When Obedience Begins With Surrender

“She said, ‘What are we doing here? We are just roommates. Let’s end this.’”

Those words did not come out of nowhere. They were the fruit of a season I had entered through disobedience.

Many years ago, I married a woman God had clearly told me not to marry. I wish I could say I did not know. But I knew. I had heard Him. I had sensed His warning. Yet I moved forward anyway.

Looking back, I can see how she was able to come into my life. I was still grieving the loss of my mother, who had recently died from breast cancer. I was emotionally vulnerable, wounded, and trying to process a pain I did not fully know how to carry. In that vulnerable place, she offered comfort.

But comfort is not always confirmation.

Sometimes what soothes our pain in the moment can still be outside of God’s will for our lives. That is why discernment matters. When we are grieving, lonely, disappointed, or emotionally exposed, we must be careful not to confuse relief with God’s direction.

At first, I tried to make it right by being obedient in other areas. I tried to pray. I tried to honor the Word. I tried to do what I knew was right. But the problem was that I was trying to be obedient under the umbrella of disobedience.

That is a dangerous place to live.

You can do religious things and still be out of alignment. You can pray, serve, attend church, and quote Scripture, but if there is an area where God has clearly said “no” and you continue to say “yes,” then your foundation is not settled in obedience.

That covenant was never blessed because I had entered it outside of God’s instruction.

For seven years, I lived in a loveless marriage. It was painful, confusing, and spiritually costly. Before that decision, God had used me in gifts of healing, casting out demons, evangelism, and preaching in churches. But when I chose disobedience, something shifted. The flow of those gifts seemed to stop.

I felt isolated. I could not seem to get counsel. Pastors would not talk to me. Friends abandoned me. My family became distant. Whether they understood what was happening or not, I felt the weight of walking through consequences I had invited by ignoring God’s voice.

Disobedience is not just a mistake. It creates disorder. It opens doors that obedience would have kept shut. It brings unnecessary warfare, confusion, delay, and pain. We may be forgiven by God, but that does not mean we walk away without scars.

That is one of the hard truths I had to learn.

At Greater Few, we talk about choosing the narrow path. But the narrow path is not just about avoiding obvious sin. It is about surrendering even when obedience costs us something. It is about trusting God when our emotions, desires, fears, grief, and attachments are pulling us in another direction.

The narrow path requires more than good intentions. It requires alignment.

Eventually, I reached a point of surrender. I had to release the relationship to God. I had to stop trying to fix what I had built outside of His blessing. I had to acknowledge that my obedience could not be partial. I could not keep asking God to bless something He had warned me not to enter.

Then one day, God gave me this question to ask her:

“Do you believe God is an able God? And if so, will you let Him fix our marriage?”

That question was more than a conversation between a husband and wife. It was a turning point. I articulated what I was releasing to God, because words have power. When I finally surrendered, God began to move. He got me out of what I did not have the strength, wisdom, or clarity to escape on my own. Needless to say, she chose not to respond. Her silence was my answer and our relationship ended.

I regret the time I lost in that relationship. Seven years is not a small thing. There were gifts delayed, assignments interrupted, relationships damaged, and spiritual momentum lost. But I also learned something that I now carry with conviction:

You cannot build a blessed life on a disobedient foundation.

God is merciful. God restores. God forgives. But we should never treat His mercy as permission to ignore His instruction. When God speaks, it is not to control us. It is to protect us. His “no” is often covering us from pain we cannot yet see.

Obedience is not always easy, but it is always safer than rebellion.

This is what Greater Few is about. It is about helping believers discern the voice of God, surrender what is out of alignment, and walk the narrow path with clarity, courage, and obedience. It is about moving beyond religious activity into true spiritual alignment.

Because greater works do not begin with greater talent.

They begin with greater surrender.

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“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” — Matthew 7:14

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