Can you Worship when you have strife?

Let us take a look at the two definitions of the two words and see if we can put them together.
  What does Worship mean?

-Reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power; also: an act of expressing such reverence

 a form of religious practice with its creed and ritual

   What does Strife mean?

-Bitter sometimes violent conflict or dissension <political strife>

 an act of contention : fight, struggle

 exertion or contention for superiority

 

After seeing these two definitions side by side we can now see if we can do both at the same time.  After reading this what do you think?  Is it possible? What do we get when we do these both at the same time?  Now when I mention "worship" this is what I mean: praising God in Church, praying for someone or over someone, and praying.  As you can see above the dictionary makes clear that there is a reverence offered to a divine being or supernatural power.  It is an act of expressing such reverence.  So when we are to worship God we should be in such awe and wonder of how powerful he is and what he has done in our life that we can only think of him and how great he is that we just want to offer it up to him.  So now let's get "Strife" into the equation and see what we get.  As you can see above, Strife is a Bitter sometimes even a violent conflict or dissension (quarrel) an act of contention or exertion for superiority.  So right from the beginning we can see the word "bitter" we know God only gives us a peace, love and sound mind (2 Tim 1:7) So now we know that this "strife" is a direct hit from Satan himself.  Now let's see what Satan wants to do by bringing us strife.  He has come to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10) Also in scripture 2 Corinthians 2:11 we are told:So that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.  So if we don't know scripture then we aren't armed with Gods word and we aren't able to have the wisdom to see when the devil is attacking us.  We see now he ONLY comes to steal, kill, and destroy.  What is "strife?"  Strife is basically a disruption of peace, a fight.  Fights destroy relationships, it creates distance and it gets us alone to where the devil isolates us from others.  So let me now fast forward to the original point of this blog.  Can you Worship AND have Strife?

 

       It is possible to do both, I have seen people in church doing it.  I have known people who fight on the way to church and then once they get in church, they are smiling and praising God.  I have done this myself, especially very early on in my christian walk.  Now that I am a mature christian I am now bothered to the point where I can't have peace and it needs to be settled immediately.  Now before I was saved, oh boy! I could probably went for weeks before I talked to someone that I was in a fight with. Now I am going to ask this question:  Can you have TRUE worship with God and Strife at the SAME TIME?  The answer is NO!!!!  This is impossible to do.  In order to come before God fully we have to leave everything to God, and I mean EVERYTHING to God.  We need to surrender our entire lives to him, and we can't have anything blocking us from God.  When we try and take "control" of things or even people, then we are playing God and that blocks us from the Lord.  Do you ever wonder why you can't hear from God?  It could be that you have things blocking you and you haven't surrendered it all. We can try and fool everyone we want by acting one way behind doors and then one way in front of people, the truth is that with God he sees it ALL, so there are no two sides, there is only one side with him.  So next time you are in worship singing, praying, or even praying for someone ask yourself this: Is anything blocking you from the relationship with God that he wants you to have?