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Transcript 207B — Breaking the Cigarette Habit
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: I have a question, and I'll take the answer on the air. What about a person who has been walking with the Lord, for about four years or less, and has been delivered from drugs and drinking and everything, but still has the cigarette habit? And he's prayed and prayed, and still can't give them up. And he really wants to, but there's something in me (I'm talking about myself) that just wants to keep smoking. And I wondered if you could answer that.
HC: Our caller tells us that since she's become a born again believer she has been delivered from some very ugly sins, sins of drug habits, and other things. But now she is struggling and struggling and struggling with a habit in her life that she believes it be sinful. Otherwise she wouldn't be struggling with it. And that is the habit of smoking.
And she wonders, "Now why can't I get victory over that?" Well, I might offer one reason for this. There are some sins that are especially notorious, that are especially ugly. And we don't have to be convinced that they're awful, that they're terrible. Secondly, there are some sins that are so obviously hurtful and destructive to us that we don't have to be encouraged very much to give them up. If we see that our life is really on the edge of destruction at any moment, because we're taking LSD, or because we're on some other kind of a drug habit, or if we are living in open adultery, or if we are living as a thief, all of these things are such obvious and terrible sins and so self-destructive, that as a born again believers these sins go very quickly. Immediately we know that we've got to turn away from this. These sins can be no part of us.
But now comes the job of getting at the sins that we didn't really understand to be sins. I'm convinced that all kinds of people who had taken on a smoking habit for a long while in their life may not have realized at all that possibly that might be a sin. I'm sure I'm talking to people tonight who even smoke today, and up until tonight you would have been absolutely in shock that someone would suggest that smoking is a sin. Why, all kinds of people in your church smoke. Or your whole cultural background is that people smoke. And incidentally, smoking is just one sin that we're going to pick on. But there are lots of other things that we'll find in our life that are besetting sins, but we're not really convinced that they're sins, at first anyway. And gradually we take on this awareness that maybe it is sin, and then we start going to work on it. And we find that they're really tough to get rid of, really tough to get rid of, as compared with those real ugly, gross, terrible things that went right at the very beginning, when we were born again.
Now the reason for this is that, first of all, we don't have that complete conviction that that smaller sin, of smoking or whatever, is really nearly as bad. We fail to realize what the Bible teaches, that if we've broken one commandment, we stand guilty of the whole law of God. In the case of smoking, we may not even be convinced that it is sin. And so as we start finding in the Bible that it says that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, as we start finding that we're to live holy lives, and that we're not to do anything to destroy this temple, and when we tie that together with the information all around us that smoking is, after all, very detrimental to our health, you come up with the idea that this is sin.
And even if you kind of sense that it is sin, you're not really sure that it's really a big sin. It's really kind of a small sin, after all. But once we can realize that just as the drug habit was ugly, terrible, rebellious sin against God, just as the living in adultery was dirty, rotten, rebellious sin against God, so a little sin of smoking, or gossiping, or telling white lies, or being impatient, or flying off the handle, because your temper is right on the edge, is also dirty, ugly, rotten sin against God. That's the first profound truth that has to begin to hone in on us, if I we're going to get victory over these sins.
Secondly, we have to face the fact that we like these little sins. Now the big sin, we like that too. But that was outweighed by the fact that it was so destructive, it ran such risks, for example, of being caught by the law, or caught by other members of the family (if it was an adulterous kind of thing), that we really didn't like it that much. It was too risky a business.
But these little sins, everybody does them. And we're never going to be caught by society. We're never going to be reprimanded by our fellow man. This is par for the course. We can do these things, and there's nothing, at least from the outward appearance, that has to be paid for concerning these sins. We're not getting demerits from anybody. And so we like these sins, and we'd rather not let them go.
But yet we've come to the conclusion that it is sin. And so we've begun to pray, "Oh Lord, forgive me. Oh Lord forgive me." But even as we're praying, "Oh Lord forgive me," we know that tomorrow, when the occasion arises, we're going to commit the sin all over again. If we only will come to recognize that God does not take away that sin, when we're not looking. God expects us to repent of that sin.
When we got victory over the sin of drugs, over the sin of adultery, over the sin of being a thief, or whatever, what did we do? We repented. We turned away from it. It was an ugly, dirty business, and it was too risky. We didn't want to do it anymore. It was too big a flaunting, an act of rebellion against God. It had to go. And so we repented of it. We turned away from it. We cut our strings with it. We didn't want to be fastened to that kind of sin anymore.
Well, this is what we've got to do with the little sins. We've got to repent. We've got to turn away from it. OK. Smoking. I've learned now that it's a dirty, ugly sin. Any sin is dirty, ugly. It's open rebellion against my Saviour. It's spitting in His eye, if you will. It's an act of self-indulgence. It's a situation in which I'm really effectively saying, "Lord, I love You. I love You dearly, but I love my gossiping more." What nonsense!
"Lord I love You. Oh, I love so dearly! But I've got to fly off the handle once in awhile. My temper has just to go. There is a certain enjoyment in it. And I'm sorry. I love that more." What sheer nonsense! Of course you don't love that more, but this is effectively what we've been doing.
And so we come to the Lord, and we say, "Oh Father, forgive me. Forgive me I've tolerated this sin. I've nourished it. I've coddled it. I've enjoyed it so much. And oh Father, this sin has got to go. I'm repenting of it. The cigarettes are all in the garbage can. I'm not going to buy any more. Oh Father strengthen me. My friend called me this afternoon and began to gossip. And I told her, 'Please. We can't talk this way anymore, if we're going to remain friends.' And she slammed the receiver down because she thought I affronted her. But oh Father, I repented. I can't go on. I can't talk this way anymore. And if I have to lose a friend in doing it, I lose a friend in doing it. But I cannot live in sin anymore." That's repentance.
And this is when we're going to begin to get victory. Again let me emphasize, sin begins in the mind, most frequently. Either the great sin or the little sin, it begins in our minds. And in our thinking we begin to think, when we're lying in bed and we can't sleep, or we're driving a car and are musing about different things, or we're taking a walk, or whatever we're doing, about how nice it would be to have a cigarette. Or we begin to think how nice it would be to call our friend and see if she's got a little tid-bit. It's been a little while since she's passed along a little dirt about someone else.
Or we have a friend or a loved one against whom we're always angry. And so we begin to think in our minds some negative thought toward this person. Whatever the sin may be, we begin to nourish it. We begin to play with it. We begin to enjoy it in our minds. And pretty soon it's not enough to be in our mind. We're ready to commit it. This thing is too big for me, and so I dash out to buy another pack of cigarettes. Nothing can stop me. It's too big for me. Or I rush to the phone to make the phone call, to learn what I can. Or the one comes home from work that I'm always losing my temper with, and I've been thinking these nasty thoughts all afternoon, and now I'm really ready to let him have it. There's going to be a temper tantrum, when he opens his mouth, that he hasn't heard for a long while.
This is the path of sin. But the place to stop it is at the moment that it got into our minds, the moment you catch yourself beginning to think the wrong thoughts: how good that smoke would be, how nice that little tid-bit of information about someone else would be, that nasty thought about your husband or your wife, or your son or your daughter, or whatever. Cry out to God, "Oh, Father, forgive me. Forgive me. I'm starting to go on that path of sin again. Forgive me. I don't want to go that way. Oh, Father, strengthen me now."
And get your Bible. And start feeding on the Word. "Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee." If you can't think of a better excuse to read the Bible, then read the Bible when you're being tempted. And make a decision, "Every time I feel this temptation, I'm going to spend thirty minutes in the Word. And I'm going to sit down and I'm going to read the Word. I'm going to let God talk to me for awhile. And I'm going to begin to discover anew the will of God."
Now if we begin to do this, we're going to find that it's a lifelong task to get victory over these little sins. You get victory over one, and then you go to work on the next. And you get victory over the next, and you go to work on the next one. And this is a lifelong path, because we have a body that still lusts after sin. And the moment we take our eyes off of Christ for a little bit, then our body is there ready to encourage us back into some kind of sin.
But if we really mean business with the Lord on these things, we're going to discover that this sin no longer is troubling like it used to. That sin is no longer as much as problem as it used to be. This doesn't mean that it'll never flare up again. But if it ever would, you know exactly what to do with it, before it ever gets started.
And so you are growing in sanctification. So I am finding that my life is more and more conformed to the will of God.
Well, thank you so much for that good question.