Thank you all for your responses. I had no idea that there would be so many pages when I came back to this. I had been away for awhile with my father's health complications (supposedly from the flu) and moving into my first house with my family and so on....
TrustAndObey said:
I notice the most successful people in quitting smoking or losing weight are the ones that say "and I prayed about it a lot".
That was true for me. I got to the point where I thought about those 2 guys in the old testament (the priest's sons) who offered "strange fire" to God and they got poofed out of existence. I wondered if God was offended by my smoke smell after I lay down. I prayed that if HE thought it was offensive and wanted it to stop that He help (or make, I can't remember the exact word) me stop. I used to have to choose between smoking and putting my Bible away and changing the radio station. One day I smoked and had a Bible station on. I think I had a few puffs and put it out, noticing the change at that time. I think I thought to myself, I don't need this. That was one of the last few times I smoked. I kept another unlit one in the car just waiting for me. If it is not still there I have probably thrown it away. When someone asked me how I stopped smoking, I basically told her I just did. I should have also told her God did the hard work, I just did the praying.
It was like He took away my urges even almost completely.
Now if only I could stop eating meat, junk food, drinking soda (my worst one yet) nonorganic foods, and start exercising.... As far as when a person thinks it's a sin just because it's bad, I would have to disagree with that because of how eventually even the wrong diet can kill someone (heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, etc.). My mom never smoked, yet she grew up drinking milk with each meal and eating whatever she ate. She is 70 now and is on heart medicine and diabetes medicine. I want people to know so they don't think I'm just throwing in non-related stuff. I have also had an elderly teacher who smoked (I think all her life) and she was still healthy.
My husband still smokes. He started when he was around 8 or 9, he says. He tells me he wishes he never started. He also says he can stop anytime he wants to and he just doesn't want to. I pray at times for him to stop. My husband is physically fit and does not have to do extra exercise outside his work to stay in shape.
I am also wondering...
If God made the tobacco plant and the marijuanna plant and other plants, how can they be bad? If God made mistletoe, and a person (or a child) unknowingly ate it and died or harmed his/her body, wouldn't that be a case of not a sin but bad for the body? Why did God make plants that would have no purpose that we can think of? Is it possible that in some way people did light up a fire of tobbacco in rituals to God? I have read on a website that in the old days in rituals, people would make oil out of marijuanna plants and put the oil on them, but what about making a smoke offering? Is it possible that I stopped, not because it is sinful in/of/by itself, but that I was not doing it for the glory of God? When I was using it as a medicine and stress reliever, does that make it sinful, wrong, or both? I have even watched on the history channel that an Egyptian pharoah or royalty may have died from an overdose of a medicine. So if the medicine causes relief of the symptoms but results in other reactions or symptoms, does that make it a sin if it is used as a medicine?
I sprained my back recently. I also have severe migraine and tension headaches and my body between my shoulders and shoulder blades hurts really bad at time. I finally drank enough "sweet" wine to make me tipsy, and I did not feel the pain for a long time. Had I taken my pain killers at that time, I probably would have continued to suffer (this is not the only time I've sprained it and if prescription muscle relaxers, pain killers, and OTC pain killers don't do much good together, what good would a couple advil do me). And whoever calls that nasty concoction "sweet" has no idea what candy tastes like, and I would sure hate to even try unsweetened (does it even come that way?), unless I'm in that same boat again with no other choice than an OTC that's not doing much good.
On the other hand I have met someone who almost never takes medicine like that's wrong or something.
I noticed the Bible says, "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach's sake and your frequent infirmities" 1 Tim. 5: 23 (NKJV).
In Titus 1:15 It says, "To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled." We are not to be drunk on wine but rather the Holy Spirit, and we are to be sober and diligent. And even Jesus said in Mark 7:15 "
There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man." And again in verses 18-23 He talks of this in further detail, that the outside thing going in enters the man's stomach and is eliminated, purifying all foods and it does not enter his heart.
So does this mean that if after 10 years of non-smoking and one's body has eliminated smoke so well that the body is as if it has never smoked, does that mean that it is a thing from the outside that does not defile a man, and is therefore not a sin, but like red meat, harmful to the body in excess but not a sin?
What do you think? Taking something for a physical malady, to strengthen the stomach although it can cause cirrhosis (liver damage), for mental problems or emotional distress, is that wrong, sinful, both, or neither?
I too have heard the saying that smoking won't keep you out of heaven; it will just get you there faster.
But then there's the body is a holy temple, which has been brought up. Is it defilement or not?
