What Keeps You From Worshiping?

A couple years back I was playing with a Christian
Rock band called Two Towns Over. We toured and
played all over Florida and had a lot of fun doing it.
I remember one concert in particular outside on the
beach. It was a night worship service in front of a Church
right off of A1A. Th e words to the songs were projected
on the front of the Church and everyone from the road
could see it. We had finished our set and a local worship
band was playing. There were a lot of people there and
I was excited to worship in a public setting under the
stars with the cool salty breeze coming off the ocean.
It was great, until I heard someone shouting from
behind us, “Satan Rules” and derogatory terms about Jesus.
I turned around and saw two kids on bikes, dressed in all
black and sweaty from all the riding they must had been
doing. Th e shouting got worse and people began to become
more than annoyed. I got angry, and I mean real “I’m going
to beat them with a bible” anger. I stopped singing and
walked in their direction. As I got closer the anger grew
and grew, their shouting got softer and softer until silence.
At that very moment something changed in my heart,
I said a half second prayer that seemed like twenty four
hours of prayer and fasting. I said “God, speak through me.”
Just like that, my heart was changed and I talked with
them about what they believed and as I spoke to them
more gathered around us to listen to the two atheist
high school students. We invited them to an after party
at my friends house where we played more worship
music, and everybody treated those two high schoolers
like best friends. They stayed and even started singing
some of the songs with us. I don’t know if they ever
started going to church or were baptized and saved. But
I do know that we didn’t let Satan ruin our worship, in
fact God turned something evil into something good.
What keeps you from worshiping? What stops you in your
daily life from singing His praises. Is it the guy that cut you
off in traffic while you were listening to the Christian radio
station? Is it the new songs we do in Church? Is it the lighting?
Th e baby crying next to you? Is it anything? Or is it you?
I think what really keeps us from worship is ourself.
We get in the way with what we want out of worship (say
that five times fast). We fear intimacy with God, and are
distracted easily.
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither
angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor
any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else
in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of
God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If nothing can separate us from His love, we should not
allow anything to separate our love from Him