A prayer to overcome addiction
The prayer
Lord, I have promised to stop so many times that my promise is worth nothing now. So today I am not promising. I am asking.
Get me out of today. Only today. Tomorrow I will come back and ask again.
When the craving comes, give me two minutes of delay — and somebody to call inside them.
And if I fall, let me come back the same day, and not a year from now.
Amen.
In short
This is a prayer for anyone trying to quit something. It was written for this site and it is signed. It asks for one day rather than for the whole victory, because a day is a promise that can be kept. Addiction has treatment, and free support groups exist in almost every town.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 5 min read
When to pray it
In the morning, before the day starts asking — and again at the exact moment the craving arrives, which lasts far less than it seems to from the inside.
The prayer asks for one day. That is not decorative humility: it is the only horizon that can actually be met. Whoever promises to stop for ever signs a commitment whose first failure cancels the whole thing — and the experience of the whole thing being cancelled is exactly what turns a slip into a relapse that lasts weeks. Asking for today makes tomorrow a fresh request rather than the second instalment of a debt.
The most practical part of the text is the request for two minutes of delay and somebody to call inside them. A craving has a duration, and it is shorter than it feels from within; postponing the decision without promising never again is the difference between a possible task and an impossible one. Having someone to call matters because trying alone is the variable that shows up in almost every attempt that failed.
A relapse does not erase the time before it. Coming back the same day is what this prayer asks for, rather than coming back within a year — and most of the damage lives in the gap between those two.
Worth saying without ceremony: addiction has treatment. A doctor, a psychologist or a psychiatrist, and free support groups that exist in practically every town and ask nothing of whoever walks in. Praying and getting treated fit in the same day, and looking for help is not a sign of small faith.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared Written for Faith Flame in 2026
The prayer most associated with recovery anywhere in the world is the Serenity Prayer, taken up by mutual-help groups from the 1940s onwards — four lines about accepting, changing, and telling one from the other. This one was written to say what that one does not: the one-day horizon, what to do in the exact minute the craving lands, and what to do after a relapse.
It leans on two passages the Christian tradition has read as descriptions of compulsion for centuries. The first is Romans 7, where Paul writes, in the first person, that he does the evil he does not want and fails to do the good he wants — without calling it a weakness of character. The second is Psalm 51, the prayer of somebody who has already failed and asks for a new heart rather than for an excuse.
What it avoids: promising instant deliverance, treating a relapse as bad faith, and implying that praying is enough. Substance and behavioural dependence are health conditions, and they have treatment that works. This prayer was written to sit beside that treatment, not in place of it.
Little-known details
Paul describes compulsion in the first person, and in the present tense
What 1 Corinthians 10:13 promises is not what it is usually quoted for
What the passages say
18For I know that what is good does not live within me, that is, within my flesh. For the willingness to do good lies close to me, but the carrying out of that good, I cannot reach.
19For I do not do the good that I want to do. But instead, I do the evil that I do not want to do.
The most precise description of compulsion in Scripture, and it comes from an apostle. The text separates two things common sense insists on merging: wanting and managing. Notice that the willingness is present throughout — what is missing is not that.
13Temptation should not take hold of you, except what is human. For God is faithful, and he will not permit you to be tempted beyond your ability. Instead, he will effect his Providence, even during temptation, so that you may be able to bear it.
A specific promise that is usually quoted about the wrong subject. It speaks of temptation, and what it guarantees is that the temptation will not exceed what a person can bear. Read in its own context it is exactly what this prayer asks for: something to hold when the craving arrives.
12Create a clean heart in me, O God. And renew an upright spirit within my inmost being.
13Do not cast me away from your face; and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
14Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and confirm me with an unsurpassed spirit.
A prayer from somebody who has already failed, and the request is not only for pardon: it is for a new heart, a steady spirit, and joy given back. Anyone trying to quit something recognises that last item — the hardest thing to recover is not the behaviour, it is wanting the day. (Psalm 51:10-12 in Hebrew-numbered Bibles.)
1Stand firm, and do not be willing to be again held by the yoke of servitude.
The image is a yoke already lifted that can be put back on, not a permanent state won once. It is why this prayer asks again every day: the freedom described here is something kept rather than something collected and stored.