Smoking Freedom in 30 days: Day 30
How to Never Stumble
2nd Peter 1 verse 3: His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life 5 For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.8 For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.
10 Therefore, my brothers and sisters,[a] make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To never stumble pursue goodness. Dr. Calvin Miller said:
- Realize that God is the source of all goodness. Seek to draw closer to Him, and express your love for Him. As you do, He will recreate you so that you naturally love goodness as He does and are motivated to obey His laws. Live to please God because you love Him.
- Meditate on God’s Word and ask the Holy Spirit to show you how you should apply it to every aspect of your life. Read a Bible chapter then think about what it means for 5 minutes.
- Be aware that other people are watching as you make decisions. When you choose good, you honor Christ and bring Him glory as His representative. But when you choose evil over good, you discredit His name and cause others to turn away from pursuing Him.
- Imitate Christ’s life by showing love for others. Seek to serve others in love whenever you have an opportunity.
- We acquire knowledge by reading the Word, going to church – I watch a Robert Morris sermon every week day as well.
- We have talked a lot about self-control. Pray about it, research it and improve self-control every day.
- Perseverance means to never quit trying:
Battles are fought in our minds every day. When we begin to feel the battle is just too difficult and want to give up, we must choose to resist negative thoughts and be determined to rise above our problems. We must decide that we’re not going to quit. When we’re bombarded with doubts and fears, we must take a stand and say: “I’ll never give up! God’s on my side. He loves me, and He’s helping me! I’m going to make it!- Joyce Meyer
C.S. Lewis Quotes About Perseverance
God knows our situation; He will not judge us as if we had no difficulties to overcome. What matters is the sincerity and perseverance of our will to overcome them.
We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
Romans 5:3-4 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5. Godliness:
The idea that best expresses the idea of godliness in the Pastoral Epistles is the Old Testament expression, “to fear the Lord,” which was almost a synonym of “believer” under the Old Covenant. Someone who fears the Lord does not live in terror of God, but has a healthy respect for God and seeks in both heart and in action to “love God” and not be offensive to God.
And so we come back to Paul’s teaching to Timothy said to “Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (4:7b-8)
In what ways did you train to become godly which have fallen by the way side. Were you changing for the better when you trained?
- Mutual affection: It is the love we have for those who are like us, for those who share our values. In the world of Christ-followers – Peter’s world of 2,000 years ago – mutual affection would refer to those who share our faith: affection we have for those who worship with us, who are in our church.
To overcome an addiction it is best to take the Bible very literally. If it says it, I believe it and I will live it. Others have other opinions about how to interpret the Bible. Don’t fight with them – explain what you believe and then try to find common ground with them.
Pray: Father, help me to have mutual affection for my Christian friends. Help me to love them, have peaceful fellowship with them and respect for them.
- Love: Pray for God to take away your _____ and fill you with love. Focus on getting rid of wrong thoughts and actions and replacing them with the Holy Spirit who is love. I pray to be filled with love all the time – sometimes 25 times each day. Some of us have plenty of empty space in our life that could be filled with Jesus love. Would we be happier if we were more filled with love? Would addiction lose its firm grasp if we were more filled with love?
The Bible says that if we do these things we will never stumble and we will go to heaven. What will you do today to focus on doing these things every day?
Did you ever wonder why people idolize a basketball player or a rock star? The reason we do this is because we were created to be this way. We want to find something great and we want to be a fan of the greatness, or a participant in the greatness.
For a variety of reasons we now idolize our addiction on some level. It is now more important to us than many things that should be priorities. Even though we are aware of this problem we struggle to change, we are driven and sometimes controlled.
This brings us to addictions real issue. We are supposed to Worship. When we worship the wrong thing, life goes very badly. God created us to love many things but to worship only Him and His Son Jesus Christ.
Many of us worship God and we love (and maybe sort of worship) other things. Things like success, money, addictions, you name it, there are many things to choose from. As time goes by, we tend to put those other things firmly ahead of God. Some of us do it all of the time and the rest do it some of the time. But God does not accept us ever putting anything before Him.
The reason many people can’t quit their addiction is because when they quit the one thing that they really love (and maybe even worship), they have lost the one thing that they love the most.
The answer is that instead of worshipping or prioritizing our addiction we need to learn to worship God consistently so that He will be the One that we love the most. Once we have disciplined ourselves to do that, our addictions will begin to disappear.
To worship God step #1 is to ask for forgiveness for your sins and to accept him as your Savior (if you have not done that already). Step #2 is to do everything you can to get the sin out of your life. Step #3 is to learn to habitually worship God.
Key Point #1 We should always be telling God that we love Him.
Many of us old cranky people hate it when we hear a young couple in love. Oh I love you, no, I love you more, Oh I’m going to miss you when you leave for 71 minutes, no I’m going to miss you more. Please grow up so you can be disgruntled like the rest of us.
But the Bible insists that we always have our first love as Christians. We need to always love God the way we loved Him the day we became a Christian. Key Point #2 We need to always tell God that we worship Him. We need to check ourselves to make sure that we are always worshipping Him not something else. For example don’t stop worshipping God when you are entertaining yourself. When you are watching TV, during the commercials, mute it and pray.
Key Point #3 get into the habit of always praising God. Key Point #4 the Bible says in everything give thanks. This means that we are to thank God for everything good or bad. Key Point #5 listen to Christian music.
I love listening to Christian music. Nowadays there is Christian rock, rap, country, you name it and there there is a Christian style for you. You may be able to stream your style of choice on the internet. Give it a try, it can sometimes help you worship God.
The late Keith Green sang one of my favorite songs which was written by Ray Boltz. It is called
Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful
Oh Lord, You’re beautiful
Your face is all I seek.
For when Your eyes are on this child,
Your grace abounds to me.
Oh Lord, please light the fire
that once burned bright and clear
Replace the lamp of my first
love that burns with holy fear
Key Point #6 Begin turning over to God areas of your life that you have never committed to Him. This is the heart of worship – surrender. God won’t settle for 80 percent of your life; He wants it all.
Read Matthew 2, Proverbs 25 and 2nd Corinthians 11
Fulfill your purpose – do something to help. Pray “Father, bring people to this website and give them a chance to overcome addiction, find your love, start to find their purpose and to start to find joy again.”
Buy this book for more help. How Stewart Quit Smoking is 24 action-packed, fictional adventures Stewart goes on, which teach him how to quit smoking.
The Titanic will take you on a journey just as exciting as the movie, but way more beneficial.
At the end of each story, Stewart talks to his mentor Gordon, who helps him learn from his adventure and learn about his Higher Power. The 24 adventures include: Right and Wrong, Pearl Harbor, the Matrix, the Exorcist, Fear Factory, the Pleasure Principle, Escaping Reality and many others. Gordon teaches Stewart his code at the end of every chapter. The code gives help on how to be unstoppable, how a true understanding of pleasure will lead to you never smoke again, how to make current obsessions become minor temptations and how to fight until you are free.
This book teaches you practical techniques on how to renew your mind while having fun. These vivid stories will help you form new habits that will break addictions chains. Click the link below to access.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YSY5QNZ/ref=
The key to quitting smoking and to finding joy is to acquire new habits. Feel free to take this course again until you acquire new habits.