SOUNDING OUT:
Stolen Identity

  Perhaps you’ve seen them, too. The identity theft commercials from the credit card company. There are two older ladies talking in young men’s redneck voices about how their new motorcycles sound when they rev them up. Another one has a large black man speaking in a valley girl voice about all the things that were purchased on somebody’s credit card.. They are marketing to an audience concerned about identity theft. It has of late been a very big topic. TV news shows, lead magazine and newspaper articles, Internet sites and resources, address this cogent threat to our security and lifestyle.

  I’m partial to Sandra Bullock as an actress, and a few years ago, she was in a movie called “The Net.” The plot of the movie revolved around how her life was manipulated and changed. She could not even prove who she was. The bad guys changed her background and put in information like being arrested for drugs and theft. When anyone looked at this woman’s identification and checked the computer, they found her picture, but someone else’s name and background came up. She was tormented because everything she knew to be true about herself couldn’t be proved because someone had stolen her identity and made her someone else. It’s only a movie and perhaps a bit extreme, but identity theft is a very real situation, and getting more and more common every day.

  However, there is an even more diabolical threat to our identity. Satan fights every day to steal the believer’s true identity in Christ. Either we are complete in Christ, or we are not. Either we are new creations in Christ, or we are not. The devil will try everything at his disposal to scare us, to trick us, to deceive us so that we lose our identity as sons of God. He wants us to think that the new birth has made no difference, that we are exactly the same as we were before we became sons of God. He walks about as a roaring lion seeking to devour us.

  This tactic should not surprise us. He tried it on Jesus, too. In the temptation in the wilderness he sought to indirectly instill doubt in the Lord as to who he was with the statement, “If thou be the son of God.” How many times does that same thought run through our minds? “If I’m a son of God why…?” We were created in Christ Jesus, and we are complete in him.

  We must know who we are as sons of God. We have authority. We can do the works of Jesus Christ and more. We have a direct personal connection with God of holy spirit. We must refute the lies of Satan, and take the time to learn who we are and what we have as sons of the Almighty God. The Bible is replete with the truth of who we are in Christ. The Word if faithful! We can rely on what it says. We can live as it directs and walk in the steps of Jesus Christ.

  The next time you see one of those commercials, do as I do. Rejoice that we are who God says we are. Remember that we have what God says we have. Expect to be what God says we will be. Walking as a son of God today makes our expectations for the future even greater. We are God’s kids and nothing or no one can pluck us out of His hands. [But that’s a different commercial.]

  That’s this week’s reflections from Wayne’s world.