The Power to Change

Have you ever promised yourself that this time things would be different—only to find yourself back in the same old patterns? Craig Groeschel’s The Power to Change: Mastering the Habits That Matter Most begins with that all-too-familiar struggle. You want to change, you try to change, and yet despite your best intentions, you end up discouraged when your efforts don’t last. Groeschel argues that the problem isn’t desire—it’s the system you’re using. The good news, he insists, is that lasting transformation isn’t about trying harder; it’s about learning how to channel the right identity, habits, and divine power.

In this deeply practical and faith-centered approach to change, Groeschel reveals how personal transformation flows from five intertwined principles: Who, not do; Training, not trying; Habits, not hope; Sowing, not reaping; and God’s power, not willpower. Across these five parts, he weaves biblical wisdom, psychology, and personal anecdotes—from his early ministry days to his jujitsu adventures—to illustrate a single truth: change begins not with behavior modification but with spiritual renewal.

The Root of Change: Identity Before Behavior

We often try to alter our behavior before changing what we believe about ourselves. But, Groeschel says, “you do what you do because of what you think of you.” He introduces this idea through humor—like sprinting out to stop a schoolyard fight only because he remembered he was a pastor—to show that identity drives behavior. Drawing on psychology (James March’s identity model of decision-making), scripture (“For as he thinks within himself, so is he” – Proverbs 23:7), and science, he establishes that true transformation must start with the mind. In the words of Romans 12:2: “Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”

Why Trying Harder Fails

Most of us know the frustration of “trying” to change. We commit to diets, new schedules, or prayer routines, only to give up when our willpower runs dry. Groeschel likens trying without training to showing up to a marathon without conditioning or to yanking out weeds without dealing with their roots. Behavior modification, he explains, can create brief improvements but ultimately leads to exhaustion and shame. The alternative—training—is about intentional conditioning through spiritual disciplines and small, repeatable habits that align to who you want to become. Training, not trying, transforms your nature because it shapes your natural reflexes.

Habits, Hope, and the Path of Consistency

Groeschel builds heavily on habit science popularized by authors like Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) and James Clear (Atomic Habits). He reframes this wisdom through a spiritual lens: hope doesn’t change your life—habits do. You are what you repeatedly do, not what you occasionally attempt. Each action either reinforces or contradicts your identity. As he recounts his own journey—from flossing as a symbolic act of self-discipline to praying with his wife every morning—Groeschel demonstrates how “the small things no one sees create the big results everyone wants.” Flossing may have saved his life, not by its dentistry, but by proving he could become disciplined one small act at a time.

Sowing Seeds That Multiply Over Time

Using agricultural metaphors from Galatians 6, Groeschel explains how transformation mirrors the law of sowing and reaping—you get what you plant, more than you plant, and later than you plant it. The law of cumulative and compound effects means consistency in small, godly actions—saving, forgiving, praying, exercising—multiplies exponentially over time. He parallels this with Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall “one brick at a time,” turning an impossible dream into reality in just 52 days. The key lesson? Value progress over perfection, and never underestimate the future power of daily faithfulness.

God’s Power, Not Our Willpower

Finally, Groeschel insists, human willpower is limited—it wilts under pressure. Drawing from Romans 7, he outlines Paul’s inner struggle: “I want to do what is right, but I can’t.” Our transformation depends not on resolve but on reliance—on the power of the Holy Spirit working within us. He unpacks this through four steps—renew your mind, remain in Christ, acknowledge your limitations, and ask for divine help. When we surrender control, God supplies supernatural energy for change. True transformation, Groeschel concludes, comes when “you can’t, but God can.”

Why This Matters

Groeschel’s approach matters because it integrates Christian theology with behavioral psychology into a coherent model of transformation. It speaks to believers weary of hollow resolutions and guilt cycles, offering instead a Spirit-centered framework that makes discipline desirable, doable, and deeply meaningful. The power to change is not about striving for perfection but walking daily in progress—one decision, one habit, one prayer at a time—trusting that God’s strength fills every human gap. (Comparable works include John Ortberg’s The Life You’ve Always Wanted and Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart.)

In essence, The Power to Change is not a typical productivity manual; it’s a roadmap for spiritual growth that begins with identity, builds through habit, and ends with grace. It challenges you to stop saying “maybe tomorrow” and instead join the training today—knowing that the same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in you, empowering you to change and live out the habits that matter most.

Craig Groeschel’s first major principle—Who, not do—flips conventional self-improvement advice on its head. You cannot sustain new behavior until you believe something new about who you are. Lasting change begins with being, not doing.

You Do What You Think of You

In a hilarious church parking lot story, young Pastor Craig rushes outside to watch a brawl until he remembers—he’s a pastor, not an onlooker. That instant identity check changed his reaction. Identity is the base of all decision-making. Psychologists James March and Carol Dweck confirm this: we subconsciously ask ourselves three questions before any behavior—“Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do here?” It’s the “identity model” of behavior. Just as a smoker who tries to quit but still calls himself a smoker will relapse, we continue acting in line with who we believe we are.

False Identities and God’s Truths

Groeschel notes how we inherit identities—through what our teachers, parents, or environments say about us—and how Satan reinforces them with lies: “You’ll never change. You are worthless.” Amy Groeschel’s story exemplifies this: told she was bad at school and not a morning person, she lived that out until she replaced those lies with God’s truth. When her self-belief changed, her reality followed. This echoes biblical passages affirming divine identity: You are chosen, forgiven, loved, accepted, the temple of God, and His masterpiece. (See 1 John 3:1 and Ephesians 2:10.) The transformation happens when these truths move from head to heart.

Future You and the Growth Mindset

If identity defines today, vision defines tomorrow. Referencing Matthew McConaughey’s Oscar speech—where his hero is “me in ten years”—Groeschel introduces the idea of Future You. Psychologist Hal Hershfield’s research shows that when you visualize a future self, you make better choices today. This aligns with Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset”: people who see themselves as evolving treat failure as feedback, not finality. Spiritually speaking, “God began a good work in you and will carry it on to completion” (Philippians 1:6). In short, Future You already exists in God’s eyes—you’re just catching up.

Calling, Not Comparison

You might think your calling is something you do, but Groeschel points out that it first defines who you become. Like the disciples chosen for “donkey duty”—a seemingly small job that carried Jesus to Jerusalem—your do becomes holy when it’s tied to who you are in Christ. Whether you’re designing graphics, leading a classroom, or driving a bus, your identity as God’s representative makes your work sacred. “Small is the new big” becomes a guiding refrain for calling and purpose.

Start with Who

In the final step of part one, Groeschel shows how God gives new names to reveal new identities—Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Simon to Peter, Gideon to “mighty warrior.” Transformation begins the same way: name the new you. That’s why, he advises, you declare identity-first statements like “I don’t smoke” instead of “I’m trying to quit smoking.” Once you define the who, the do follows naturally. When you start with who, you make change more than possible—you make it inevitable.

The second key idea overturns one of the most common myths of self-improvement: that success is about effort. Groeschel argues that trying harder doesn’t work—training smarter does. Like an unprepared runner entering a marathon on day one, most people fail because they mistake effort for readiness. Training requires discipline—the art of doing today what enables you to do tomorrow what you can’t do today.

Goals Give Direction, Not Victory

Groeschel encourages readers to define their “win.” As he learned when redefining family priorities—saying yes to his kids instead of work—clarity is the starting point of training. However, defining your win isn’t how you win; it’s how you begin. Both winners and losers share similar goals; what separates them is consistency in preparation. The apostle Paul likened spiritual life to an athletic race: “Run to win!” (1 Corinthians 9:24). Goals provide vision; training ensures victory.

Quit Trying—You’re in Training

Drawing on ancient Greek athletic practices, Groeschel shows how Paul’s command to “train yourself to be godly” (1 Timothy 4:7) comes from the word gymnazo—to exercise diligently. Success depends on strategic habits before the moment of decision, not on willpower during it. Trying is reactive; training is proactive. A trying-based marriage might rely on emotional surges, while a training-minded marriage builds daily rituals—prayer, communication, and forgiveness—that fortify love over time.

Discipline Is Choosing What You Want Most

In his humorous jujitsu tales—where he accidentally challenged a brown-belt and ended with bruises and a swollen ear—Groeschel illustrates discipline as the bridge between ambition and achievement. True discipline, he writes, is “choosing what you want most over what you want now.” Every decision asks: Do you choose comfort or calling? Instant gratification or eternal growth? Hebrews 12:11 reminds believers that discipline is “painful now but yields peace later.” Whether managing finances or physical health, discipline reframes sacrifice as investment.

Fanatical Consistency

Greatness isn’t built on moments of inspiration but on the monotony of practice. Referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule and Kobe Bryant’s relentless basics, Groeschel calls this “fanatical consistency.” Successful people do consistently what others do occasionally. Whether Daniel’s thrice-daily prayer or Groeschel’s habit of journaling five lines each morning, transformation accumulates through constancy. “Training instead of trying” turns discipline from punishment into purpose.

(In a similar vein, theologian Dallas Willard argued that spiritual disciplines are not ways to earn grace but ways to train for it. Groeschel’s model echoes this by shifting change from willpower to structure—steady actions aligned with divine empowerment.)

Groeschel’s third anchor principle, Habits, not hope, builds on modern habit psychology but grounds it in biblical wisdom. Hope alone, he warns, won’t make you healthier, holier, or happier—it must be anchored to repeatable systems. Your daily habits are the tracks your destiny runs on.

The Loop: How Habits Form

Drawing parallels to his dog Sadie’s predictable routines, Groeschel demonstrates the four-part habit loop: cue, craving, response, reward. Once repeated enough times, the loop becomes unconscious. Understanding cues—like time, place, mood, moment, and people—is crucial. Wrong people trigger wrong habits, right people reinforce right ones (echoing Proverbs 13:20). If you want to walk with the wise, walk with the disciplined. Habits aren’t isolated behaviors—they’re socially contagious ecosystems.

How to Start Right

Successful habits share five characteristics, summarized in what Groeschel calls the “OAECR framework”: make your habits Obvious, Attractive, Easy, Communal, and Repetitious. Visual triggers (like leaving your Bible on the nightstand), environmental tweaks (putting your shoes by the door), and ‘habit stacking’ (“I will pray after I make coffee”) turn aspirations into routines. Keeping habits attractive and supported by community converts endurance into joy.

Make Doing the Habit Your Win

The biggest plot twist, Groeschel says, is this: success isn’t measured by reaching your goal but by doing your habit. If you focus on results, you’ll feel perpetually behind. But if you celebrate process, you can win every day. You may not have lost twenty pounds or paid off $20,000 yet, but if you walked today or skipped lattes this week—you’re already succeeding. This subtle mindset shift creates momentum through consistent micro-wins.

Breaking Bad Habits

To stop destructive loops, Groeschel offers the mirror opposite: make bad habits invisible, unattractive, and difficult. Drawing on Samson’s downfall (“he took 56,250 steps toward destruction”), he warns that people don’t destroy their lives in a single decision—it’s slow erosion. Removing cues—deleting apps, changing environments, or finding accountability—makes temptation avoidable instead of resistible. “Why resist tomorrow what you can eliminate today?” becomes his battle cry.

As habits compound, progress multiplies. Whether sowing seeds of gratitude, forgiveness, or fitness, the small routines no one sees become the big results everyone admires. The power of habits isn’t in their size—it’s in their consistency and alignment with who you want to be in Christ.

The fourth principle—Sowing, not reaping—anchors the book’s wisdom in one of Scripture’s simplest and most profound truths: you reap what you sow, more than you sow, and after you sow. In other words, your future harvest is determined by your daily seed.

You Reap What You Sow

Galatians 6:7–9 becomes Groeschel’s blueprint for change. If you sow to please the flesh, you reap destruction. If you sow to please the Spirit, you reap life. Every decision is a planted seed—of character, behavior, or faith. If you don’t like what you’re reaping in your finances, marriage, or spiritual life, change what you’re sowing. God’s moral order ensures that life always yields in kind.

You Reap More Than You Sow

Groeschel unpacks the cumulative and compound effects—the idea that a single habit multiplies over time. A kernel of wheat yields hundreds more; a good decision one morning can ripple into decades of blessings. Whether saving $2 a day, reading one page, or praying with your spouse, small obedience compounds exponentially. (This echoes Darren Hardy’s work The Compound Effect.) “What you do occasionally doesn’t make a difference. What you do consistently changes everything.”

You Reap After You Sow

This is where many people give up. We sow seeds of change but quit before the harvest. Like water at 211°F, transformation happens just before the boiling point—but most abandon it too early. Groeschel calls this the “valley of disappointment,” when progress seems invisible. The key is persistence: “Let us not grow weary in doing good.” Nehemiah’s wall was rebuilt one brick at a time in just 52 days; your change, too, will manifest in due season if you don’t stop sowing.

The sowing principle reframes faith as partnership—God multiplies what you plant but won’t plant it for you. Every act of prayer, generosity, forgiveness, or discipline becomes a seed in God’s field. If you keep sowing faithfully, you’ll someday wake up to a harvest more abundant than you imagined.

Groeschel concludes with his most liberating revelation: you can’t, but God can. Even the strongest self-discipline must be infused with divine power to endure. Willpower is finite; the Spirit’s power is infinite.

The Limits of Human Effort

Referencing Paul’s lament in Romans 7 (“I do what I hate…”), Groeschel recognizes our shared frustration. Willpower works temporarily but eventually wilts. From resisting cookies in an experiment to breaking addictions in life, psychological research calls this “ego depletion.” The result is a shame cycle: failure fuels guilt, which drains power, which breeds more failure. The way out isn’t gritting harder—it’s surrender.

But God Can

“Thank God—the answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25). Groeschel traces Paul’s transformation from despair to deliverance: the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead now lives in you. Ephesians 1:19–20 becomes his favorite verse—resurrection power is available, accessible, active, and abundant. When you reach the end of yourself, God begins His work.

Renew, Remain, Acknowledge, Ask

To walk in the Spirit, Groeschel offers a simple four-step model:

• Renew your mind through Scripture (Romans 12:2) so God reprograms your thoughts before temptation.
• Remain in Christ daily (John 15:4), maintaining intimacy through prayer, silence, and obedience.
• Acknowledge your weakness instead of boasting in strength—humility invites divine help.
• Ask for God’s power moment by moment; He delights in responding to dependence.

Walking in the Spirit

Groeschel’s metaphor of a child learning to walk captures grace in motion. When you stumble, God doesn’t scold—He steadies you. “When you’re winning, you’re winning. When you’re losing, you’re learning.” The aim of spiritual maturity isn’t perfection but partnership: daily steps in sync with God’s Spirit. True freedom comes when change is no longer powered by you but lived through you.

Ultimately, The Power to Change replaces self-help with Spirit-help. You stop saying “maybe tomorrow” and start walking today—renewing, remaining, acknowledging, and asking—one faithful step at a time, empowered not by willpower but by the resurrected power of God within you.