Smoking freedom in 20 days: Day 14
Self Control
Our goal should be to learn to be at the maximum level of self control both physically and spiritually. With improved self control in other areas of life we will improve self control over smoking. We also need to learn to control the anger and other emotions. Self control is about calmly and slowly identifying the cause of your distress and irritation and finding a solution. Find calm and constructive solutions to your problems. Stable emotions allow joy to grow in your life.
Pause before you speak or act. Self control does not react impulsively. Practice this often. Pray that Jesus Christ will help you improve. Think and plan about how you will react around people.
We need a new Spirit in us. Our Spirit is often dark and evil. The more we pray and fight to overcome sin the more the Holy Spirit starts to help us. When we allow God’s Spirit to begin to be joined with us we start to be filled with His Light. Self Control is sweet like honey; lack of self control is bitter and destructive.
Billie Joel Daugherty noted the following. “We should practice self control over greed, lust, anger and pleasure in excess. Where does real self control come from? It comes from the Holy Spirit. We were created to have fire in our lives. A fire that drives us. If we choose not to strive for the Holy Spirits fire we will be forced to find fire in something that will hurt us.
How do we start to get the Holy Spirit’s help? Let God’s Word get inside of you by hearing good preaching, praying, and digging into the Word. We must make decisions that cause the Spirit of God to do work on the inside of us. There must be an attitude of repentance to say no to these temptations.
If God made us do everything we would be nothing more than a robot. God shows us his will and gives us the power to choose to follow his will so that when you do it, it is not a robotic act. Instead it is an act of love. You have the power to choose either way. We start to align with Jesus when we ask Him to give us the power to follow His ways. We say yes to those things He says yes to. We say no to those things He says no to. That can only happen when we are surrendered to Jesus. We pray to God – not my will be done. But your will be done. Who is a great example of this? Jesus. Before being taken away to be crucified He was in the garden. The soldiers came for Him and His disciple Peter took a sword out and cut off one soldier’s ear. Here is Peter out of control and all he has is a sword. Here is Jesus who can call legions of angels and He is under control.
Each of us has an opportunity to react to what people have done to us. Or we have the opportunity to respond to the Spirit of God and the Word of God that He will put inside of us if we allow Him to. With the Holy Spirit’s help we can fight off temptations, imaginations and bring every thought into captivity.”
Pray, morning noon and night every day “Father put a guard over my mind and my willingness to think about my addictions”.
William Glasser from his book Positive Addiction noted the following.
“Very few of us realize how much we choose the misery in our lives. Even when we do, we still go ahead with the disastrous choice because we are convinced that we don’t have the strength to choose better. A child doesn’t give up in school, or a wife on her marriage, because each believes it’s a good move. They give up because they no longer have the strength to keep up the struggle.”
Glasser calls good addictions – positive addictions because they “strengthen us and make our lives more satisfying. Positive addicts because, due to their addictions, they are almost always stronger than nonpositively addicted people who lead similar lives. With this added strength they live with more confidence, more creativity, and more happiness, and usually in much better health.”
He says “the problem is we don’t have the strength to do what will make us happy.” Instead we give up. “Some give up completely and more give up partly, not because they don’t want happiness-they want it as much as anyone else. They give up because at this miserable point in their lives, happiness in not even on their minds. What is on their minds is the hope that through giving up they will get relief from the constant misery of not having and of believing they probably never will have what they need.”
Many blot out of their minds what they might do to get stronger; they settle for a minimal life because they haven’t the strength for a better one. We choose a lot of our misery. And while your pain is reduced for a while when you give up it tends to return because you can’t give up permanently on what you need for happiness without suffering.”
He gives two basic solutions. His favorite positive addiction is running. He loves this positive addiction because runners get high. When you run and push yourself a bit endorphins are released and you get what is called runners high. You feel great and over time you are increasing your power to do what you want to do (including quitting a negative addiction).
The second solution is meditation. When we pray to Jesus Christ we are meditating on Someone who has the power to help us. When we pray in God’s will we will see answers starting to emerge. For example I prayer “God take this anger out of me”. For me this was a massive fight but I could see God working on my anger because it was in his will for me to get it out. We need to pray about the many little things that lead us back into addiction.
Commit to praying twice every day this month (or this year) about two weaknesses that you have that become triggers to addiction.
Pray, Father, help me to choose living in your light instead of smoking. Knowing that as I learn to like other things to do (over time) – my joy overall will increase.
- To get rid of smoking pray the Lord’s Prayer 4 times a day (if you can do it each time sincerely) or as often as you can sincerely pray it.
The Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
Read Proverbs 6
Continue to read the Purpose Driven Life
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Thank you for reading day 14 of this program to get rid of smoking.
Index
Day 1 Overcoming cravings
Day 2 Why can’t you quit
Day 3 Start a Journal
Day 4 Overcoming negative emotions
Day 5 You can’t increase your pleasure for the month by smoking
Day 6 Control your emotions and plan your day
Day 7 Learning how to worship God is a key to overcoming addiction
Day 8 Develop positive addictions
Day 9 How to get help from the Holy Spirit
Day 10 Have a list of coping statements
Day 11 Living water and how to live in God’s blessing
Day 12 Genesis can teach us about addiction
Day 13 Results of Adam and Eve’s actions