Although the influence of the Bible on our culture seems to be less and less every day, I’ve been reflecting upon the many sayings we have today that originated from the Bible. I’m sure a lot of people don’t realize some of the things we say actually have a Biblical origin.

Here are a few examples…. You may have heard the phrase “the writing on the wall”, which means some event or some thing (usually bad) is imminent. Did you know that saying originated 2,500 years ago? You can find the passage in Daniel 5, a story about how Daniel was the only person who was able to read a message of prophecy written on a wall for King Belshazzar.

Another common phrase we hear today is when a skeptical person is referred to as a “Doubting Thomas”. The original “doubting Thomas” was a disciple who would not believe that Christ had risen from the grave until he saw it for himself (See John 20).

In the world of sports, it’s not uncommon to hear “David & Goliath” used as a phrase to describe a heavily favored team competing against a weaker opponent. This, of course, refers to the heavily favored soldier, Goliath, fighting against a shepard boy, David. See 1 Samuel 17.

I’ll share more phrases that originated from the Bible over the coming weeks.

* WINDOWS 7. I’ve been running Windows 7 for about a week now and I have to say that all the reviews stating it’s a terrific operating system are spot on. I’m running the OS on a 3-year-old Dell laptop that previously ran Windows XP, and Windows 7 is running faster than XP did. With a few tweaks (like turning the annoying User Access Control off), I’m happily running all my laptop apps with no problems. And the new features in Windows 7 are cool, but not overwhelming. How impressed should you be by my decision to run Windows 7? This is the earliest I’ve purchased a Windows operating system since Windows 95! I didn’t adopt XP until it was 2 years old and I never did adopt Vista.

* WINDOWS ANTI-VIRUS. Another terrific new product (this one free) from Microsoft is Security Essentials. Like Windows 7, reviews of the product stated it was one of the best AVs available to Windows users. My experience would support that conclusion. I was running AntiVir & Windows Defender on a family member’s computer and it got badly infected with spyware. Defender caught one thing but was waiting for someone to direct it what to do. Antivir also caught one item and deleted it, after it prompted me what to do.

After putting Microsoft Security Essentials on the computer and running a scan, it found another eight items that it immediately removed (without need for user intervention) that were apparently missed by the other two products. AntiVir, according to most reviews, had the best virus recognition available among the free anti-virus programs.

I highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials for your Windows PC. It’s free, it’s excellent and requires only a small amount of memory to run.

* LAST WORD: In case you’re wondering, the Mac is still my preferred platform (I’m writing this post on a Mac).

As I continue in my study of 1 Peter, here are my thoughts from Chapter 3:

- A wife’s submission to her husband does not mean she is a doormat. A wife’ submission to her husband is often misunderstood today.
- Beauty and adornments have their proper place, but should be kept in perspective. Christian women should let their beauty shine from within, which comes from trusting Jesus.
- Men: respect your wife. This means you will protect, honor, and help her. This means men should listen to their wives’ counsel, be considerate of her needs and treat her with love, courtesy, insight and tact.
- Wives are equal to their husbands in spiritual privileges.
- Men who misuse their authority over their wives will suffer in their relationship with God.
- Unity is a critical component for Christians living in the world. We must 1) Be of one mind, 2) be full of sympathy, 3) have love for Christian brothers & sisters, 4) have tender hearts, 5) have humble minds (verse 8).
- Jesus teaches us to resist our natural temptation to pay evil with evil, but to instead pay evil with a blessing. We give the enemy ammunition when respond with evil.
- Joy comes from trusting God no matter what our outward circumstances.
- God will watch over those who do right.
- We shouldn’t worry about the persecution from people; they have no control over our eternal lives.
- We don’t all need to be theologians or scholars, but all believers needs to be prepared to explain our reasons for being a Christian.
- Each time we deliberately ignore our conscience we harden our heart.
- It’s better to suffer for good than to suffer for doing evil.
- We shouldn’t sin because we suffer. Look at Christ; he suffered greatly but never sinned.
- Noah being saved from drowning is a picture of baptism; it was the power of God through His promise that saved Noah.
- Baptism is an appeal to God from a clean conscience; this is what saves us today, not simply the act of baptism.

We found out today that a member of our family most likely has cancer. They’re continuing to do tests, but they’re already pretty certain of the diagnosis. It’s a sad situation anytime someone has to deal with cancer, but in this particular situation, the person with cancer is just a teenager.

Upon learning the news, his grandpa said “I wish it was me instead of him.” That’s sentiment a lot of us would share. Afterall, the person with cancer is just a kid and hasn’t had the opportunities many of us “old folks” have had.

This situation brought to mind this age-old question: “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?” I’m sure that’s a question a lot of folks are asking.

I’m going to attempt to answer that question in this post, and I welcome comments from readers with further opinions.

My first thought is the question itself is flawed. You see the Bible teaches us that there are no good people. It’s very clear in Romans 3:23:

Because all people have sinned, they have fallen short of God’s glory. – Romans 3:23 (GWT)

So if there are no good people (see also 1 John 1:8, Romans 6:23, Romans 3:10-18) let’s revise the question… Why does God allow bad things to happen to believers? Afterall, if we believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ, shouldn’t he reward us with an abundant life?

Most of us know better than that. God is good, just, loving, and merciful God, but that is not guarantee that life will be easy or go the way we think it should. In fact the Bible says life as a believer is more difficult (Matthew 7:13-14)!

I believe God allows “bad things” to happen for many reasons. For one, God uses painful situations in life to teach us to depend upon him. Sometimes that’s the only time we’ll listen! The Apostle Paul says it this way:

Brothers and sisters, we don’t want you to be ignorant about the suffering we experienced in the province of Asia. It was so extreme that it was beyond our ability to endure. We even wondered if we could go on living. In fact, we still feel as if we’re under a death sentence. But we suffered so that we would stop trusting ourselves and learn to trust God, who brings the dead back to life. He has rescued us from a terrible death, and he will rescue us in the future. We are confident that he will continue to rescue us, – 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 (GWT)

Another way God uses difficult situations in life is to teach us to minister to others. How many times have you seen crime victims helping other crime victims, recovering addicts helping those trying to recover from an addiction, or cancer survivors encouraging cancer patients? God can use our pain to help other people.

We’ll have to wait and see what God has in store for our family. Until then, all we can do is continue to praise Him and bring glory to Him in all we do.

Here are some of my thoughts from 1 Peter Chapter 2.

– Bad attitudes can hinder our love for Christ and people.
– Purging evil from our lives is an intentional choice.
– God’s word sustains life and gives growth. Read your Bible daily!
– The more we experience God’s goodness, the easier it becomes to reject worldliness.
– Every part of our lives – jobs, activities, recreation, attitudes, thoughts, service – should be given as a spiritual sacrifice to God.
– Believers will face disappointment in life but our faith in God is never misplaced.
– When we stumble in life, we should examine ourselves. Are we listening and obeying God’s Word?
– When we become believers, the enemy (Satan) wants to deceive us so that our evil desires will prevail.
– Entertaining evil desires, even if those desires never become sinful actions, takes our focus off Christ and on to worldly desires. Actions start with thoughts.
– The purpose of government is to punish evil and condone good works.
– God is honored when we respect authority over us, even if that authority is unjust. Especially when the authority is unjust.
– We are to respect and love all people whether they are believers or not, and we are called to sacrificially love those who love Christ.
– When we take our eyes off Christ, we will go astray. We should be cautious not to let life’s circumstances dictate the directions in our lives.

I’m currently studying 1 Peter, and here are some thoughts from Chapter 1.

– Salvation is given to us the moment we accept Jesus, but is not complete until He returns.
– Even when life’s direction isn’t clear to us, we must trust God to carry our his purposes, even in times of trial.
– Sometimes God uses trials to test our faith; giving us the opportunity to show that our faith is strong and pure.
– Trials burn away our self-reliant and self-serving attitudes.
– Before we accept Christ, we are often ignorant to what desires are evil. We don’t easily recognize selfishness, pride, greed, etc.
– Evil desires still exist after we accept Christ. We depend upon the Holy Spirit to overcome them.
– We cannot achieve perfect holiness on Earth. Attaining holiness is a process perfected when we get to Heaven.
– We should not be spoiled children but grateful children who fear (respect) their Father.
– Growth in purity and holiness will result in deeper love. Such love isn’t possible in the world at large.

For the past several years my wife has been using a so-called “cleansing puff” instead of traditional wash cloths when showering. She loves cleansing puffs and has on several occasions suggested I use one, too. She said the rich lather generated from a cleansing puff makes her skin feel vibrant, therefore, I should try it too.

My goal when showering is to be clean and not stink. Therefore, I saw little value in using a cleansing puff. Besides I have no need for “vibrant skin.” But more importantly, no real man would use something called a “cleansing puff”! Real men use a bar of soap and that’s it!

A couple of months back I relented. I confess that I now use a cleansing puff. What happened, you ask?

Mrs. Vhost stopped buying bar soap. I was now faced with using body wash, which by the way is just a fancy term for “liquid soap”. As it turns out, a traditional wash cloth sucks up body wash like a Hummer sucks gas.

So instead of wasting valuable body wash, I bit the bullet and tried a cleansing puff instead. And it worked well. It requires much less soap and the rest, as they say, is history.

It took a lot of humility to begin using a cleansing puff.

Humility is a good thing. The Bible tells us that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. (1 Peter 5:5-6)

Humility is not putting yourself down; it’s lifting God up.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself less.

Humility is not denying your strengths, but admitting your weaknesses.

Our culture teaches to do the opposite. Our culture tells us to take pride in our ambition, to be noticed and to be self-confident.

When we are prideful, we become dependent upon ourselves and don’t depend on God.

When we are prideful, we condemn others.

When we are prideful, we become content with the externals. “Doing religion” is more than just following rules and making yourself look good before people. It means a transformation of the heart from the inside out.

Humility is a daily decision. It is the core of any strong relationship, whether it be with God or with people.

What I’m listening to (as of 7/1/2009):

Summer of ‘69 (Bryan Adams)
Achy Breaky Heart (Billy Ray Cyrus)
Awesome God (Rich Mullens)
Spooky (Classics IV)
Animal (Def Leppard)

One of my three readers requested a synopsis of my favorite iPhone apps. So without any further delay…..

All apps are free unless marked by $$.

YouVersion: The Holy Bible in 16 English translations. This is a must-have app!
AOL Radio: Lot of choices for music and talk if you want something different than your own iPod music collection.
TweetDeck: Client application for Twitter.
Shazam: If you hear a song you like but you don’t know who sings it, let Shazam listen and it will give you the information you need.
GPS Tracker: Track your position on the planet.
App Sniper ($$) – Find iPhone paid applications on sale, oftentimes for free.
Labyrinth LE – Fun game.
Lightsaber – Must have for Star Wars fanatics.
Air Sharing ($$) – Transfer files to/from your computer wirelessly.
SpeedTest – Want to know how fast your Internet connection is? Try this from speedtest.net.
Network Utility – very basic network utility; discover your IP address, ping and scan TCP/IP ports.