One Day at a Time

I was driving down the road the other day and I heard a guy on the radio talking about his recovery from alcoholism and how he relapsed at some point because of a stupid idea that he could just drink one more and then stop again. Later in the same day, my wife and I are talking and she talks about quitting smoking and how she made a bad decision to just smoke a couple more and it will be easy to quit again. I'm thinking wow, twice in the same day. Is this some kind of subliminal message from God?

Then I started thinking about our addiction to sin. Yes, I think in a way we are all addicted to some kind of sinful behavior. For some it might be lust, for others it might be greed, or many other of the sins that we find ourselves unable to stop. We pray for God to help us break these addictions and we sometimes do well for a season but then we make that fatal mistake to think we can go back just one time. Just one time, what will it hurt? We can always quit again. Then we find ourselves once again addicted and on our knees asking God for help again.

Maybe we should just use one of the AA principles on our sin addiction. How about just taking things one day at a time? Approach each day as a new day with no concern for past failures or successes. Start each day in prayer with God asking Him to get us through just one day without sin. Will that help in the battle? I certainly think it will. If we approach the problem one day at a time, perhaps we will later find a very long string of "one days" and a much stronger relationship with God.