| Christians United Fellowship |
 Chapel |
...A Smoker's Miracle...
 |
When I was 16 years old, I and my friends, wanting to "fit in" and look big, began to sneak into the cornfield and roll cigarettes from cornsilk. Eventually we had graduated to rolling tobacco, and then to store-bought cigarettes. In other words, we were hooked.
As the years came and went the smoking gradually made me cough more and feel worse. Time after time I tried to quit, but I had come to associate smoking with everything I did. When I was working, I had to smoke. When I played the guitar I always had a cigarette tucked under the strings by the keys. Whenever I finished eating a meal, I had to have a cigarette...it seemed to relax me. On the other hand, everytime I got up in the morning I coughed and wheezed and felt rotten.
Once, right after leaving the Air Force, I even managed to quit. I couldn't believe how great I felt. I had energy I'd not had since I was a young boy. I did great for about a year, then I decided to drive the 1,000 mile trip to home. During this trip, I became bored, and when I stopped at a little country store to get a snack, I just happened to get a pack of little cigars. I didn't figure it would do any harm. To make a long story short, I was hooked again and the dependence grew much stronger. After that, quitting was absolutely impossible.
Some years later, we moved to Florida and God made us a Christian family. He did all sorts of miracles for us and answered prayers daily. The fact that I smoked began to get the better of me. I tried with all I was worth to quit. I would walk the floor and cry till midnight, then light another cigarette. They began to work on my breathing so much that I had to use asthma medicines to breathe normally. They were killing me slowly, and there seemed to be nothing I could do about it.
I thought that if I could change to pipe smoking it would be easier on me, but everytime I had ever tried to smoke a pipe the tobaccoes would bite my tongue so bad I couldn't even drink water without it hurting. Then one day on the way to work I spied a tiny pipe in a tobacco shop that would fold up and fit in a shirt pocket. I loved it, so I bought one. But there was still the problem of the tobacco, until I noticed a new brand I had never tried before. I bought a pouch of that, filled the tiny pipe, and to my surprise had no more discomfort. I was free of the cigarettes!...And I could breathe again...but I was still smoking.
Though the Lord never stopped doing for me, everytime I went to church I felt guilty because of the habit. It became so bad that I simply dropped out of church altogether. I reasoned that rather than be a hypocrite, I would just stay home. This went on for weeks, till one day I walked out into the kitchen and everything suddenly appeared to lose focus till I seemed to be seeing nothing. A voice said to me: "The only thing that's wrong with your smoking habit is that you are letting it stop you from doing God's work!" (Now please don't do as I did, and misunderstand that statement...I will explain it later on) In that instant, I paused for a minute, then I thought... "You know, that's right." I decided right then and there that if I went to hell for smoking, I would go doing God's work, and I went back to church.
A short time after that, through personal prophecy and His Word, the Lord God, by miraculous means, set us on the road in a gospel-singing/teaching ministry. My job was preaching to preachers, and there were no denominational separations. Now just try doing that job when you have to tell every preacher, up front, that you smoke a pipe. In spite of every prayer I prayed and all the guilt and shame I experienced, I still could not quit. I felt like I was condemned to having this "thorn in the side" for the rest of my life.
After 2 and one-half years on the road the Lord sent us to our present home and allowed us to open up a little print shop. I was still smoking the pipe and feeling terrible about it. But it was not to be very long till I found out what the voice I had heard in Florida really meant. A friend of mine walked into the shop a couple of days after new years and said: "Well I made a resolution."
"What did you resolve?" I asked.
"I quit smoking." He replied.
"Well that's great," I said, puffing on my pipe.
"...And you know what..." He continued, " God ain't helped me one little bit."
In my questionable wisdom I remarked, "Yeah, an' he ain't goin' to... that's something you gotta do yourself." Boy, was I about to learn.
A few months later, I decided to try quitting again myself. I even ordered some of those "quit smoking" pills. About a day after I got them the company called to try and sell me another year's worth, giving us some idea of their effectiveness. So I didn't take any more of the things. Then, the next day, a miracle came about. I didn't smoke my pipe at all, and I made a startling discovery... I didn't WANT to smoke it at all... in fact, I have never had the urge to smoke it again. It was unbelievable! It is still unbelievable! I even picked up the tobacco pouch and sniffed it, without any smoking urge at all. After all those years of suffering with that habit, the Lord God removed it instantly, doing exactly the opposite of what I had told my friend!
I began to understand the true meaning of what the voice had said that day in Florida. If I had stopped doing God's work back then, I might never have been free of that habit. But by continuing in his ministry I allowed the Lord to keep working toward my absolute freedom. That's what the voice meant:... By staying in the work he gave me, he could eventually bring deliverance. That's why it was wrong to allow the habit to stop the work. Now, the habit is GONE!...Forever gone!
This was an absolute miracle! And if the Lord is no respector of persons, this miracle is available to anyone who keeps on doing God's work. Praise God! Praise God! Miracles are just as prevelant now as they were in the days of the disciples!
In Jesus' Name,
AMEN
Back to Chapel