JESUS WILL HELP YOU QUIT SMOKING

I used to be harder on folk that use tobacco than I am now. I would make those trifling references that were supposed to be humorous about how God would have given us smokestacks had He intended for us to smoke, and of how there is fire on one end of a cigarette and a fool on the other. The one that must have always embarrassed the smokers in my audience was my explanation that it is not, after all, the man that smokes. It is the cigarette that smokes; man is the sucker!

While I may now be no more tolerant of the deadly habit, I now see it as much as an illness as I do a habit. My censure has turned to pity. I see college girls take up the habit just for the heck of it, and then get hooked to the point that they can’t quit. After awhile comes the typical cigarette cough. It is sad to realize what is happening to their healthful lungs and heart, and the risk they are taking with the children they will someday bear. Their own textbooks warn them, and I never fail to emphasize the facts that are now common knowledge.

It is a tragic sight to see an otherwise strong, stalwart, resolute man who is trapped by the cigarette habit. Few are left who will defend it as a harmless habit. Everybody knows, for the evidence is so overwhelming that the warning has to be printed on every pack. Still there is no noticeable decline in smoking. Why? Part of the answer is simply that people haven’t the will to quit. It must be a hard blow to one’s self image for him to admit this to himself. To be a slave to a weed—a little cigarette—is hard on the ego.

Surely most people would be pleased to kick the habit. When a man has to get up during the night to smoke. . . When the first thing he reaches for at the beginning of a new day is a cigarette . . . When he finds himself embarrassed and irritable in situations when he can’t smoke . . . When he has to rationalize and justify himself in the face of a Readers Digest report on what science says may happen to him if he doesn’t quit. . . When he has to he rude and foul up the air in homes and automobiles for children and non-smokers . . . When he has to pay hard-earned cash for such a habit . . . When he keeps on and on, even after promising himself he will quit, and even when his conscience urges it . . . When he smells of the habit . . . Surely something tragic has befallen a man who has to yield to such a senseless habit and say, “I can’t quit.” It seems that he is being denied of his manhood.

I assume that any man with intelligence and foresight would choose to be free of the cigarette trap. He continues only because he cannot find his way out. Such a man is as much in need of help as the dope addict or the alcoholic. The man is ill who is the victim of craving, when he is at the mercy of irrational forces within him.

I want to help him and I have the answer for him. He can be delivered if he really wants to be . . . with the help of Jesus.

Jesus came to save man . . . the whole man. If a man is physically ill, Jesus wants him well. If he is emotionally ill, Jesus wants him well. If he is hungry, Jesus wants him fed. If he is ensnared by carnal habits, Jesus wants him delivered, Salvation is a big word. It means renewal of self and transformation of character. It means a new creation in every respect that man is man. Joy displaces fear and hope displaces despair. Human dignity and self-respect are restored. Salvation means to become a new person, one in whom Christ lives through His Spirit.

Herein lies the answer for the cigarette addict, and it is an answer inspired by love. Jesus loves and He will help, if one will but ask for the help. He always gives to those who ask and opens to those who knock.

Let me suggest these points to all who wish to be delivered of the cigarette habit:

1. Make up your mind definitely that you must quit. Your desire to quit must become stronger than your desire to continue. Will is simply desire. Once your will to be free is stronger than your will to continue the battle is half-won.

2. Ask Jesus to help you to carry out your heart’s desire to quit. Pray for the strength and fortitude that only He can give. Confess your inability to do it alone. Trust in His grace to save you from this enslavement, I am suspicious that few smokers who talk about wanting to quit have ever asked God for help.

3. Ask the Lord to fill you with His Spirit to the point that all craving for the cigarette will be taken away. Implore God to transform your desires, that you will indeed crave God Himself as you have craved cigarettes.

There is no question in my mind but what you will never again desire a cigarette if you will dare to take these three steps. I say dare because it takes courage to yield oneself to God and really believe in His deliverance.

What a blessed day that will be! You’ll be free of the most senseless habit ever devised by man. You’ll not have to smell yourself anymore. Better still, others will not have to smell you. That cough, that rasp throat. Free! Your food will even begin to have taste again.

The Lord is ready to help you. Are you ready to ask?

Write to me personally if you want the prayers of others in your behalf. We will pray for you, and we will ask others who have been delivered from the habit to pray for you.