Wednesday: I Don’t Want That Now
WEEK 44
WEDNESDAY
I DON’T WANT THAT NOW
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
We saw yesterday that when we link our will with God’s will, we can have the mastery of smoking.
A woman had smoked heavily for twenty years. She was a physical wreck, weighing a hundred pounds. She asked me to pray for her healing from physical disease. We went to the chapel together and prayed. As she went to her room, she mechanically reached for a cigarette, drew back, and said to herself, “I don’t want that now. I will later.” But she didn’t want it later. The desire was gone. And with the dropping of smoking her various ailments dropped away, and a year later she was the picture of health, having gained twenty-five much-needed pounds. When we prayed for her physical health, God answered by delivering her from the basis of her ill health, the smoking habit. This points to a much-needed lesson: I question whether anyone has a moral right to ask for health if he or she is holding to any habit that produces ill health.
A friend writes, “I smoked three packs a day. I handed it over to Jesus, and he took it away like that. I didn’t even desire it anymore. Then I knew this was a miracle.” And it was!
Some try the harder way, on their own. A friend went into a drugstore and saw a woman whisper to the druggist and saw him shake his head. After the woman had gone, the druggist said to this friend, “Did you see that woman whisper to me? Well, she was the eighth person who has come in here this morning asking for a drug that makes people sick when they smoke. She had been to every drugstore in town, she said, trying to get it. But we can’t keep it in stock since the newspapers have carried the news about the proved connection between smoking and lung cancer.” So the women who caved in under the propaganda that it is smart to smoke are now smarting under their smartness in following the herd into this expensive, foolish, and health-undermining habit. But there is a way out for everybody; surrender to Christ and cooperate with his power.
O Christ, I thank you that nothing, absolutely nothing, need master me except your love, if you are within me and I willingly cooperate with you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “All things are lawful, . . . but I will not be brought under the power of any” (1 Cor 6:12 KJV).