Quitting For Good: A 21 Day Plan

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.