This is a real story about a priest and it happened to him in his youth before he was ordained as a priest.  In his early youth, he was addicted to smoking.  He was smoking in an unbelievable way that everybody told him he definitely is going to get lung cancer.  He tried everything under the sun to stop but he couldn’t.  One night, he decided to get into his room and told God “I am dead”.  I am killing myself by smoking.  I tried everything but I couldn’t.  I might as well die under Your hands here.  He then told God, I am not leaving tonight until You heal me and cure me.  Until you take the root of the love of the sin from inside of my heart that even the smell cannot affect me.  Can you do this or not?  He was not asking for something from the outside.  He was asking that God take away the love of this sin from inside of his heart.

He prayed with faith that from that night on for 30 and 40 years after that he could not even stand the smell of smoking.  This is what is called the power of the resurrection.  He admitted that he is suffering and  he is under the bondage of sin.  The amazing thing is that this man became a priest later and God gave him authority over people who are smokers.  He was well known that people would come to him and he takes their cigarette packs throw it away and they leave cured.  Is this miracle? No, it is because he received authority over this sin and over this problem from Christ Himself, not through any other power.  So he had the power to free others.  In the same way, Christ received power over the devil and over sin, He gave us this power and this authority.  God wants to be glorified through our weakness when we give it to Him.  When we tell Him, we are in the account of dead people.  Why? Because we could not fix ourselves.  And so we must rely on the power of His resurrection.