our hearts.
Click to expand...
challies.com/articles/the-appeal-of-roman-catholicism

This is the article to which I believe you are referring that he wrote. As a convert (Protestant to Catholic) I am offended by it; quite frankly. There is a quite peace in my soul that I have gained from Catholicism that was never there as a Protestant. I am not ignorant, nor do I think the history of the religion made my decision easier. There was harmony in many of the Protestant churches I attended and the numbers of Protestants in the US are vast. My conversion was so much more than this. It was God who spoke to me. Yes, that’s right, God.
And I listened, and I followed his voice. Amazingly as simple as that.

I also find there are way more than eight ways Satan keeps us from worship; although most of them he lists contain validity. We are taught through Catechism that we will be tempted by all sorts of distractions; but different than my Protestant upbringing, I was more educated and aware of this, thus became more prepared. Satan not only attempts to be an obstacle to our worshiping God; he attempts to be an obstacle in ALL phases of our life in which we are trying to live in the path of the Holy Spirit. We must maintain a constant diligence in rebuking these attempts and focus on the Word as it relates to God’s teachings.
OK. I’ll get off my soap box now.
 
To me it seems the devil uses despair the most.

Giving up in marriage, giving up on a son/daughter, giving up on parents, giving up on prayer, giving up on a neighbor, giving up on trying to do better, giving up on sobriety, giving up on staying away from porn, giving up on our job, giving up on life, giving up on seeing good, giving up on doing good, giving up on our faith, giving up worship, giving up on just about anything.

But prayer is the worst to give up on. Because then we give up on Jesus which is the end of all giving up.

Despair = devil.

Prayer = trust in Jesus, even for the miraculous.
 
the site is missing #9

“Keep you away from the Eucharist, which is the real presence of Christ. He’ll say this sect that does not have the Eucharist is the true Church and you don’t need the Eucharist.”
 
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