Sometimes I wonder what the background to some of our Christian cliches are. I mean, who was the first person to say, “Let go, and let God”? I think that if we knew the circumstances it would help us to know what the original intent has.
For example, if you are struggling with a sin and someone says, “Let go (of your sin) and Let God (give you strength)” then that’s a good thing. But if you happen to be hanging off the edge of a cliff and some well-meaning spiritualist comes along and says “Let go, and let God”, maybe not such a good idea!
Our question concerns five well-known cliches which we hear all the time. And I want to comment on each one of them but I would also like to add a few others to the list:
1. God works in mysterious ways. This is partly true. Sometimes God very obviously does things that we don’t understand. After all:
Isaiah 55:8-9  For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.  9  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
But it is also true that God has given us principles in His word with promises attached whereby we know what God will do. God has written natural laws by which we know what the reaction to some action will be. And I have found that the Lord uses His natural laws far more often than he does His supernatural intervention of those laws.
2. Where God guides, He provides. This is true. But what we need to remember is that the key is knowing that the Lord is guiding, and then stepping out in obedience. At the same time, sometimes we like to look at our provisions as proof of God’s guidance but this may or may not be true.
3. Let go, and let God. This phrase highlights a believer’s need to surrender to the Lord’s control. But surrendering to God’s control doesn’t mean inactivity. It means trusting the Lord as we continue to follow what we believe His revealed will is for our lives. God doesn’t do everything for us. Have you ever noticed that God never changes the lightbulbs at church? So let go and Let God is good when we apply it to the aspect of trusting Him but isn’t an excuse for laziness.
4. Cleanliness is next to godliness. I’m not sure where this came from but it was probably a Christian mom speaking to a child about their room! First of all, it is good to be clean. It is good to focus on the little details but don’t forget what Jesus said to the Pharisees:
Matthew 23:25-26  Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.  26  Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
It is good to be clean. Personally, I don’t like being in a dirty restaurant and I don’t like to be in closed spaces with people who don’t shower often enough or don’t brush their teeth. But you don’t become godly (Christlike) by using soap and water. You become godly by getting saved and then growing in God’s grace through obedience and trust.
5. God helps those who help themselves. - Came from Ben Franklin. If you think about it, it sounds almost opposite of “Let go, and let God”. The truth is, God helps those who realize that they are helpless without Christ. But I get it. The point is, don’t sit around and expect the Lord to do everything for you. He gave you a brain and a body so use them.
Now, let me add some other Christian cliches that you have probably heard:
6. When God closes a door, he opens a window. This is not always true. Sometimes God doesn’t want us to take any action whatsoever. God can also desire us to stay right where we are. It is called waiting on the Lord. I like to say, “Just keep doing what the Lord told you to do. He will make it clear if He wants you to do something else.”
7. You can’t out-give God. I think this is one I have heard the most coming from the pulpit when preachers are trying to get their people to give more financially. So let me begin by saying it is a biblical principle:
Luke 6:38  Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.
But I do see a danger in the way this saying is usually used. The idea is that if I give to the Lord then He will give me more. This is the prosperity gospel through-and-through. Nobody ever gave more than Jesus and yet Jesus had this to say about himself:
Luke 9:57-58  And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.  58  And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.
It really all comes down to the motive of the heart.
8. God said. I believe it. That settles it. I saw this on a bumper sticker a number of times. One day I saw a bumper sticker that said, “God said it. That settles it whether you believe it or not.”  That’s probably more applicable to the society of faithlessness that we are living in today. Having said that, the next time you desire to say this, make sure that what you are referring to is actually what God said and not just what you think he said.
I’d like to make one more point about Christian cliches. When I was a young Christian I would here people say things like “Just trust the Lord” or “God knows what He is doing” or my all-time favorite, “He/she has gone to a better place”.
Look, I know you may mean well but remember that young believers want to trust God but don’t know exactly how to apply that concept. It is nice to know that God knows what he is doing but how do I live in the light of that truth?
And I will never forget how totally useless “She has gone to a better place” sounded to my aching heart at the graveside of my mother. When a person loses a loved one, they don’t need our theological prowess, they need our comfort and support. Just be there to weep with them. That’s what they really want and what they really need.

The ESV is becoming quite popular and a lot of people speak very highly of it. But popularity doesn’t make something right. The real question is, “Can it be trusted”.
It is true that the ESV is becoming quite popular. In fact, it has been listed as one of the top-selling Bible translations since at least 2014. In the last 15 years, an estimated 200,000,000 copies have been sold world-wide. I would say that’s popular! 
The ESV was released in 2001, with minor revisions being released in 2007, 2011, and 2016.
From their web site:
The English Standard Version (ESV) is an "essentially literal" translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Created by a team of more than 100 leading evangelical scholars and pastors, the ESV Bible emphasizes "word-for-word" accuracy, literary excellence, and depth of meaning.
Not long ago, the ESV Translation Oversight Committee decided that they had brought their translation to the point where it was good enough to stop working on. In their words:
“the ESV Bible will remain unchanged in all future editions printed and published by Crossway—in much the same way that the King James Version (KJV) has remained unchanged ever since the final KJV text was established almost 250 years ago (in 1769).” 
They are calling their final revision the “Permanent Text of the ESV Bible”. This final revision included changes to 52 words found in 29 verses.
The foundation for their translation work was the Revised Standard Version (RSV) which was translated from the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in the Old Testament and the Critical Greek Text in the New Testament.
So the Translators of the ESV basically took the RSV and tweaked it to be more of a formal equivalent translation (they call it “optimal equivalence”) of these same original language texts. Also, in their own words, there were occasions when they consulted  the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Syriac Peshitta, the Latin Vulgate, and a few other things to “shed light” on the Old Testament Hebrew text.
So, the essential and most basic problem is that it is based upon inferior Hebrew and Greek texts. 
It’s ironic that they actually claim to be following in the tradition of the Tyndale translation and the KJV. This isn’t even remotely possible since the ESV is by all intents and purposes, nothing more than a revision of a translation based upon different Hebrew and Greek texts. A good number of scholars have basically come to the same conclusion. And yet, rather than address the elephant in the room, the ESV publishers just quietly ignore this fact.
Since the ESV is not based on the Textus Receptus, we should expect to find differences. And indeed we do. There are quite a number of verses that you will find in the KJV which are just not in the ESV. The reason is because those same verses are not in the Critical text from which the ESV was translated.
There are also phrases missing in quite a number of other verses. There are several lists available on the internet, if you are interested but I wanted to address a few which I believe are more critical:
Mathew 19:9  And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.  KJV
And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.  ESV
This is critical because without this phrase, one could conclude that it is acceptable to married a woman who was divorced when Jesus clearly said otherwise. We may debate what the conditions are all day long. But we cannot simply remove the phrase.
Mark 1:2 (ESV) – As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way,
What’s the problem here, you ask? It’s not written in Isaiah. But that's what the Critical Text says so rather than do it what we like to call, "the right way", they went with it.

John 3:13  And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.  KJV
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.  ESV 
This is an unfortunate deletion because the phrase teaches us the omnipresence of Christ. He was sitting down with Nicodemus when he said this. And he clearly said that he was in heaven. I don’t know of any other verse from the earthly ministry of Christ that makes this as clear as we see it here.
John 7:8 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for My time is not yet full come.
You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come.
The absence of that little word “yet” makes Jesus a liar in the ESV because in the ESV, Jesus told his brothers he wasn’t going to the feast and then later he went.
One of the more plain errors of the ESV is the fact that Elhanan is said to be the slayer of Goliath in 2 Samuel 21:19, even though any child who attended Sunday school knows that it was David. The reason for this translation error is that the faulty ESV Greek textual basis reads so. So if your Bible says Elhanan killed Goliath, that’s an error, even it clarifies it in a footnote.
One of the more controversial changes, which was actually debated quite strongly, was Genesis 3:16.
The ESV translators changed their earlier translation from “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you,” to “Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
Of course the KJV says, “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee”.
The ESV sets it in stone that the woman, all women, will always have a naturally tendency to be contrary to the husband. And that is simply not what the Hebrew states.
I had originally thought that the ESV avoided gender neutral language but that is not always the case. The danger? Formal equivalence.
So, in summery, there are some negative things about the ESV almost all of them are textual, meaning, it is because the foundation is different. Some are translational. But none of the changes are warranted.
Nuff said?