MHow to break bad habits for good: This blog is about how to be freed of nasty habits and repetitive thoughts that you can’t seem to eradicate from your mind.
If you want to clean up your life from debilitating things that hinder you from reaching your goals, you’re reading the right blog.
But before we embark on this journey, I will be telling you about things that you may never have heard before. I want you to make one promise to yourself first, and then one to me.
Promise me that you will read the entire article and mull over what you’ve read, if you think there could be any validity to what I’m saying.
What I’m about to reveal is true because these are the steps that I have taken over 23 years to free myself from a lot of emotional pain, bondage, and nasty habits.
I’m guessing that you have some stuff to or you wouldn’t be reading this blog. As a senior pastor, I have worked with my staff and team to help them be free, so I know this works. So be inspired!
There are people who believe they cannot be freed from certain behavioral patterns. It’s not whether they can be free from it, but it is more like are they ready to be free.
Because if you are in bondage or addicted to something, you have to want to be free. When they say you have to hit rock bottom, not everybody does, and each person‘s rock-bottom is different.
I want to share a story of someone I know who was addicted to crack cocaine. I first saw her around the neighborhood when she was strung out on drugs. However, we weren’t friends at that time.
A few years later, after she got off crack, she started to come around me and my best friend.
A Monster Looking at You
One day during a conversation with her, I asked her how she got off drugs and She told me that she would ask GOD every time she took a hit off the crack pipe to please set her free from this addiction. She was desperate for GOD to deliver her from crack cocaine and to take the desire away to use the drug.
Also She told me that it made her feel like a monster every time she used the drug; she would look in the mirror and see a monster looking back at her. I asked if you saw a monster when you looked in the mirror, why did you keep doing it? She said because crack calls you, it tells you to buy it.
During her addiction, she lost custody of her children, marriage, and home due to drug dependence.
She said I would pray every time I would get high, asking GOD to destroy the stronghold that crack had on her. And one day I woke up and the taste and desire were gone she said: “I couldn’t believe it, so much so that I tried to go out and buy some crack, but I had no desire for it.” She realized that her prayers were answered and she was free.
From that moment on, she slowly started to put her life back together. Then she told me “that is when I decided to hang out with you and Marie because I knew being around you, I would have to be free of drugs because you were no-nonsense and did not live that life.”
She said, so inadvertently you helped me stay clean. It’s important to know that when GOD restored her, the judge gave her back her two boys which she had to end up going on public assistance to take care of. But there was another wonderful surprise that came about; she found out from her aunt which raised her, that her mother alive and living in a mental institution. Growing up, she was led to believe that her mother was dead.
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When she discovered that her mother was alive, she decided to go and see her. Afterward, she took her out of the institution and started to take care of her until the day she passed away. Some years after taking care of her mother, the blessings kept coming; she got a job which became a career, in Midtown Manhattan.
During this time, she met the man of her dreams and married him. Now I would be amiss if I didn’t tell you another miracle that GOD gave her. While we were hanging out back in the 90s, one day, she said to me that she had always wanted a daughter.
But by the time we discussed it, her sons were already 15 and 16 years old, so she gave up on that dream. I told her, let’s pray and ask GOD to give you a daughter.
This is where you can see the power of the prayer of agreement. I prayed and asked GOD to give the daughter she wanted. By the way, that particular night we were sitting there drinking a bottle of vodka, smoking cigarettes, playing music, and having a good time.
About seven years later, after I had relocated to Connecticut, I got a phone call from my friend; she asked me was I sitting down. I knew at that moment it was something serious, she told me “guess what, I’m pregnant and it’s a girl!” I had forgotten the prayer that we prayed and asked GOD for a daughter for her, but she didn’t. She was in her early 40s by this time.
But GOD doesn’t forget your prayers; they stay before him, especially if you are a believer.
The point that I’m trying to make is that you can go to GOD consistently with whatever you are plagued with. It can be sickness, or maybe you have an addiction, homelessness, or you are in an abusive marriage or relationship. May be It can be financial loss, education problems, whatever.
It may not happen overnight, but If you give yourself to the Lord and ask HIM to come into your heart, and remove everything that’s not like HIM. HE will set you free, fill in the blanks here, and keep asking HIM until HE does it. By the way, this is all scriptural.
The Bible was given to us by our Creator and Holy Father; HIS name is Jehovah. HE is the One and Only True GOD. He gave us HIS Book to introduce and get to know HIM on a level that we can understand.
Also he wrote about HIS love for us and to have no doubt how HE feels about us. HE told us great things, too great for us to fully comprehend. Things like HE is our Advocate, our GREAT PHYSICIAN.
The Prince of Peace, and our Provider, Healer, and so much more. HE chose specific men to pen HIS book while HE spoke to them and inspired them to write the stories GOD shared with us. HE made sure they conveyed HIS thoughts what HE wanted to say for all generations.
THE BIBLE
The Bible has the answers to every life problem you will ever have. It tells you where you go when you leave this world. Don’t take this holy love that’s shown in the Bible for granted. Please read it. Meditate on it. There are five genius steps you can take to get rid of bondage, nasty habits, low self-esteem, fear, and more. They are:
1. Ask GOD to help you and mean it.
2. Put your trust in HIM. Believe that HE will heal, deliver and destroy whatever you are asking of HIM.
3. Open the Bible and find the promises which guarantee that HE will free you from substance abuse, fear, arrested development, overeating, and whatever else.
4. Study the word of GOD regularly.
5. Get serious about wanting to be free and when you pray, pray consistently about it until you see the chains fall off, and they will.
I want to add one extra thing here. When GOD delivers you from whatever had you, make sure you share your story with family and friends and others so that GOD can get the glory HE deserves. So, they too, will know who to turn to in their time of need.
Drug programs
For the most part, I am not in agreement with some of the philosophies and concepts of Narcotics Anonymous, Alcohol Anonymous, and other traditional programs, which teach people to believe that once a drug addict, always one.
Their concept is once you stop using drugs, you are a recovering addict? The problem is you never fully recover from their prospective, their belief system keeps you in bondage and fear of relapse. You are labeled in those programs for the rest of your life.
I am in total disagreement with it. I believe that though you were addicted to a drug, once the Lord sets you free it’s done. HE doesn’t label you. You will not be a recovering addict; an All-Powerful GOD has restored you. The drug was something that you did, and you became enslaved to.
Still, once you’re free of it, that doesn’t define you for the rest of your life with a title always hanging over your head. No, it’s the same thing for someone who was prostituting, when she stops and no longer is selling herself. She doesn’t walk around for the rest of her life saying that I am an ex-prostitute; that’s not how GOD sees her.
HE would not refer to her as an ex-prostitute. You may have participated in something, but that doesn’t get to define you for the rest of your life once GOD says you’re free.
There are drug addicts who go to institutions to get themselves off of drugs, and some are successful and stay off drugs for the rest of their lives, but others flip flop—sometimes trading one addiction for another.
I am not a therapist, not a doctor or social worker, but I was a pastor for 23 years, and I know that the power of GOD can free you from anything. Whether it’s a nasty habit or anything else, GOD is a liberator; the Bible refers to HIM as the Spirit of liberty.
I’m not suggesting that those institutions are not viable options but what I am saying to you is that if you want to be free of a drug, The Lord, Almighty God has the power to do it. He’s freed me of things that I will not disclose here.
The Power of God is unlimited; HIS sovereignty plays out throughout the entire universe. The word of God says: Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be SAVED. (Romans 10:13) HIS character is on the line.
