My Journey to Quit Smoking

Some things are easy to pick up but very difficult to put down.

A cigarette can be held between two fingers and lit in only a few seconds. But when a habit slowly works its way into your daily life—and eventually into your desires and even your body—you begin to realize that what is truly difficult to give up may not be the cigarette in your hand, but the attachment to it in your heart.

That was my experience with smoking.

Looking back after all these years, one thing remains very clear to me: what finally enabled me to quit smoking was not my willpower. I believe it was a special work of God in my life.

1. It Began with Imitation

I was born and raised in a Christian family.

But being born into a Christian family does not mean that a person automatically knows God personally. During my teenage years, I was actually quite rebellious.

When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I remember seeing dried loofah vines in the fields in the fall. A few of us boys would cut off short pieces, hold them between our fingers, put them to our mouths, and pretend we were adults smoking cigarettes.

Looking back, it seems rather childish. But teenagers often imitate what they see without understanding where it may eventually lead. Smoking looked grown-up, carefree, and even a little stylish, so we imitated it.

Later, when I was older, I would sometimes buy a few cigarettes when I went to buy firecrackers. I had a perfectly reasonable excuse: cigarettes could be used to light the firecrackers.

But lighting firecrackers was only the excuse. The truth was that I wanted to sneak a few puffs myself.

That was how it happened—imitation became curiosity, curiosity became experimentation, and occasional secret smoking gradually became a real habit.

Many things that eventually bind us begin in ways that seem insignificant.

No one takes the first cigarette thinking, “Someday I will not be able to quit.” We often tell ourselves, “It’s fine. I can control it.”

Later, we may discover that we cannot.

2. In Hubei, I Became a Regular Smoker

Later, I went to work at a factory where my younger maternal uncle was one of several partners.

The factory was located in Xiabu, Longgang, in a rented building. It had several injection-molding machines, and that was where I began learning how to repair and maintain them.

I learned little by little—from hydraulic and oil systems to electrical circuits and temperature controls, as well as changing molds and testing machines. Over time, I developed practical skills in injection-molding machine maintenance.

In 1994, a major typhoon struck the Wenzhou area.

The building where our factory operated collapsed. Bricks and roof tiles came down, burying some of the machines. Fortunately, because the machines were largely made of steel, they were not seriously damaged after we cleared away the debris.

The machines were eventually sold, and my uncle later took me to Hubei Province, where I worked as an injection-molding machine maintenance technician at a tea-packaging factory.

This was around 1995.

At the time, I earned about 1,200 RMB per month, which was a very good wage for a young man in those days.

The factory treated us well. Meals were provided, and alcohol was available at lunch and dinner. More remarkably, the factory gave us a pack of cigarettes every day.

I remember the brand was a local Hubei cigarette called “Baihe.”

One pack a day.

That was when I went from being a teenager who smoked secretly to becoming a regular, open smoker.

Sometimes the Baihe cigarettes did not feel strong enough, so I bought other cigarettes myself. When friends or visitors came, offering cigarettes was also part of social interaction. Gradually, I smoked more and more, and my dependence grew stronger.

My body, however, told the truth.

I began coughing badly. I had more phlegm. My breath smelled unpleasant, and the odor of cigarette smoke seemed to cling to my clothes and body.

It was not that I never tried to quit.

I did—again and again.

Sometimes I lasted a week. Sometimes two weeks.

But eventually I always started smoking again.

Quit, fail. Try again, fail again.

Every time I tried, I thought, “This time I can do it.” Every time I picked up another cigarette, I discovered that my willpower was not nearly as strong as I had imagined.

3. I Entered the Third Bible Training Program of Pingyang County

The tea-packaging business was highly seasonal.

The busiest period came before and during the spring tea season. By summer, the factory would often slow down and enter a period of maintenance. I worked there perhaps six or seven months of the year and spent some of the remaining time back home.

During one of those periods at home, my mother told me that the Third Bible Training Program of Pingyang County was enrolling students.

She asked, “Would you like to go study there?”

I was not interested.

I said, “Why do I need to study the Bible? Don’t I already have a Bible?”

Because I had grown up in a Christian family, I had always had access to a Bible. I even carried one with me at times.

The problem was simple:

The Bible was with me, but I rarely opened it.

At the factory, I was responsible for repairing the machines. When something broke, I was busy. But when all the machines were running normally, I often had little to do.

So I would go to the town library and borrow martial-arts novels.

I could read one novel after another.

But the Bible remained largely unopened.

Later, my older brother also encouraged me to attend the Bible program.

Eventually, I went.

I entered the Third Bible Training Program of Pingyang County.

I had no idea that this seemingly ordinary decision would become an important turning point in my life.

There, Mr. Li Wenhua taught us about how brothers and sisters in Christ should love one another. For perhaps the first time, I began to see seriously that Christian faith was not merely a set of teachings I had heard since childhood. It could become an entirely different way of life.

During my first couple of months in the program, something began to change deeply within me.

I became increasingly aware of one truth:

I was a sinner.

Things that I had once considered normal began to trouble my conscience. Habits I had once dismissed as insignificant began to reveal something about the condition of my heart.

Smoking was one of them.

4. “Today He Is Still the Old Man; Tomorrow He Will Become New”

Before entering the Bible training program, there was a basic expectation that students should already be baptized Christians.

That year, I had already been planning to be baptized.

The church examined my faith and knew that I had grown up in a Christian family, and they agreed to baptize me.

But I was still smoking.

On the evening before my baptism, after dinner, I naturally put a cigarette in my mouth and walked outside to smoke.

My father saw me and rebuked me loudly:

“You sinner! You’re going to be baptized tomorrow, and you’re still smoking today!”

His words hit me hard.

But then my mother said something to my father that I have never forgotten.

She said:

“Don’t scold him anymore. Today he is still the old man, so he is still doing the old things. Tomorrow he is going to become new. Then he will do new things and walk a new road.”

Decades have passed, but I still remember those words.

She was not excusing my behavior.

She was expressing faith in God—and hope for her son.

She believed that although I had not yet changed, God could change me.

I quietly made a decision in my heart:

After I am baptized, I am going to quit smoking.

But I would soon discover that making a decision was one thing. Overcoming the addiction was another.

5. Two Months Without a Cigarette—And I Thought I Had Won

I began to pray:

“Lord, please help me. Lead me and help me quit smoking.”

Then, for about two months, I did not smoke at all.

Two full months.

I was delighted.

I thought, “Thank God. This time I have finally quit.”

Before that, I could hardly make it through a week or two. Now I had gone two months without touching a cigarette. Naturally, I assumed the battle was over.

I thought the addiction was behind me.

But I soon discovered something important:

Two months without smoking did not mean that the desire to smoke had disappeared from my heart.

The flame appeared to be out, but the ember was still there.

6. “Come On, Have One! You Were the One Who Taught Us to Smoke!”

One day, some friends from my earlier social circle contacted me.

“We haven’t seen each other for a long time,” they said. “Let’s get together, have dinner, and drink a little.”

We gathered for dinner at a friend’s home.

This was more than thirty years ago, when smoking around the dinner table was extremely common. People ate, drank, talked, and passed cigarettes around the table again and again.

There was even a popular saying at the time: after a meal, a cigarette made you feel better than an immortal.

During the first round, someone offered me a cigarette.

I waved it away.

“I don’t smoke anymore. I quit.”

My friends laughed.

“You quit? You were the one who used to give us cigarettes! Some of us learned to smoke because of you, and now you’re telling us you quit?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

I insisted, “I really quit. I don’t smoke anymore.”

The first time, I refused.

The second time, I refused again.

Then came the third round, the fourth...

We kept eating, drinking, and talking.

Eventually, someone offered me another cigarette.

This time, almost without thinking, I took it.

I did not smoke it immediately.

I even reassured myself:

“I’ve already quit. What difference does it make if I just take one?”

I tucked the cigarette behind my ear.

We continued talking.

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, without even being fully conscious of the moment, the cigarette that had been behind my ear ended up between my lips.

Then it was lit.

Smoke entered my lungs again.

That night, I smoked perhaps three or four cigarettes.

Two months of abstinence had been broken in a single evening.

7. That Night, I Finally Admitted: I Cannot Do This

I felt terrible afterward.

No one needed to condemn me.

The conviction inside me was already overwhelming.

We stayed together until after eleven o’clock. When I finally returned home, I went straight into my room and shut the door.

I knelt in front of the sofa, leaned my whole body against it, and began to weep.

I prayed:

“Lord, I am a sinner.”

“I truly cannot quit smoking by myself.”

At that moment, I finally became willing to admit something.

I had repeatedly said, “I’m quitting. I’m quitting.”

But whenever someone smoked near me, the smell still attracted me.

I still wanted a cigarette.

The smell even made my mouth water.

And suddenly I understood:

I had stopped smoking, but I had not stopped loving smoking.

My hands had let go of the cigarette, but my heart had not.

That night I cried out to God:

“Lord, have mercy on me. Forgive me.”

“I truly cannot quit by myself. I have tried again and again, and I have failed again and again.”

“Lord, please change my heart. Give me a new heart. Let me stop loving this smell. Let me hate what has been controlling me and help me stay away from it.”

“I cannot do this on my own. Please help me.”

I cried and prayed for a long time.

Eventually, I must have fallen asleep there.

When I woke up, it was around three o’clock in the morning.

I was still lying there by the sofa. Tears and mucus were everywhere.

I felt completely disappointed in myself.

Yet looking back now, I realize something:

Sometimes the moment when we finally lose confidence in ourselves is the very moment when we begin to understand what it means to surrender.

That night, I was no longer saying to God, “Lord, help me, and I know I can do it.”

I was finally admitting:

“Lord, I cannot.”

8. Then Something Remarkable Happened

After that night of prayer, something happened that I still consider remarkable.

From then on, cigarette smoke smelled completely different to me.

Before that night, the smell of cigarettes had attracted me.

It made me want to smoke.

I even craved it.

But afterward, whenever cigarette smoke came near me, I found it deeply unpleasant.

I became extremely sensitive to it. Sometimes the smell even made breathing uncomfortable.

What had once attracted me became something I wanted to avoid.

Before, I had to use willpower to tell myself:

“Don’t smoke! Don’t smoke!”

Afterward, something had changed:

I did not want to smoke.

There is a profound difference between those two experiences.

From that time on, I truly quit smoking.

So when people ask about my experience, I tell them that I know how difficult quitting can be because I tried many times and failed many times.

I cannot boast about extraordinary self-discipline.

At least when it comes to smoking, my experience taught me the opposite:

I could not do it by myself.

That is why I understand this change as an act of God’s grace in my life and as the work of the Holy Spirit helping me.

9. True Freedom Is Not Only Saying “No”—It Is No Longer Loving What Enslaved You

Decades later, when I look back on this experience, I understand something more clearly.

When we are trying to leave something that has bound us, the deepest struggle is often not merely with outward behavior. It is with inward desire.

If my mouth says,

“I want to leave this behind,”

while my heart keeps whispering,

“But I still love it. I just know I’m not supposed to have it,”

then leaving it will remain an exhausting struggle.

My feet may be walking away while my heart keeps looking back.

This principle reaches beyond smoking.

It can apply to many destructive habits, temptations, and sins.

True freedom is not merely gritting my teeth and forcing myself not to do something. Deeper freedom comes when the heart itself begins to change and no longer treats what once enslaved it as something desirable.

If we still see sin as something sweet and pleasurable and avoid it only because we fear the consequences, then when the circumstances are right and temptation returns, we may easily return to it.

Deep change involves a change in what we value.

What once smelled attractive now smells unpleasant.

What once seemed impossible to surrender can finally be released.

What once seemed indispensable can lose its hold on us.

I sometimes put it in very plain language: if you still regard sin as delicious food, you will always want to go back for another taste. But when you finally see it for what it is—when you begin to hate the filth that once attracted you—you genuinely want to leave it behind.

Of course, this is my personal testimony.

I am not saying that everyone who wants to quit smoking will have the same experience, or that one prayer will instantly remove every person’s addiction. People differ in their physical condition, degree of dependence, and circumstances. Some need a long process of change as well as professional help and support.

But for me, that night was real.

The tears were real.

My repeated failures were real.

And the change that followed was real.

10. Grace Often Begins with the Words, “I Cannot”

I once thought quitting smoking was mainly about being tough.

Be harder on yourself.

Hold out longer.

Resist.

Push through.

But eventually I learned that the turning point in my life did not come when I felt strongest.

It came when I finally admitted how weak I was.

That night, lying against the sofa and crying uncontrollably, probably looked like the greatest failure in my entire attempt to quit.

I had gone two months without smoking, only to smoke three or four cigarettes in one evening.

It seemed that everything had been lost.

Yet looking back, I see that night as a turning point.

Because that was the night I finally stopped boasting in my own ability.

I admitted:

“Lord, I cannot.”

And that is precisely where my testimony begins:

I could not—but God could change me.

The night before my baptism, my mother had said:

“Today he is still the old man; tomorrow he will become new. Today the old man is still doing the old things. Tomorrow the new man will do new things and walk a new road.”

At the time, I had no idea how long that “new road” would be.

Even after baptism, I still struggled and failed.

But decades later, I treasure my mother’s words even more.

The renewal of a life does not always mean that every struggle disappears overnight.

There may be battles.

There may be setbacks.

There may be tears.

There may even be failures.

But grace keeps leading us in a new direction.

The cigarette I once tucked behind my ear has been gone from my life for many years.

But I have never forgotten the tears of that night.

They taught me that victory does not always begin with the words, “I finally did it.”

Sometimes it begins with the most honest prayer a person can pray:

“Lord, I truly cannot do this. Please help me.”

— Paul Zhang