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:

  1. 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)

  2. 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