3-11-2019

Good Morning All,

     Galatians 3:26; “You are all God’s children by believing in Christ Jesus.”

    Whenever the discussion gets around to how things are different today from 25 or 30 years ago, many thoughts go through your mind.  The cell phone, the personal computer, real electric cars, wind turbines just to name a few.  Of course, we have the flip side, the proliferation of violence by non-state groups, global weather change, a greater degree of anger, and the one that fascinates me the most, identity theft.  It used to be that you would have to be able to forge someone’s signature to steal from them.  You would have to steal a few check blanks, learn to sign their name and be able to physically impersonate them.  It was tough for a 60+ year old bald white guy to pretend he was a 25-year-old Asian lady.  Now it is easy.

    I recall listening to a story about identity theft on NPR a few years ago.  At that time, a person could purchase over 100,000 different identities for less than $200.  At that time, many experts guessed somewhere between one third and one half of the population in the North America, Europe, Russia, China and India had their identities compromised.  One of the panelist said his company estimated that almost all Americans have some portion of their personal identification floating on the dark web and for most people, it was only a matter of time before they were “hacked” and had their identity stolen.  We hear of more and more times when some major retail player has their system hacked and millions of people have their data exposed and ripe for picking.

    Yet surprisingly, identity theft is not new.  The devil has been doing it for thousands of years.  His goal is to steal your identity.  He wants you to lose sight of who you are; you are God’s children.  Through Jesus, God brings us into his family as adopted children.  We are declared heirs of His eternal kingdom.  We have all that we need but the devil wants us to forget that.  The devil wants us to think that we are far from God and that God has little care or love for us.  The devil wants you to think that God is very angry at us and is looking to punish us.  The devil wants us to think we are lost and hopeless.

   But Jesus came to give us our true identity; we are the redeemed, baptized children of God and that will not change.  God wants us to remember this simple fact in all that we do.  We are the redeemed, baptized children of God, given the victory over death and the devil by Jesus.  We have won the war against Satan because Jesus defeated him on the cross and at the empty tomb.  We are God’s beloved children and the devil can never take that away.  He will try to confuse you and trick you and make you lose your identity but he will always fail as long as we trust in God’s great promises of salvation, hope and peace.  You are a redeemed, baptized child of God; the victory is yours through Jesus and nothing will change that.  So, live in the peace of the Lord.

Father of all grace, keep me in your loving arms.  Keep my eyes focused on who you are and who you have declared me to be.  Comfort my heart, strengthen my spirit and give rest to my soul.  In the precious name of Jesus, we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret