Author and pastor Mark Clark tells the following story:

I started smoking when I was in the eighth grade. I stopped shortly after I got married when I was twenty-three years old. I smoked for ten years of my life, and I loved it. You could tell me daily I was going to die of cancer – but it didn’t matter. You could warn me, you could work on my behavior. The government puts pictures on cigarette packages of bleeding brains and rotting teeth. But that never deterred me. I would just go into the store and say, “Give me one pack of donkey teeth and one dead brain.” 

You know how I quit? I fell in love with a girl who hated smoking. And over time my love for smoking was trumped by something stronger: my love for her.

So I quit.

That’s the expulsive power of a new affection in action. My tendency toward idolatry didn’t disappear, but the object of my affection shifted in priority. You can’t just tear down idols; you have to replace them with something you love more.

Paul Harvey, in one of his radio broadcasts, “The rest of the story,” told how showing sincere appreciation can change a person’s life. He reported that years ago a teacher in Detroit asked Stevie Morris to help her find a mouse that was lost in the classroom.

You see, she appreciated the fact that nature had given Stevie a remarkable pair of ears to compensate for his blind eyes. But this was really the first time Stevie had been shown appreciation for those talented ears.

Now, years later, he says that this act of appreciation was the beginning of a new life. You see, from that time on he developed his gift of hearing and went on to become, under the stage name of Stevie Wonder, one of the greatest pop singers and songwriters of all time.