Tobacco Abuse; God Can Deliver

God loves you and wants you to come to Him just as you are. He is well able to deliver you. Even though tobacco is strongly addictive, and you may have a craving for it, God will gladly bring His almighty power to bear upon your problem. “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:18-19).

If you are using tobacco there may be many questions that come to your mind. You may ask, “What will my friends think if I stop smoking? What will they think if I can’t stop? I’ve tried before and failed. The desire for a cigarette is so strong. Smoking one gives me some relief-until I need the next one. Who will help? Does God understand how I feel?”

God sees your heart. He not only sees your habits and problems, but He sees how Satan has trapped you. Your own pride may have brought you into these problems through your desire to find acceptance from your friends. Jesus died on the cross to bring deliverance from the hard master of sin. Those who recognize their need for deliverance and crucify self will find help. Romans 6:5-6 instructs us: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”

God created us in His image and expects us to glorify Him with our lives. The Scriptures say in 1 Corinthians 6:20 “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Those things that do not glorify God are the very things that leave an especially empty feeling afterward. People are tempted to do them again and again, trying to find pleasure. But, alas! It does not last. God’s compassion and mercy reach out to those caught in this circle of vice to lift them into the newness of life in Christ. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).