I had an unwelcome intruder last week. No, our home wasn’t broken into, but a thief broke into my life. An unknown person created a fake Facebook account using my name and picture. That was only the beginning. He began the next phase of his plan by asking my Facebook friends to “Like” the fake account. The attempted robbery came when he asked my friends for money. Thankfully my friends were too smart, cheap, or poor to fall for his scheme.
The request was unusual, so one friend recognized there was a problem and notified me through my wife’s account. They know I use both accounts to distribute my “Good News to Share” stories to more people. I have seen this happen to other people and I didn’t welcome the intrusion into my day. I began working on stopping the thief.
At first, I worried I might have been hacked and someone was using my real account. If I lost credibility with my friends, they might “Unfriend” me and we could lose contact forever. That would hurt my witness and my ability to share the Good News if people thought I was using my stories as a front to get money. The thief had me worried until I realized he wasn’t using my actual account but had copied it. That is when I posted a notice that someone was posing as me and they shouldn’t accept any new “Friend” requests from that account.
Fortunately, the thief asked my wife to “Friend” him and I was able to decline that request and report it as a fake account. I also noticed the fake account didn’t have my correct birthday and I passed that info to my friends. I notified all my friends who had accepted the fake requests to “Unfriend” the account that has the wrong birthday and few friends. Facebook removed the fake account by the next day, so the troubling episode ended.
There is another thief who wants to intrude into our lives. That thief is much more dangerous because he is “seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8 KJV). He can devour us in many ways, but the scariest is when we do nothing. The Bible tells us to “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7 KJV). Sadly, people find it hard to submit themselves to GOD and so they can’t resist the devil who hates them.
The thief was unwelcomed by me, but some enthusiastically follow him and do his bidding. “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ…And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:13-14 KJV). His most powerful weapon is deceit. We are told “believe not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 1, 3 KJV).
So, what am I supposed to do? You must submit to GOD and resist the thief through the power of the HOLY SPIRIT! JESUS says “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mat 18:18 KJV). So, bind the thief in JESUS name, using the WORD, through the power of the HOLY SPIRIT!
Wayne Lance (2019)