Yesterday I wrote a short blog about how many Christians abuse the phrase, “God told me.” That inspired me to think of a few other things that Christians often say either without much thought or simply because it’s something we’ve grown so familiar with, we’ve lost the meaning of it. As I said in my last post, I’m not trying to be nit-picky or single anyone out, but I do believe that the words we say matter. I also believe that sloppy speech leads to sloppy theology - and sloppy theology leads to sloppy living. Many of these are not wrong to say and can even have times that they are appropriate, but I want us to focus less on the statements themselves and more on the theology that's often behind them. Let’s get going.

1. “God is in this place.”
This is most often found in worship songs with lines such as “we invite you in this place.” One of God’s attributes is that He is omnipresent - which means as John Frame says that He is “in every place and time.” Frame also notes “To say that God is “present” is to say that he is here with us, really here, not absent.” We cannot ‘invite’ God anywhere, He is already there and will never require our permission.

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”
Psalm 139:7-10

2. “That was a ‘God-thing!’”
Often after some prayer request is answered the way we desire, or something really important happens, we throw this one out there. Now the heart behind this one is most often right because we are trying to bring glory to God for the event that just took place. But when we only attribute this to the big, exciting events of life, we are acting as though there are things that God is in control of and things that He is not in control of. Or worse, we are saying that God is only responsible for the good things that happen, but is not in control when bad things happen. I’m not saying that this phrase is wrong and that we should never use it, but let’s make sure that we give glory to God in the small and hard things as much as the big amazing things.

3. “Church was amazing today!”
As a pastor, you can imagine that I wish everyone walked away on Sunday mornings saying this, but I also realize the danger in this mindset. Most often, we use this phrase when emotions were high and we left the service feeling happy and encouraged. We almost never use this phrase when we walk away from the gathering feeling convicted or when the pastor just wasn’t as energetic as we would like. The factors that often go into this statement rarely have anything to do with the main goals and purposes of a local church gathering. While there’s nothing wrong with this statement in itself, we should ask ourselves why we said that.

Here are some helpful questions to ask yourself when leaving a church service: Was Jesus Christ glorified during that service? Was the Word of God faithfully preached? Did we truly seek to encourage one another? Were the songs that we sang true about the character of God? Were our hearts seeking to magnify Christ or get a spiritual shot in the arm for the week? Those are not all the questions we should ask, but it’s a starting point. If you can answer yes to all of those, then church was indeed ‘awesome’ that day whether or not the band was ‘on point’ or the pastor was ‘engaging.’

4. “I wish God would show me a sign.”
I want to be sensitive with this one, but honestly, it’s really time for us to stop saying this. More importantly, it’s time for us to stop asking God for signs. He has already given you what you need in His Word to know how you should live. Asking for a sign is a good sign that you’re not doing the hard work of studying the Word, praying, and seeking to walk in the Spirit day by day. I know there are many people out there who are in really hard situations and you really aren’t sure of the way forward. Maybe you have been praying and seeking the Lord and things don’t seem any clearer now than they did at the beginning of all this. It could be that God is trying to teach you what He taught Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9 - “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It could be that He has you in a state of uncertainty in order to drive you to depend on Him more than you depend on having clarity and comfort in life.

That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll do another post like this in the future. If you’ve got a suggestion for more phrases Christians need to stop saying, send them my way by commenting on this post.