Craig Groeschel - Small Choices That Keep You Stuck
How many of you would say, that generally speaking, you want to do what’s right? Raise your hand. You can type in the comment section, I wanna do what’s right. You wanna obey God. I wish I could say I always wanna do what’s right, but a lot of times I don’t. Can I be real honest today? I was in the grocery store and I was in a hurry. I’m always in a hurry. And I looked up and there was the express line that allowed 10 items. I counted my items and I had 12. And so I thought to myself, 12 is really close to 10. 12 is a spiritual number. Jesus had 12 disciples, there should be 12 in the express line.
So what do you think I did? You guessed it. I quietly and innocently just tried to take my 12 items into the 10 item line. And that’s when it happened. A little sweet, innocent voice from behind me said, «Pastor is 12 the new 10»? And I looked back and there was a really sweet lady wearing a Live Church shirt. And I just, I froze, I panicked. I’m thinking like, do I throw her two items just to make it work? Do I change my voice and act like I’m from Great Britain, then run out the door. What do I do? What do I do? And so I just stared at her blank. I didn’t say anything and she smiled and she said, «Pastor, why don’t you just give me your two avocados and we’ll pretend the whole thing never happened».
And there it was. And you say, is that whole story true? And I would say most of it’s true. I did get caught by a lady wearing a Life Church shirt and it made me think about how often I’ll actually do that with God. I’ll know that God wants me to do something and I’ll do some of it or most of it, but not all of it. Yeah. Yeah. And you might be the same. I’m guessing that there may be times where you tell yourself, Hey, I’m doing pretty good and there’s just this one area. I’m only human. I’m a pretty good Christian and if I do this one thing I know I’m not supposed to. But no one’s really gonna notice that it’s really not that big of a deal. And God will certainly understand.
We’re in a message series called Christianish. If you missed last week, we define Christianish as someone that has a half-hearted faith that wears the label of Christian without truly following Jesus. It’s kind of a sort of Christian, a almost Christian, a kind of sort of Christian. And one of the most common qualities of someone who is Christianish, and I know this because I’ve been there, one of the most common qualities of someone who’s Christianish is something I call selective obedience. Selective obedience. You know what this is. Like, we’re gonna do what God’s word tells us to do as long as it’s not too difficult, unless God’s asking us too much or if we have a better plan or if we’re in a hurry and we want to go through the express line. It’s selective obedience.
I’ll define selective obedience this way. Selective obedience is the dangerous illusion that doing some of what God commands is enough, when it’s really disobedience in disguise. Obedience. Everybody say obedience. Obedience. Type that in the comment section, obedience. Obedience is a tricky subject. For example, some of you love the rules. How many of you like following the rules is your love language? Raise your hand. You can type that in the comment section. Following the rules is my love language. Others of you, not so much. I’d tell you to raise your hands but you won’t. Why? Because you don’t want to. How many of you would say that rules are just dares in disguise, right? You just wanna break them.
What I wanna do for a moment is I wanna look at three different verses in the Bible that talk about obedience and then I wanna play a little game with you. I want you to try to figure out what these verses have in common. We’re looking for two qualities that these three verses on obedience have in common. We’ll look at Deuteronomy 5:33. This says, «Walk in obedience,» to part of? No. «To all that the Lord your God has commanded you». Why? So that anything happens, no. «So that you may live and prosper». Walk in all obedience so that God will bless you. Let’s look at the next verse. Exodus 19:5. Now if you obey me partially, no, I’m giving you a little hint there. God says, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, someone say it with me. Next word. «Then you’ll be my treasured possession». Let’s look at one more. Job 36 that says, «If they listen and obey God,» what’s gonna happen? «They will be blessed».
If you look at these three verses, there are two things that they all have in common. Do any of you see them? I’ll answer the question and show you what they have in common. Two things. First of all, God is asking for our full obedience. If you’ll do all, if you’ll obey me completely. God is asking for our full obedience. And the second thing is there are actually conditions. Some of God’s blessings are conditional. God is asking for all of our obedience. And those verses show us that some of his blessings are actually tied to obedience.
Now, with some of you who are more theologically minded, might say, but Craig, that sounds like works righteousness. If you don’t know what works righteousness is. Works righteousness is a belief system that we tend to think, if we work hard enough and if we’re good enough, then we can earn the favor and the forgiveness of God. It’s working our way to being right with God. And I wanna be very, very clear that this is not good theology. The Bible is ridiculously clear that we are not saved, we’re not made right with God by our good works. We’re saved by grace, the grace of God, through the perfect work of Jesus on the cross. We are saved by grace through faith and that alone. Yet, we are blessed many times because of our obedience, or God might withhold blessings when we are not obeying. We’re saved by grace, but we are blessed by God and many times by our faithfulness or our obedience. Does that make sense?
So let me just explain it a little bit deeper. With God, it’s like there’s two categories. There’s what I would call unconditional promises that are true no matter what. There are unconditional promises and then there are conditional blessings. How many of you have a kid? Raise your hand. Type in the comment section, I have a kid. If you have a kid, you know the power of unconditional promises and conditional blessings, right? A promise is, kid, I’m gonna love you no matter what. I may not like you Monday through Saturday, but I still love you no matter what you do, right? As a parent, I mean there are times your kid’s gonna drive you crazy, but you love your kid. It’s this unconditional promise. But then there are conditional blessings and there are a lot of them. Like if you do your homework, then you can go hang out with your friends.
If you eat all your food and wipe that bad attitude off your face and stop picking on your brother and don’t backtalk me, or whatever it is, then you can go and play a video game. There’s unconditional promises. I love you no matter what. And there are conditional blessings. Now let’s take that and apply it to God. There’s something that theologians call covenant theology. Covenant theology. Let’s talk about it. All of God’s redemptive plan is structured around covenants. What happened? Adam and Eve sinned against God. They broke God’s rules. And so God said, hey, let me make a covering for you. And he gave them a covenant. All through the Bible, there are covenants, which they’re really, they’re divine agreements between God and us, between God and mankind. And all of the covenants have unconditional promises, and conditional blessings. I’ll show you just a few of the covenants.
There is the creation covenant. There’s the Abrahamic covenant. There’s the mosaic covenant. I like this. There is the Davidic covenant. In other words, if you want to create a covenant and your name is David, you add ic to it. And then it’s the Davidic, not the Davidic. This the Davidic covenant. And then there’s the priestly covenant. And there’s also, the most important, which is the new covenant. These are different covenants and God’s plan to restore us to him. We see through covenants all through the Bible. The final covenant, the new covenant, there’s the Old Testament, there’s the New Testament. The New Testament is under the new covenant. Each covenant has an unconditional promise and it has a conditional blessing.
Let’s look at the new covenant because now we’re in New Testament times, we’re not under the old covenant. We’re under the new covenant. And we’re gonna look first of all at the unconditional promise. This is true for everyone. That Jesus died and rose again offering forgiveness of sins and eternal life for all who believe we’re saved by grace through faith. That anyone who calls on the name of the Lord would be saved. That’s really, really good news and that’s a promise to anyone. Then, there’s not just an unconditional promise, but there are conditional blessings. And that is this. While salvation is a gift given freely by God through grace, certain blessings flow from obedience to God. There’s an unconditional promise and there would be conditional blessings.
So to be really, really clear, 'cause I don’t want anybody to misunderstand this, you are saved by grace through faith, period. Only by the grace of God. But God blesses you with special blessings when you obey. And that’s why God doesn’t want our partial obedience. God wants our full surrender. God wants all of us. And if I could say just very pastorally, I think one of the most dangerous things that I’m seeing kind of in the modern Western church is just a whole heck of a lot of partial obedience. God, I’m gonna do the parts that I like, that feel good and the rest of it all. Well, God, you just have to understand. And God is a holy and a righteous God and he loves you unconditionally, but he wants to bless you and pour out blessings. And for some people, it may be the very reason why you’re not experiencing the blessings that you wanna experience, is because you aren’t obeying some of what God says.
And so let’s just let the holy spirit speak to us and we’ll go back to our main theme. And what I wanna do is I wanna show you one of the people in the Bible who really represents so many of us. We’re gonna look at Saul in the Old Testament and we’re gonna see a guy who started off with really good intentions, but then over time he was only partially obeying God. And if you don’t know his story, he starts out as a very humble servant. And he was anointed to be by, to be the king over Israel. And he started out with a real heart, like «God, I wanna obey you. And God I wanna please you». And over time he started one decision by another, slowly drifting from God and slowly started prioritizing his own desires above God’s will. And he would rationalize one sin and then another one. And it started to hurt his relationship with God. And it ended horribly for him.
I mean, if you watch this story, you see a guy that starched out really, really strong like a lot of you. And then eventually this old guy is consulting witches and listening to demonic voices. And you kinda ask yourself, how’d that happen? I mean, how do you go from genuinely wanting to live for God and please God and obey God, to listening to demonic voices and and being completely destroyed in your life? And the answer is, you do it one step at a time. One moment of rationalizing a sin. Another moment is saying, hey, I’m gonna do it my way. Another moment is saying, God, I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but this just isn’t convenient for me. And I mean, besides, it’s the year 2025. I mean you gotta understand these are my knees and this is what I wanna do one step at a time.
And we see a very powerful example in 1 Samuel 15 in this odd story. And I gotta tell you it’s a little bit odd, where God told Saul to go and attack and destroy the Amalekites because they were so evil. I mean these people were ridiculously wicked. And so God told Saul, destroy them, kinda like as my righteous judgment. And when you do, don’t spare a thing. That’s how evil they are. And so Saul started out obeying. He gathered 200,000 troops and he attacked the Amalekites and he was obeying God, until he didn’t. Verse seven tells us this, «Then Saul attacked the Amalekites». He’s obeying God. «He took Agag, king of the Amalekites alive,» uh-oh. He was supposed to destroy everything, but he didn’t do it. And all his people, he totally destroyed with the sword.
So he did most of what God asked him to do. Not all of it. «But Saul and the army,» who were supposed, «they’re supposed to destroy everything, they spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves and the lambs, everything that was good». Saul did what God asked him to do for a little while. He obeyed God and then he looked up and noticed this perfectly good bunch of animals, nice sheep, nice lambs, fatted calves. And very likely Saul heard a whisper. Some of you would know this whisper. The voice whispers to you, hey, you’ve done so much for God already. Certainly you’ve already done enough, Saul. You destroyed almost everything that God asked you to destroy. But those are some valuable animals. There’s real value there.
Those are some nice sheep and some fat calves. And Saul, you wanna be a good steward, don’t you? You don’t wanna waste something perfectly good, Saul. Maybe you should keep some of them for yourself. And then Saul has an idea. I know, I’ll keep them and then I’ll make a sacrifice to God. That’s what I’ll do. That sounds so spiritual. And God will like that. Surely God will understand. And so what do you see? God told Saul to destroy everything and he didn’t do it. What led to his compromise is the very same voice that tempts us all. Disobedience always starts with a whisper. With a whisper. Hey, you’re a pastor and you got some really important things to do, even though you have 12 items and it says only 10, you’re important enough to sneak on in there when everybody else has to follow the rules.
And you know how it goes. The voice tells you, go ahead and look. No one’s gonna know. Go ahead and take it. You deserve it. Everybody else does it. Hey, go ahead and say it. They deserve it anyway. Go ahead and do it. Not that big of a deal. It’s just this one time, right? Here’s the problem. Disobedience is rarely a onetime event. When you do it once, you think, well, I’ve already done it now. Well, I lost my virginity, so might as well have a party. Couple of you laugh 'cause you’ve been there, right? Disobedience is rarely a onetime event. And here’s what happens. What you allow in the moment, often owns you in the future. You think it’s no big deal and you let it into your life. An one day you realize that one act of disobedience turned into two and three and four, and it takes you to a place you never wanted to go.
You thought it was just one look and then it was too many. You thought it was just one drink, no big deal, not really a sin to drink alcohol, just sin to get drunk. I can drink a few, right? And then it costs you your marriage. You thought it was just one bet. I mean, you’re, it’s just like entertainment. Like going to a movie, like going out to dinner. It’s just 20 bucks, just 40 bucks. And then it costs you a lot. You thought, hey, they deserve it. So you’re gonna raise your voice. And the next thing you know, you’ve lost trust with those around you who don’t feel safe. Not that big of a deal. But what you allow in the moment often owns you in the future. So at the beginning of the message we prayed and asked God to speak to us and to convict us.
And what I wanna do is I want to ask you this question and give you a moment just to let God perhaps speak to you. And I wanna ask you, where are you letting sin whisper in your life? Where are you letting sin whisper in your life? God, speak to us. It could be for some of you, you’re partially obeying. You’re not taking revenge against the person that hurt you, but you’re also not forgiving them as Jesus asked you to do. It could be that you’re not completely neglecting your time with God. You still do your little verse of the day or whatever it is, but it’s more of a check the box for you, than it is really seeking after the heart and the will of God.
It could be that you’re not looking at porn all the time. You’re just going to the Gram looking on the explore page, seeing if there’s anything that might be interesting, because you have to stay current on the latest bikini fashions and you compromise and look at something that takes you to a place that you probably didn’t want to go. You’re not recklessly spending too much, you’re just a little bit of debt and you’re still not trusting God with the tithe. You’re not cheating on your spouse, but you are hiding a few things. You’ve got some secrets. You’re spending money and not talking about it. Or there’s someone at work that you’re enjoying just a little bit more than you should. Christian if, claiming Jesus, but not really fully obeying him.
And so I’d ask you, is there some place that you’re letting sin whisper its way into your life? Now, once you have an answer to that question, where are you letting sin whisper its way into your life? I want you to think about what it is. I want you to look at someone sitting next to you that you do not know and confess it to them. Don’t do that, I’m just joking. Don’t do that, please. I mean you can if you want to, but I’m just joking. I’m not really asking you to do that. But I do want you to be open to what God might say to you and then it is wise to confess to God and then to your life group. If you’re not in a life group, you’re probably missing out. One of the reasons why you might be struggling is 'cause you don’t have a group of people praying for you, supporting you. And we get into our group and we confess our sins.
The Bible says, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other that you may be healed. We confess to God for forgiveness. We confess to people for healing. And so is there an area in your life that you’re partially obeying and you’re rationalizing it? This is what Saul was doing. And so there was a guy who is a prophet named Samuel, and he kind of got up into Saul’s business and he’s like, «Saul, bro, you’re better than this. You know you love God. Why are you disobeying»? What do you think Saul did? Did he say, «Oh, you’re right. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done it». No, he did what a lot of us do. He doubled down on his disobedience. And he said this, he says Scripture. He said, «But I did obey the Lord. Hey, I went on a mission the Lord assigned me and I completely,» not true, he’s lying. «I completely destroyed the Amalekites. And I brought back Agag, their king».
And then watch as he blames someone else for what he did. He said, «The soldiers, those other people, my men, that I told them not to do this, but they did it anyway. The soldiers took the sheep and the cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God». And watch out how he distances himself from God. Watch this. He says, «They took the best of what was devoted to God in order to sacrifice them to the Lord. Not my God, but the Lord your God at Gilgal». Because here’s the deal, sin never needs a good reason. Sin just needs a good excuse, and he’s making an excuse. And we have to remember, watch as he’s, not the Lord, my God, the Lord your God. Why is he now distancing himself from God? Because every sin we justify builds a wall between us and God. Every time we sin.
God is a holy God. And that’s why he sent Jesus to deal righteously with our sin. But whenever we’re sinning against him, it’s almost like we’re saying, God, I’m putting something between us. And this is exactly what Saul was doing. And so I want to tell you, and I want you to feel there’s an unconditional promise that God loves you. He loves you so much. He loves you, he loves you. He loves you, and he wants to bless you. He loves you and he wants to bless your obedience. And so whenever he says in his word, keep your body pure, that doesn’t mean have sex with eight people before you get married. Doesn’t mean do naked gymnastics, but don’t go all the way, and call that purity. He means the body is meant for God. Honor it with sexual purity. Whenever God says, don’t look lustfully at someone, he’s not trying to rob you of your righteous visual entertainment. He’s saying that he wants you to have the mind of Christ.
There is something way better if you’ll protect your heart and your mind and your eyes. There is the blessing of purity in a God honoring covenantal marriage that can be yours if you’ll obey along the way. If God says this, he says, hey, let there be no unwholesome talk amongst you. That doesn’t mean we’re allowed to gossip and call a prayer request. Doesn’t mean that we’re allowed to cuss and take God’s name in vain. It probably means we shouldn’t be watching shows that have more bad language in it than the gospel of Mark has the name of Jesus in it. Right? When scripture says, don’t get drunk, what do you think that means? Don’t get drunk? And for those of you who are technical, don’t get high, don’t get stones, don’t get blasted. But instead there’s something better.
Be filled with the spirit of God. It’s like it’s better, it’s better, it’s better. Instead, instead, let the spirit of God. You think that there’s any high that this world offers that’s better than the presence of God directing your steps? Saul was making excuses. And in verse 22, Samuel replies to him, «Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,» as much as in what? As in obeying the Lord. And Samuel says, «To obey is better than sacrifice». «To obey is better than sacrifice». Why does God love for us to obey him? Because he loves us. Because he loves to bless our obedience. God loves it when we obey, because every act of obedience is a demonstration of our love to the one who loved us first. God, I’m loving you by obeying. I’m loving you.
It was John who said this. This is love for God. You wanna know what love for God is? It’s not just your worship, it’s obedience. This is love. To keep his commands and his commands. What? They’re not burdensome. For everyone, born of God overcomes the world. The commands of God, they’re not confining or restricting. They’re freeing and they’re liberating. And that’s why love and obedience, they’re inseparable in our relationship with God. What does God do? God loves you unconditionally. And so his love motivates you to want to obey him. And because your obedience, it demonstrates your love for God. And then what does God do? God honors your obedience by blessing you.
And then you grow closer to him and you sense his power and his presence with you. And then he continues to love you, and His love makes you want to obey him even more. And your obedience demonstrates your love and loyalty because you are not like this world. You are better than that. You are not gonna be conformed to the patterns of this world, but you’re being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you can test and improve what the will of God is good, pleasing and perfect will. And so you obey God and he blesses you and you get to know him even more and you’re obeying him, not because you have to, to get his approval, but because you want to, because he already approved of you through Jesus. It’s not partial obedience. We’re not perfect. But we want the Holy Spirit to continue to perfect us and make us more like Jesus.
So I’ll ask you again and just be really open to what the Holy Spirit might say to you, because dang, God’s been speaking to me all week long preparedness. Oh, there’s some things he’s working on me about. What’s the whisper of compromise that you’ve been justifying? Name it. Because partial obedience isn’t obedience. It’s sin. And every sin we justify, it builds a wall between us and the God who loves us. And so how do we end up one day like, well, forget the church. I don’t really like God. I’m far from God. How do we end up there? One step of disobedience at a time. How do we get close to God? One step of repentance. One step, God, I’m sorry, one step. And when you draw near to him, guess what? Immediately in the moment, God draws near to you, because there’s an unconditional promise that he loves you and he always will.
He’ll never stop loving you. But there’s some conditional blessings. If you obey me fully, then I’m gonna bless you in this way. So how do we get close to him? One step of obedience toward him, then we’re not Christian name only. We’re not Christianish. We’re devoted. We’re not perfect, but we’re being perfected. When we mess up, we just turn from our sin and we turn back to him. We’re devoted, faithful, and we’re obedient, because God doesn’t want our partial obedience. What does he want? God wants our full surrender. So as a church family, let’s be open to what God wants to say to us, what he wants to do in us, and then what He wants to do through us.
Holy Spirit, speak to us, we pray. Speak to us. Convict us and change us.
Today, at all of our churches, if you would recognize, and I’m gonna tell you right now, my hand is going up. If you would recognize there’s some area of compromise in your life where you’re partially obeying God. And today, by faith, you want to ask God to help you fully surrender. If that’s you today then say, I want to be fully obedient to God. Would you lift up your hands high right now? All of our churches, lift up your hands. Say, I wanna be fully obedient to God. Type in the comments section. I want to be fully obedient to God. You can even leave your hands up in an act of worship if you want.
God, we just acknowledge you’re the Lord of all, the king of all kings. You’re a holy and a righteous God. And God help us to know you as friend, but also revere you as a righteous king. God, we thank you that the fear of the Lord is beginning of wisdom. And so God, we do, we accept your grace through Jesus. But we also, God, we truly wanna honor and obey you. So Holy Spirit, just speak to us. God, show us any area of our life that we’ve been rationalizing, compromising, and we confess our sins to you. And God, we thank you that you are faithful and just to forgive all of our sins, God, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Holy Spirit, do a work in us.
As you keep praying today, nobody looking around. Man, this message is so heavy on my heart and I just wanna say, I’m just really pretty sure there’s many of you that you are like I was. I went to church, I believed in God. I did some kind of Christian looking things, but I was Christianish. I wore the name of Christian, but I wasn’t fully devoted to Jesus. And you may say, okay, so you weren’t working for him. No, I wasn’t receiving his grace. I didn’t know him. How are you made right with God? I wanna say it again. I wanna be as clear as I can. You cannot work your way to God. There is an unconditional promise, and that is that God loves you, period. No matter what you do, he loves you. He loves you so much that he sent Jesus his son, who was perfect in every way. And Jesus paid the price for our evil. He he paid the price for our unrighteousness.
Jesus died for our sins. And God raised him from the debt. And then there’s a conditional promise that if you call on the name of Jesus, like you gotta do something. You can’t earn it, but you have to trust this for you. You receive the gift. When you call on the name of Jesus, God hears your prayers and forgives your sins. And you’re made right with him. Not because you’re good, but because he’s good. Some of you, today’s the day of your salvation to receive the gift. And when you truly receive the gift of forgiveness through Jesus, your only reasonable response is not partial obedience, but full and total surrender.
Today at all of our churches and those of you online, if you recognize you’re only partially surrendered to Jesus or maybe not at all, today is the day of your salvation. When we step away from our sin, when we call on him, he’ll hear your prayer. He’ll forgive your sins. He’ll make you brand new. At all of our churches, those who say, «I’m not sure where I stand with him. Maybe I’ve only partially surrendered to him today. I want to give it all to him. I wanna trust that he forgives me, that he makes me new. I want to give him my whole life, savior and Lord, today I step away from my sin. I give my whole life to Jesus».
That your prayer lift your hands high right now. All of our churches say here, praise God for you right here and right over there. God bless you here as well. Others right back up there. Oh, come on church. Others who say, «yes, that’s me, Jesus. I surrender». Lift up your hands and say, «oh, be the Lord of my life». Up here, God bless you as well. Right back over here. Oh my gosh. Come on somebody. The presence of the Lord is in this place, online. Type in the comment section. I’m surrendering my life to Jesus. Just type it in the comment section. I’m surrendering my life to Jesus in this holy moment. Would you pray with those around you? Pray:
Heavenly Father, forgive all of my sins. I receive salvation through Jesus alone. Thank you for loving me, for saving me. Now, take my life. I want to know you. I wanna obey you. I wanna live for you. My life is not my own. I give it all to you. Thank you for new life. You have all of mine. In Jesus' name, I pray.