About 10 years ago I went to the Father and asked for help to stop smoking. I had smoked for 30 years, smoked through the birth of my 3 children and had tried a few times to quit without success. Then one day I went to the Lord. "Father, I know you do not want me to smoke but I can't come up with a good enough reason to make me want to quit." I explained the numerous reasons I had considered: smoking around children is bad for them (I only smoke outside), cigarettes cause cancer (I'm not sick, yet) to only name a couple. I said, "Maybe you can come up with a good enough reason to quit." When I thought about that I thought, how ridiculous a statement it was. "Of course You can. The problem is getting that information from You to me."
I had always suffered from sinus infections as long as I can remember and had been working through one when I decided it was time to go to the doctor. My doctor usually trusted me because I had so many through the years he had been doctoring me, but this time he decided to do some tests. He came back and told me that my sinus' were as clear as his. So I asked him why I felt this way and he informed me that he thought I was allergic to smoke! "Good one!" I said as I looked up. My doctor must have thought I was really strange.
I quit smoking that day with the help of those stop smoking patches. I was smoke free for an entire year when I got very angry at my husband and started smoking again. After about 6 months to a year I went back to the Lord and told him it did not work. A week later I found out I had ASTHMA!
Now I want to make this very clear. I was originally told I had emphysema which scared the living day lights out of me. It was later determined I had asthma. The asthma, today, some 9 years later, is so mild I only need a rescue inhaler for rare attacks. Possibly reminders that next time, should I start smoking again, I may very well end up with emphysema.
And if that is not enough to convince you that God does answer our prayers, I was told after smoking for 9 years that my lungs were as strong, if not stronger, than any none-smoker. This was determined after the birth of my first child in which I had to breath into this machine and try to get it up to a certain number. I shot the smokers machine up and beyond so fast that the tech asked me again. "You did say that you smoke didn't you? And how much?" I responded that I smoked about 1 1/2 packs a day and have smoked for the last 9 years. I would go up to two packs on occasion, though. The tech went out and brought in another machine and this one was harder but I was able to bring it up to the number the tech asked for...barely, but I did get it there. I never had any breathing problems or energy problems due to smoking, yet in one weeks time after asking God for a reason that would be strong enough to convince me, He scared me with the first diagnoses of emphysema, later to be reduced to a diagnoses of asthma and finally a non-life threatening mild asthma. BUT, asthma enough to keep me away from cigarettes!
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." (Matthew 7:7-8)
“And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” (Matthew 21:22)
