Craig Groeschel - Everyday Choices Keeping You Stuck (11/21/2025)
Pastor Craig uses a humorous grocery store story to illustrate selective obedience—doing most of what God asks but rationalizing the rest—and contrasts it with King Saul’s partial obedience in 1 Samuel 15, showing how compromise starts with whispers of sin. The core message is that God desires full obedience, not partial, because while salvation is by grace alone, many blessings are conditional on our faithfulness and surrender to Him.
Wanting to Do What’s Right
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 want to do what’s right. You want to obey God. I wish I could say I always want to 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.»
The Grocery Store Moment
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 Life Church shirt.
And I just 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 blankly. 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.»
The Bigger Point
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.
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.»
The Series: Christian-ish
We’re in a message series called Christian-ish. If you missed last week, we define Christian-ish 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, almost Christian, a kind of sort of Christian.
And one of the most common qualities of someone who is Christian-ish, and I know this because I’ve been there, one of the most common qualities of someone who’s Christian-ish is something I call selective obedience. Selective obedience.
Defining 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. Type that in the comment section: obedience.
Attitudes Toward Rules
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 hand, 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 want to break them.
Three Verses on Obedience
What I want to do for a moment is I want to look at three different verses in the Bible that talk about obedience, and then I want to 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 all that the Lord your God has commanded you.» Why? «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 fully and keep my covenant, ” someone say it with me—next word—“then you’ll be my treasured possession.»
One More Verse
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.
Conditional Blessings
And the second thing is they’re 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.
Saved by Grace, Blessed by Obedience
And I want to 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?
Unconditional vs. Conditional
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.
Covenant Theology
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 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 is the Davidic Covenant. And then, there’s the Priestly Covenant. And there’s also the most important, which is the New Covenant.
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 the gift given freely by God through grace, certain blessings flow from obedience to God.
God Wants Full Surrender
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.
The Story of Saul
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 want to 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 want to do is I want to 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.
If you don’t know his story, he starts out as a very humble servant. And he was anointed to be the king over Israel. And he started out with a real heart like, „God, I want to obey you and God, I want to please you.“
Saul’s Drift
And over time he started one decision after 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 starts 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 being completely destroyed in your life? And the answer is you do it one step at a time.
The Amalekite Command
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.
Partial Obedience
Verse 7 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 to destroy everything, „they spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, the fat calves, and the lambs—everything that was good.“
The Whisper of Compromise
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, fat 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 want to be a good steward, don’t you? You don’t want to 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.“
Disobedience Starts Small
And so, what do you see? God told Saul to destroy everything, and he didn’t do it. What led to his compromise? It’s 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?
The Cost of Allowing Sin
Here’s the problem: disobedience is rarely a one-time event. When you do it once, you think, „Well, I’ve already done it now.“ Disobedience is rarely a one-time event. 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. And 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.
Where Is Sin Whispering?
So at the beginning of the message, we prayed and asked God to speak to us and to convict us. And what I want to do is I want to ask you this question and give you a moment just to let God perhaps speak to you. And I want to 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.
Common Areas of Compromise
It could be that you are 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-ish—claiming Jesus, but not really fully obeying Him.
Saul’s Excuses
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.
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.
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. 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.
Obedience Is Better
And in verse 22, Samuel replies to him: „Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much 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.
Love and Obedience
It was John who said this: „This is love for God.“ Do you want to 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.
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.
Full Surrender
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 all.
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. What’s the whisper of compromise that you’ve been justifying? Name it. Because partial obedience isn’t obedience. It’s sin.
Prayer for Conviction
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 want to be fully obedient to God.“ Type in the comments section: „I want to be fully obedient to God.“
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 want to 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.
Invitation to Salvation
As you keep praying today, nobody looking around. Man, this message is so heavy on my heart and I just want to 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 look Christian-looking things, but I was Christian-ish.
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 paid the price for our unrighteousness.
Jesus died for our sins, and God raised Him from the dead. And then, there’s a conditional promise: that if you call on the name of Jesus, you gotta do something. You can’t earn it, but you have to trust it’s for you. You receive the gift when you call on the name of Jesus.
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 want to obey you. I want to 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.