How do you know if God's asking you to give it up?
February 22, 2026 · 3 min
Book reference: When what is not sin takes precedence over the word of the Lord it becomes sin. Awe of God (John Bevere)
How do you know if God's asking you to give something up?
1. Check scripture to see if it blatantly tells you to let it go.
2. Pay attention to whether this habit or desire is taking precedence over the Lord.
3. Listen for that inner feeling from God telling you to slow down or stop.
4. If you can't control yourself and ignore God's promptings, it's time to cut it out.
Remember that to obey is better than sacrifice (1 Samuel 15:22).
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How do you know if God's asking you to give something up? A few months ago, I gave up my favorite candy in the entire world. Now, obviously, I didn't want to, but here's the problem. I'd open the bag, I would eat one, get this craving to eat more, start to get this feeling that I needed to slow down that even God was like, "Calm down." And then I would just shut it out. I would shut that feeling out and then just eat the whole bag. And then afterward, I'd feel sick. And then I'd apologize to God. I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have done that. Now, I didn't think too much about it until one day I came across this quote in a book. It said, "When what is not sin takes precedence or priority over the word of the Lord, it becomes sin." I realized when I was eating that candy and I'd get that feeling, I would ignore the voice telling me to stop and just eat the candy regardless. That's when I knew it was a problem. Now, the obvious answer is just slow down, cut back. Do you really have to give it up completely? Well, I thought about that, too. But then there's this story in scripture where God tells Saul, "Go and completely destroy these bad guys and all their animals." So Saul goes to destroy the people, but not all of them, and then saves their best animals. Why? When talking to one of God's messengers about it, he said, "I was going to sacrifice them to God." And then God's messenger, Samuel, replied to him, saying, "Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord. To obey is better than sacrifice." Now, it might sound crazy, but anytime I ate this candy, nerdclusters, by the way, I would ignore the feelings that God was giving me. To stop, to slow down. nerd clusters weren't sin, but I was putting it over the word of the Lord. Now, I actually had this revelation right after I bought a brand new bag of their new candy that has like juice in the middle, which is so good. And it was a buy one get one free. So, after eating the first bag, I got this feeling. I got this revelation. And as a commitment to the Lord, I just threw the second bag away and said, "I'm never going to eat these again." Now, does God say give up all nerd clusters? No. It's not in scripture. Nerds run around back then. But every time I ate that candy, I ignored the voice of God. The feeling telling me to stop, to cut back, to obey is better than sacrifice. So, how do you know if it's God that's asking you to give something up? One, check scripture to see if it blatantly tells you give this up. But nerds isn't in there. So, that's why the second thing is if you notice that when you do this thing, which may not be sin, starts to take precedence over the word of the Lord. Meaning, he's telling you to stop and you can't control yourself, it's time to cut it out, to give it up so you could be obedient to the word of the Lord. And there's a place in scripture in Deuteronomy 28 that talks about blessings from obedience. And yes, that was a long time ago. But do you really think that there's not going to be any blessings from obeying him today? Maybe not in the way that we want, but now there's one less time where I'm pushing away God's voice because I'm so caught up in what I want. And if there's something like that for you, I'm praying for you today. God bless.