It is wise to take into
consideration the three headed dragon, if one lives in the neighborhood. The Saint’s three headed dragon is The World,
The Flesh and The Devil, three formidable forces that join together in an
effort to take souls to a fiery grave... an eternally fiery grave. It would be nice to blame everything on the
devil and in a broad general sense this is correct, but in reality most of what
is wrong with individual Christians is caused by the flesh and it’s affinity
for the world… a world our Savior warned us not to love. Ditto the Church of
the living God which is composed of individual Christians linked together Lego
fashion into a mystical body. The world thinks of itself as “OK” much like the
old Eric Clapton song “it’s all right, it’s alright, it’s all right –
cocaine.” Darkness truly is blind.
We can paint a relational word
picture of the dragon this way: The World is a “drug”, the things our carnal flesh
desires to satisfy physical, material, and emotional appetites, things such as drugs,
sex, food, wealth, intellect, physique, power, position and prominence. The Flesh is an addict needing a fix to satisfy its addiction(s). And The Devil and
his little demon thingies are the syringes or bong pipes used to convey the
world’s drugs into people’s flesh. We can do little about the world and its “drugs”,
what The Apostle John called the Lust of the Eyes, Lust of the Flesh, and Pride
of Life. The Sower Parable apply named the world “Thornland” and distilled its allure
down to four desires, the desire for pleasure, riches, "other " non-spiritual
things, and the cares of this life -- worry about our stuff. And, we can do
little about the powers of darkness who will promote darkness until the Day
dawns and the Morning Star arises over a New Heaven and a New Earth. To defeat
the dragon we must focus on The Flesh, Self, our carnal nature, which must be
put to death on the Cross of Christ that His nature may reign supreme in us as
our new nature. Our conformation into the nature of Christ is number one on God’s
agenda and the real reason we have The Holy Spirit, whose job it is to manifest
Christ in us.
Satan and his legion of henchmen
simply encourage us to do what we really want to do anyway. I say “do” recognizing that all action is
preceded by thought, and in God’s world thinking is doing, so we are caught -- ensnared
to use James’ words -- in a sin-trap where our desires expressed as thoughts are
the bait: “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his
own desires and enticed.” (James 1:13-15)
Notice God says we are drawn away “by our own desires”, not someone else’s, and
yes, our desire for the world is lust. Put another way, that heavenly endowed
young lady, with more than ample flesh exposed, did not just happen to dress
that way nor just happen to wander down the same Walmart isle at the same time
as a man addicted to pornography, so he could get a visual “fix” to feed his
addiction, and she could concurrently feed her addiction, her need for attention.
Within the framework of our fleshly desires and the world’s abundant
enticements, the devil simply orchestrates. It is wise to take into
consideration the three headed dragon, if one lives in the neighborhood… and
one does…
DRAGON SLAYING 101
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