CHASING THE DRAGON
“Take your stand with God's loyal community and live, or chase after phantoms of evil and die.”---Proverbs 11:9 (Message)
“Cocaine isn't habit-forming. I should know - I've been using it for years.”---Tallulah Bankhead
I know. You thought we beat the “addiction” thing to death, right? Me too. Just one more quick note. This morning, when I woke up, the Holy Spirit was like, “Oh and one more thing. As it relates to being an addict, remember what they say about heroin addicts.”
Interestingly enough, did you know that a lot of them die chasing the feeling they got from their first high to the point that the only time they are able to duplicate it is when they overdose? Brings a whole new meaning to “The wages of sin is death”, doesn't it? (Romans 6:23)
I know the addiction message was enough to process on its own, but I just want to encourage you to consider the fact that when you do anything in the name of “natural man love” which is nothing more than counterfeit love, which often comes in the form of lust (James 3:15, Jude 1:19), it can bring about a high, a sensation, a feeling, a response that is not really healthy for your spirit, but can still appease the senses (i.e., your flesh).
This is why if you're a virgin, STAY ONE (remember you can whore out emotionally just as much as physically, but we'll have to touch on that another time). When someone is hooked on heroin, the slang term for it is “chasing the dragon”. (Do you know I could only find “dragon” in the NKJV in Revelation---the end time? Interesting.) An article by a heroin addict that I recently read said this:
“It started off as a rage in Hong Kong early in the fifties. It got called chui lung, which means chasing the dragon. Because the spiraling smoke looks like a dragon' s tail. The fumes are inhaled through a small tube....When you chase the dragon you can first try out a little bit and taste it to test whether you've got good stuff. When you mainline (through a needle) it's different. You dissolve the dope, fix a shot and all at once you've got it in you."
Already the “you first try out a little bit” part made me think of the PSA that says “buzzed driving is drunk driving.” Sometimes, when flirting with drugs, alcohol or anything thing else, you don't know when you've done too much until you've hurt yourself or someone else. (2 Peter 1:5-7)
Moving on. Wikipedia stated that another reference to chasing the dragon was prostitutes that sell their body in order to get/maintain their high.
With that said, here are my two main points:
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I Corinthians 6:18 (NKJV) says, “Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.” In other words, when you're sexually immoral, you are not loving yourself. You can't love me if you don't love you, therefore what many people call “making love”, in the spirit realm, is actually “making death”. When you have sex outside of God's protective covering (which is marriage---Hebrews 13:4), you find yourself chasing a high that can never fully satisfy you because counterfeits are substitutes and substitutes usually aren't meant to fill, but to replace something else. When it comes to doing things God's way, there is no suitable replacement. Some of us are caught up in foolishness right now (Proverbs 26:11) all because our first high---in this context, our first sexual experience---was in lust, not love and we have been chasing the feeling that it gave us ever since. Yet, because it took place under counterfeit conditions, it hasn't been able to satisfy or complete us. If we don't get out of denial, give it up, get into spiritual detox, and free ourselves, it could very well lead to death, not just in the afterworld (Galatians 5:19-21), but now: “The same thing could happen to us. We must be on guard so that we never get caught up in wanting our own way as they did. And we must not turn our religion into a circus as they did—"First the people partied, then they threw a dance." We must not be sexually promiscuous—they paid for that, remember, with 23,000 deaths in one day! We must never try to get Christ to serve us instead of us serving him; they tried it, and God launched an epidemic of poisonous snakes. We must be careful not to stir up discontent; discontent destroyed them.”---I Corinthians 10:7-9 (Message)
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Be careful/aware of what you are doing to get/maintain what you want. I have many substance abusers in my family. They are TOTALLY DIFFERENT PEOPLE high than when they are sober-minded. Titus 2:11-13 tells us that we should live soberly. That means we should be “not intoxicated”, “habitually temperate”, “sedate in demeanor”, “showing self-control”, “sane and rationale”. I speak from personal experience when I say, the kind of person you are chasing the high from sin (which I simply define as anything that abuses your spirit) is totally different than the kind of person when you are free from it. One of the nicest compliments I ever got was from a guy who said, “Shellie is the same person I knew in college, but at the same time, she's not. Her personality is the same, but her character is different.” (Thanks, Brian!) No wonder the Bible says that if you are in Christ, you are a NEW CREATION (2 Corinthians 5:17).
OK, now I'm done (unless the Holy Spirit says otherwise!)
Have a good, sober-minded day, ya'll.
©Shellie R. Warren/2008
Remind me please, is God supposed to be the good guy or not?
