Encouragement

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All Things
© 2009

by

Stephen A. Peterson


“You have to quit smoking,” the doctor told Cindy McCoy. “It isn’t healthy plus this is your second stroke and you are so very fortunate to have survived this one without serious damage young lady.”

Cindy was sulky.

Smoking was one of the great pleasures of her life not just the act of putting a cigarette in her mouth but being in the circle of friends she was associated with who smoked as well. She considered her friends so important because she had very few of them. Additionally, she thought, “everyone has a vice of some kind. I have mine.”

That night, Cindy could not sleep. She sat up in her bed then picked up her Bible from her night stand. At about the same time, she reached out to pick up a pack of cigarettes. “I simply can’t quit smoking,” she mumbled to herself.

Cindy was about to light up when a Bible verse she had just read came to her: “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.”

“Yes,” she said to herself. “Yes, I really believe that verse—but that is a promise meant for something that is really, really important in life, not for smoking a cigarette. This is my only vice. I’m sure the Lord understands.”

Or was it? “All things,” Cindy whispered several times.

The cigarette was returned to its package. She then crushed the remaining dozen cigarettes then tossed them in a nearby waste paper basket.

Cindy did eventually stop smoking—and as she did, she continued to grow in faith. “I didn’t stop smoking in one day,” she said to a friend. “I had several lapses for almost a year and a half. I found I couldn’t do it by myself. I had to go back to my doctor a number of times for moral support. She referred me to some people who also had a problem with smoking. They helped me out a lot. One person had a missing lung. Another had cancer of the mouth so bad that they had to remove part of her mouth. But you know she tried to continue smoking through a hole in her throat? That one really got me thinking that smoking is not really worth it. But I had a lot of help from people of faith. They supported me when I was down and sometimes out. You know I made new friends, too!”

Is there anything that you have come to realize that you cannot accomplish by yourself? This very day why not lay claim to take the promise of “all things”

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