Bill W. Couldn't Quit Smoking

Bill Wilson was, is, and remains a fraud.

The man clamored for whisky at the end of his life.

The man was sober in name only. He smoked like a chimney.

He smoked like a trail of chimneys.

Toward the end of his life, he would agonize between whether to take a breath from an oxygen tank or drag a puff from his cigarette. The cigarette won.

My Mom was "addicted" to AA. She continued "working the steps" long after she stormed out of the  meetings. She left the rooms, but  the rooms never left her.

For all the Steps that she took in her life, for all the inventories that she worked, she never quit smoking by working the steps.

One day in 1984, the same year that Reagan won by a landslide against Walter Mondale, my mother got down on her knees and prayed:

"God, I have no faith in myself, and I have little faith in you. Please take away this addiction from me."

From that day on, she never smoked again. My father can attest to this. He quit smoking, too.

What really matters here is the following:

"Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts." (Zechariah 4: 6)

and

"It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." (John 6: 63)

and

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." (Philippians 4: 13)

Instead of trying to make ourselves better, God wants us to give up trying altogether and let His life live through us. His grace gives us all the strength to say "No!" to sin, and "Yes!" to life and godliness (Titus 2: 11-12)

My mother did not trust her own efforts. She gave up and just asked God, and He came through for her. She never smoked again.

Yet she continued to "work the steps" for everything else in her life. She is now dead, having "taken her inventory" until the very end.

Bill W. couldn't quit smoking, but my mother did.

Too bad that she did not quit AA.

Quit AA. Receive the forgiveness of sins through Christ Jesus, and let His life reign in you, so that yo may reign in life (Romans 5: 17)