Quitting for Good: A 21 day Plan

Here are the next verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

Proverbs 3:5-8 ESV Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Ephesians 5:3 ESV But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints.

Ephesians 5:11-12 ESV Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret.

Psalms 1 says "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

If you are straining to do everything in this program every day, you are doing almost exactly what this chapter in Psalms says to do. Many who started this program don't love these verses on lust. But those who are pushing hard are starting to prove that their “Delight is in the law of the Lord.” If you are praying over these verses you are meditating on His law. Okay, I am not quite up to meditating on the law day and day, but... at least I am meditating on His law in the areas where I have bad habits.

Verse 3. Life is supposed to be what verse 3 says. But TV preachers never tell us that verse 3 is conditional. We need to be fulfilling “all” of the conditions in verses 1, and 2.

Do we have the right to ask God that our lives become like verse 3 says if we consistently do all of the steps of the 21-day program? But... what if you do that plus doing everything in verses 1 and 2? Then the answer is of course yes.

But, we are all experts at taking shortcuts and then expecting the promises to come true. We are experts at fighting sin for an hour, day, or week and hoping that life will be like in the promised land.

Instead, it is wise to make a “permanent commitment” to fighting sin, and doing God's will to the end, obeying verse 1 & 2.

When we do that... our lives will be like verse 3 sooner or later.

Key point: It is hard to do. Believe that you can be blessed if you do what the scripture says. But for most of us, it is a massive fight. For most of us, the blessings happen a lot later than we would hope. But for those who have a full commitment, it will happen.

Key point # 2: Keep fighting.

 

Here are the next verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

Romans 12:1-2 ESV I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

1 Thessalonians 5:22 ESV Abstain from every form of evil.

Proverbs 6:32-33 ESV He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself. He will get wounds and dishonor, and his disgrace will not be wiped away.


Why do rock stars ruin their lives with massive amounts of drugs and alcohol? Why do movie stars end their lives at the height of their fame? Because they thought they would find joy and purpose when they made it to the top. It's not there.

They should have read the following:

1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

Today, work on the following for 15 minutes instead of praying about purpose:

Memorize the above verse. Doing all to the glory of God is part of fulfilling our purpose.

Consider praying: “Father, take away this spirit of lust, and help me to help others, and care about souls.”

Second, we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Matthew 5 “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Memorize and pray over the above verse.

Third, we worry more about what we can't do than what we can do with the Holy Spirits' help. If you spend 21 days pounding on that lust with key verses great things will start to happen. Consider praying:

“Father, I am excited to see what Your Holy Spirit will do as I continue to pound out this lust.”

“Father, help me to do Your will.”

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

Here are the next 3 verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

Galatians 5:16 ESV But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Ephesians 4:30 ESV And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Revelation 21:8 ESV But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

Here are the next verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

Ephesians 4:22-24 ESV To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Mark 7:20-23 ESV And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Romans 13:13 ESV Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.

To quit it is vital to go to war with your #1 trigger. Step one is to pray in advance about that trigger. Step two is to have notes on every article that you can turn to when the trigger starts.

For example, my #1 trigger was life running me over. That was my “go-to” excuse to fall. Life was not being fair to me, God was not being fair to me, and all hope is lost.

As an American living in the suburbs, it was obviously just an excuse.

Then I decided to write down James 1:2-4 for daily meditation. “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” I also wrote out 1 Thessalonians which says to “Rejoice always.”

Then I wrote this prayer and began praying it often:

“Father, help me to endure injury with patience and without resentment.”

Second, today I still have some struggles when life runs me over, but now I know exactly how to pray about it. I have several verses to turn to when bad things happen. I now have a full toolbox with tools that are perfect for fighting that trigger.

Today, find or write new prayers to combat your #1 trigger. Then find some verses and articles about it. Then go to war with it.

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

Here are the next verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

Mark 7:21-23 ESV For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Romans 13:12-14 ESV The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

James 4:6-11 ESV But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”

Sin leads to darkness, and darkness leads back to severe temptation with lust. Many have become convinced that the sin of lust is really bad. But that other sins are... not quite so bad.

We still don't understand the Bible verse that says, “The wages of sin is death.” My commentary on that verse is that “something” always dies, or begins to die when we sin.

Second, sin always brings emotional death. When we are at war with all sin our joy starts increasing, our bad fears start to fade, and our love and peace increase. When we give in to sin our anger, fear, hopelessness, and a host of other bad emotions take over. When we give in to sin we start to be dead inside.

We are either a slave to Christ and obedience or a slave to sin. Consider praying:

“Father, show me how great my life can become when I do things Your way.”

Third, commit to a war against all sin. It is a great step toward quitting lust and a giant leap toward starting to find joy.

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

Here are the next verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

1 Corinthians 6:12 ESV “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.

Proverbs 6:32 ESV He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.

Titus 2:11-12 ESV For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,

To quit for good we need to have positive addictions. When we are first quitting we force ourselves to do alternative activities. We remind ourselves that they may not be great fun until we dry out mentally from our habit. We do these activities out of self-discipline in order to quit. But in order to quit for good we need positive addictions.

Example: We get a cheap keyboard and force ourselves to play it as a distraction idea. We also try softball, jogging, art, biking, or any of 1000 things as new activities to help us do other new things. But out of the many new activities we try, we find that we just start to love playing the keyboard, while that volleyball league that we joined... we hate that.

Now we have a great positive addiction. Severe temptation arises and we run to the verses for quitting. We settle down, and we play the keyboard some more. Maybe we learn some Christian music or hymns. Now our positive addiction has a great spiritual component as well.

Second, if you develop a positive addiction to something like helping out at church or becoming a big brother or big sister it will help you even more. Doing that combines positive addictions with purpose. When we combine those two we add a lot of “power” because the Holy Spirit is involved.

Think about positive addictions every day. Work on them often. They are a key to quitting.

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

Read where you left off with the new verses. I would just write down what date you restarted on so that you can keep track of your days.

 

Here are the next three verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

1 Timothy 6:11-12 ESV But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Proverbs 23:26-28 ESV
My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways. For a prostitute is a deep pit; an adulteress is a narrow well. She lies in wait like a robber and increases the traitors among mankind.

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

Day 21

Here are the next three verses to pray over for 20 minutes.

Matthew 18:6-9 ESV But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

Psalm 51:1-19 ESV To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. ..

Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.


Teen Challenge, now called Life Challenge has a 70% rate for quitting drugs and alcohol. But, there is a secret behind that statistic. When people stay in their Christian program for a full year they have a 70% rate for quitting. These stats don't include the people who did what they said for a while and then tried to live life the way they wanted.

Today I will cover the main categories of people who completed this program. First, some have completed it and are confident that they are done with lust, and want to advance as Christians from here. For these people, they will now pray a little less about addiction and pray more about doing God's will. They have experienced the greatness of God and they want life to always be this good. They are excited about finding their complete purpose. They still study scripture and pray an hour a day, but their prayers are changing.

The second category of people have gone through the program but ran into some trouble along the way. Maybe a lack of time to do everything. Maybe you just didn't get everything done every day.

If this is you, memorize the underlined sentence above, and go through the program again. It is wise to dig into the Bible and pray enough to start to find light and joy. If you are in this category you have seen glimpses of light and joy. And if you dig in even harder the light will get brighter and the joy will start to flow more and more.

The third category of people struggled with the program. It's hard to read a verse on lust, pray about it for a minute, and then read the next one. To do it right you would be reading each verse on average 3 times over the course of the 20 minutes.

Plus maybe you have other bad habits that lead you back to this one. In that case, consider adding more verses for quitting to your printouts. Do a Google search: “Verses drinking.” Substitute the sin that leads back to lust for your search. 2nd, find the Open Bible list of verses about fighting that sin.

With your new list, you can now start to form a habit of “always” going to your new verses when you are overwhelmed by the sin that leads you back to lust.

So, if you have dedicated yourself to quitting during this program you have learned a lot about God. Even if you are still confused about many things (I am) you have now seen a glimpse of how great life can be when we do things God's way.

Hopefully, you are not as addicted as I was. I probably would have needed to do the whole program 5 or 10 times to quit.

The more we do things Gods way, the better life is.

Finally, complete all the daily steps listed on day one.

 

I have edited day one to include picking a prayer to focus on each day.

Second, have a verse or two out of the verses for quitting that really resonates with you. Mine are:

Matthew 6:22-23 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Galatians 5:16 ESV But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

Gotquestions.org noted:

“A “walk” in the Bible is often a metaphor for practical daily living. The Christian life is a journey, and we are to walk it—we are to make consistent forward progress. The biblical norm for all believers is that they walk in the Spirit: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25, KJV; cf. Romans 8:14). In other words, the Spirit gave us life in the new birth (John 3:6), and we must continue to live, day by day, in the Spirit.

To walk in the Spirit means that we yield to His control, we follow His lead, and we allow Him to exert His influence over us. To walk in the Spirit is the opposite of resisting Him or grieving Him (Ephesians 4:30). “

I want the light of the Spirit in me morning, noon, and night. The more I fight to make this happen, the more He fights to help make it happen. And when He fights to make it happen, good things happen.

 

I added these verses to the end of the verses for quitting on 8-20-2023:

"Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

They sure inspire me to increase my war against sin and increase my desire to do God's will.

 

Everyone who is trying to quit a habit needs a huge increase in contentment. Consider praying:

“Father, take away this spirit of lust and help me to be content.”

If you are single it is wise to learn contentment with being single. I see divorced people who think and talk about finding someone all the time. Instead, it is wiser to think, pray, and talk often about being content. Then to think all the time about doing God's will. Paul was in the top 1% of people who had great joy. He was single. I think that he would highly recommend divorced people to stay single and do God's will. Because... That is the only way you will find joy.

Second, single people think married people have sex all the time. Wrong. In my age group, there are well over 320 days per year that the average married person does “not” have sex. The average married person (after two years of marriage) will not have sex with their spouse today, tomorrow, or the next day. If you are single don't live in this fantasy Hollywood idea of sex. It is not reality.

Third, I recommend dozens of prayers. Consider spending time each week to study exactly what you should be praying more about. No one should be trying to find the greatest variety of prayers and prayer topics. If you have zero contentment with your life, consider praying the above prayer 5-10 times per day, or more.

Fourth, if you have never married, now is the time to learn contentment so that you can do God's will. If you learn contentment, form habits of going to war with sin, and learn to do God's will... if you do get married later, it might be one of those rare, great marriages.

Fifth, whether you are single or married, put in the prayer and the work so that God becomes the answer to loneliness and other problems. He is the answer.

Finally, do you need to pray daily about contentment? I do. Today I am committing to working more on it. I am always happier when I am content.