 You might be using one of these unbiblical phrases in your daily life and not even know it. So today I'm going to share with you seven Christian sayings that I think we should cancel. Let's dive in. This video is made possible by The Daily Disciple Club on Patreon. To support my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily, join Patreon today. God has a wonderful plan for your life. The real crux of the problem with this saying is what we mean by wonderful. By wonderful, are we holding to the world's definition of what would be wonderful, easy, comfortable, happy, or are we talking about something that would be more biblical? Where it would encounter, we'd encounter persecutions because all who, you know, seek to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We will encounter sufferings. Matthew 5.10 says, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God. And so for me, I would say God does have a wonderful plan for my life, but that includes suffering. That includes persecution because in the midst of suffering, my eyes are brought towards the Savior and I'm forced to rely that much more on Him. The challenge is, is that when we're saying this to somebody that isn't really super familiar with Christianity or maybe it's an unbeliever, or we're using it as some sort of tactic to get somebody to become a Christian, God has a wonderful plan for your life. He loves you, you know, we're communicating the wrong message to them because they're still operating out of their worldview and their worldview is that wonderful and for most people wonderful is good things, you know, good things. Suffering isn't part of that persecution isn't part of that. That's why I say I don't think this is providing an accurate picture of the plan or the purpose that God has for us on this earth. God loves the sinner, but hates the sin. Now this is something that I used to believe for a long time, but there's an important piece of clarification that's necessary here. When I talked about this on my other social media platforms, there was some confusion going on because people thought I was saying that we should hate sinners and that's not what I'm talking about at all. I'm talking about in context to God. So for us, I do believe we're called to love the sinner, but hate the sin. Jesus said that if you hate your brother, you're a murderer. So that's pretty clear on that one. But when we look at God and we say, no, God doesn't hate the sinner. He only hates the sin. He loves the sinner. We're missing something important from scripture. In Psalm 11.5, it says, Okay, let's think about it. God is love. So if God is love, that means he cannot hate anything, right? No, that's not true at all because you think about it. If somebody is truly good, they're going to hate what is evil. That only makes sense. God is like on a whole another level because he's perfect. So if he's perfectly love, he is the definition of love, right? You can't know love apart from God. The scripture says that. And so if God is love, he must hate all that is wicked. This makes Jesus sacrifice on our behalf that much more powerful because even in the scripture, it talks about, you know, one would scarcely die for a friend. Like he lays life down for a friend. But how much more would the love of somebody that would lay his life down for his enemy? And that's what God did for us. So it's like we were rebelling against God and God didn't just hate what we did, but he hated us because we were doing evil. But yet he died for us. It's like, what? That that amplifies God's love so much more. It gets us back to the heart of the gospel. It's not that we were lovable. It's not that we were so, you know, awesome that God was just, oh, I can't help but die for them. It was like, I'm enemies with that person. That person is rebelling against me. And yet in my marvelous love, I will show my love for them by dying on the cross, by laying my life down. What? If you're a part-time Christian, don't expect a full-time God. I just think this way of thinking about a relationship with God is so interesting because it's so counter to like the whole Bible. You look at it through all of human history, throughout the Old Testament, like the Israelites, right? They were told, hey, do this, you know, obey my laws, you know, and this will be good. Like you set up a covenant with them, right? And they continue to, you know, rebel against it and not obey God. And yet did God abandon them? Like there were times of discipline. There was times of testing and there were times of like, hey, you know what? You're going to spend some time in the desert because, you know, you deserve this. But at the same time, he never, you know, left them. He didn't just say, oh, I'm done with you. No, no, no, no. He was still with them. So even in the Old Testament, we can see and even now we're under kind of a new covenant with Jesus, we can still see that God is present with us despite whether we show up. God is there. God is present. And that's because of his grace. We need to recognize that, man. Like if you think you're earning what God gives you or the gifts that he gives you, the blessings in your life, if you think that's what you deserve, you're off base. That is his grace. That is his mercy. And so your works, your obedience is all of an overflow of your joy and your love for God. The Bible is just like an instruction manual. Now this is a pretty common saying. I heard this as a child and I really took it to heart. But do you know what the problem about calling the Bible an instruction manual and just an instruction manual is because what do people do with instruction manuals? Like what do I do with an instruction manual? I usually, I pull up like if it's a box, if it's Ikea furniture, a bunch of this is Ikea. So this is like Ikea back here. If I were to open the box, I'd be like, okay, I've kind of done this before a little bit, but let me just take a quick glance at the instructions. Okay, yeah, yeah, good, good. So I do it. I start working on it. And the only reason I turn back to the instruction manual is if I would need help, if I need direction, if something went wrong or I had a question or I needed guidance. Now the problem is, is that I treated the Bible in the exact same way that I would really only open it if I needed some sort of guidance or direction or I encountered a problem. That's good. That's great. I'm glad you're turning to the word when you have a problem in your life. Something's going wrong. You need some direction. That's where you should be turning. But the Bible also describes itself, God's word, as food. If you're not reading his word, you're going to become malnourished. Okay, two big problems when you become malnourished, two things that could happen. So you stop eating, you grow really, really hungry, but then all of a sudden your hunger kind of settles. And you don't really feel hungry anymore. You just feel kind of sick. And this sickness, every time you kind of see food, you're like, I could eat some, but you're just like, I don't really just feel good, so I'm not going to have any. This happens with our Bible reading. Sometimes we've gone for so long without reading the word that we don't really hunger for it anymore. We just kind of feel sick about it. The idea of even just reading a verse or whatever, we just feel kind of guilty about it. I should get in there, but I just feel like there's this wall, there's this border. The second thing that could happen, and these two things could happen in tandem, is what happens to malnourished folks? What do they do? What do hungry folks do? They consume anything to get themselves to be satisfied. I don't know about you guys, but as a single guy living on his own, sometimes I don't really have that much food at my place. And sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But maybe I have a bag of chips lying around, and I'm like, okay, I'm really hungry. I'm just going to eat this. This isn't the best thing for me, but I need to satisfy my hunger. Here's the connection. You guys already see it. If you're not being fed by the word, you're going to be fed by the world, because you will find anything to consume to get yourself to be satisfied. We shouldn't just limit it to one thing, but the truth of it here is, the Bible is not just an instruction manual. It's food for the soul. God gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. This is meant as an inspirational quote for people going through trials and sufferings and maybe even persecutions that, you know, you are experiencing this great trial in your life, but God knew this. God's kind of set this up for you, because he knows how strong you truly are. But you know what this puts the attention on? It puts the attention on your strength and your capability in overcoming something. The other day I was actually reading through 2 Samuel 5, and I really encourage you guys to look through the Old Testament because there's so much gold there, and I'll actually bring the New Testament to light. But when we're talking about, you know, being the strong soldier, that he only gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers, I think of David, one of the greatest kind of war heroes of the Old Testament and how many battles he was a part of. But this is what David said, And David inquired of the Lord, Shall I go up against the Philistines? Will you give them into my hand? And the Lord said to David, Go up, for I will certainly give the Philistines into your hand. And David defeated them there, and he said, The Lord has broken through my enemies before me like a breaking flood. So even David, one of the greatest commanders and kings of the Old Testament, wasn't confused about who was winning the battle. It wasn't him. It wasn't his strength. It was God. So now we think of our own micro battles or inner battles or spiritual battles. All those victories are from God. They're not based on our own strength or how strong of a soldier we are. God won't give you more than you can handle. Once again, the problem with this is it puts the attention on myself, on my own strength. God won't give you more than you can handle. You can handle this. But then I look at the scripture and the emphasis is completely different. It's not on our strength. It's that in our weakness, God is strong. 2 Corinthians 12, 9, But he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Just ask Jesus into your heart. I don't want to shame you if you've used this term, but personally, I think it's more confusing than helpful. It's unfortunate because it's infiltrated a lot of our language, especially around evangelism. You get to the point of having shared Jesus with somebody, and you say, would you like to ask Jesus in your heart? That's very Christian-ese. Like, what does a non-Christian think about that? How do they understand something like that? We should be using biblical language in my opinion. Because if Jesus said something or evangelized in a certain way using a certain language, I think that should be good enough for me. In Mark 1.15, Jesus says this, And the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. In Acts 16, it recounts the story of Paul and Silas being in jail. All of a sudden, an earthquake happens and they're freed. The jailer comes and he's distraught. He's about to kill himself because he knows that all the prisoners are gone. I'm going to be in trouble for this. I'm going to be killed anyway because I let all these prisoners go. All of a sudden, Paul and Silas say, Hey, hey, buddy, buddy, we're still here. And he says, what? And he says, what must I do to be saved? He's like, okay, this is a miraculous thing. Why have you not left yet? Something's going on here. And they said to him, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You and your household. That's how they respond to this direct question. How must I be saved? They didn't say, ask Jesus into your heart. They said, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You and your household. When I talk to non-Christians and I'm sharing the gospel with them, the point that I'm leading them to is to call them to repentance and faith. So how do I explain repentance? I usually go to Luke 18 in Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee comes up. He's all prideful. And he says, you know, God, thank you that I'm not like these other guys. We're just garbage. And thank you for making me like me and I'm just so awesome. And then you have the tax collector and what do you think he says? And this is, to me, the heart of repentance. It says, God be merciful to me, a sinner, seven powerful words that exemplify a heart that has been transformed. And ultimately repentance is a gift from God, man. We can't turn on our own. We can't humble ourselves on our own. It is the Holy Spirit that convicts us of our sins. So what I compel people to do is ask God to humble you. Ask God to convict you of your sin. Ask God to grant you repentance. And in the midst of that, what's intimately connected with repentance is belief or faith, this idea of putting our faith in Jesus. We're not going to turn from something to something else if we don't put our faith in that as well. So it's this kind of interlocking chain as R.C. Sproul puts it. And so when I talk about faith, I say, okay, believe in Jesus. Don't just sit, believe that he existed. Don't just believe that he was a cool guy that his teachings were awesome. Put your faith in him. That his grace, that his sacrifice was sufficient for you. That he is God. That he is your savior. Now that might take a little bit more time to explain than simply saying ask Jesus into your heart. But I think that clarity is so important. Now it's my turn to ask you what is a Christian saying that should be canceled? I'd love to hear from you in the comments down below. As always, thanks so much for watching. And if you enjoyed these videos, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos all the time equipping you to follow Jesus daily. I'll see you next time. God bless.