Jerry Bridges Quotes

To derive the fullest comfort and encouragement from Romans 8:28 we must realize that God is at work in a proactive, not reactive, fashion. That is, God does not just respond to an adversity in our lives to make the best of a bad situation. He knows before He initiates or permits the adversity exactly how He will use it for our good.

We don't have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.

Grace... expresses two complementary thoughts: God's unmerited favor to us through Christ, and God's divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit.

...God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we now can resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. God does not do that for us. To confuse the potential for resisting (which God provided) with the responsibility for resisting (which is ours) is to court disaster in our pursuit of holiness.

The person who fears God seeks to live all of life to the glory of God... All the activities of life should be pursued with the aim of glorifying God.

In order to trust God, we must always view our adverse circumstances through the eyes of faith, not of sense. And just as the faith of salvation comes through hearing the message of the gospel (Romans 10:17), so the faith to trust God in adversity comes through the Word of God alone. It is only in the Scriptures that we find an adequate view of God's relationship to and involvement in our painful circumstances. It is only from the Scriptures, applied to our hearts by the Holy Spirit, that we receive the grace to trust God in adversity.

This is the secret of being content: To learn and accept that we live daily by God's unmerited favor given through Christ, and that we can respond to any and every situation by His divine enablement through the Holy Spirit.

God will never allow any action against you that is not in accord with His will for you. And His will is always directed to our good.

Prayer assumes the sovereignty of God. If God is not sovereign, we have no assurance that He is able to answer our prayers. Our prayers would become nothing more than wishes. But while God's sovereignty, along with his wisdom and love, is the foundation of our trust in Him, prayer is the expression of that trust.

Bitterness arises in our hearts when we do not trust in the sovereign rule of God in our lives

We obey God's Law, not to be loved but because we are loved in Christ.

The purpose of God's discipline is not to punish us but to transform us.

Obeying the revealed will of God and trusting Him for the results.

Prayer is the most tangible expression of trust in God.

Trusting God is not a matter of my feelings but of my will.

Every day that we're not practicing godliness we're being conformed to the world of ungodliness around us.

How then can we deal with our tendency toward worldliness? It is not by determining that we will not be worldly, but by committing ourselves to becoming more godly.

Because peace is a fruit of the Spirit, we are dependent upon the Spirit's work in our lives to produce the desire and the means to pursue peace. But we are also responsible to use the means He has given us and to take all practical steps to attain both peace within and peace with others.

Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in us whereby our inner being is progressively changed, freeing us more and more from sinful traits and developing within us over time the virtues of Christlike character.

The level of our obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us.

If there is not at least a yearning in our hearts to live a holy life pleasing to God, we need to seriously question whether our faith in Christ is genuine.

Our very worst days are never beyond the reach of God's grace.

God is never at a loss because He cannot find someone to cooperate with Him in carrying out His plan. He so moves in the hearts of people - either Christians or non Christians, it makes no difference - that they willingly, of their own free will carry out His plans.

Only when we're thoroughly convinced that the Christian life is entirely of grace are we able to serve God out of a grateful and loving heart.

... self-control is not control by oneself through one's own willpower but rather control of oneself through the power of the Holy Spirit.

We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart.

But we need to pray daily for humility and honesty to see these sinful attitudes for that they really are, and then for grace and discipline to root them out of our minds and replace them with thoughts pleasing to God.

Preach the gospel to yourself every day.

In a sermon entitled “God's Providence,” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Napoleon once heard it said, that man proposes and God disposes. 'Ah,' said Napoleon, 'but I propose and dispose too.' How do you think he proposed and disposed? He proposed to go and take Russia; he proposed to make all Europe his. He proposed to destroy that power, and how did he come back again? How had he disposed it? He came back solitary and alone, his mighty army perished and wasted, having well-nigh eaten and devoured one another through hunger. Man proposes and God disposes.

... we did decide to trust Christ, but the reason we made that decision is that God had first made us spiritually alive. ... God comes to us when we're spiritually dead, when we don't even realize our condition, and gives us the spiritual ability to see our plight and to see the solution in Christ. God comes all the way, not partway, to meet us in our need. When we were dead, He made us alive in Christ. And the first act of that new life is to turn in faith to Jesus.

This is the amazing story of God’s grace. God saves us by His grace and transforms us more and more into the likeness of His Son by His grace. In all our trials and afflictions, He sustains and strengthens us by His grace. He calls us by grace to perform our own unique function within the Body of Christ. Then, again by grace, He gives to each of us the spiritual gifts necessary to fulfill our calling. As we serve Him, He makes that service acceptable to Himself by grace, and then rewards us a hundredfold by grace.

Giving thanks to God for both His temporal and spiritual blessings in our lives is not just a nice thing to do - it is the moral will of God. Failure to give Him the thanks due Him is sin.

Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centred than God-centred. We are more concerned about our own "Victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sin grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.

When God saves us through Christ, He not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but also from its dominion.

Lord, I am willing To receive what You give. To lack what You withhold. To relinquish what You take, To suffer what You inflict, To be what you require.

God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son (see Romans 8:28-29).

The person who is living by grace sees this vast contrast between his own sins against God and the offenses of others against him. He forgives others because he himself has been so graciously forgiven. He realizes that, by receiving God’s forgiveness through Christ, he has forfeited the right to be offended when others hurt him.

The heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 ... obeyed by faith ... obedience is the pathway to holiness ... no one will become holy apart from a life of faith. Faith enables us to claim the promises of God, but it also enables us to obey the commands of God.

Contentment is one of the most distinguishing traits of the godly person, because a godly person has his heart focused on God rather than on possessions or position or power.

God is at work in all the circumstances of your life to bring out the good for you, even if you had never heard of Romans 8:28. His work is not dependent upon your faith. But the comfort and joy that statement is intended to give you is dependent upon your believing it, upon your trusting in Him who is at work, even though you cannot see the outcome of that work.

We are 100 percent responsible for the pursuit of holiness, but at the same time we are 100 percent dependent upon the Holy Spirit to enable us in that pursuit. The pursuit of holiness is not a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps approach to the Christian life.

Grace is the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against him.

Trust is not a passive state of mind. It is a vigorous act of the soul by which we choose to lay hold on the promises of God and cling to them despite the adversity that at times seeks to overwhelms us.

Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ's love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.

Patience is the ability to suffer a long time under the mistreatment of others without growing resentful or bitter.

Jesus said, "Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). We must honestly face the question, "Am I willing to give up a certain practice or habit that is keeping me from holiness?" It is at this point of commitment that most of us fail. We prefer to dally with sin, to try to play with it a little without getting too deeply involved.

The wisdom of the chess player is displayed more in winning over a capable opponent than a novice. The wisdom of the general is displayed more in defeating a superior army than in subduing an inferior one. Even more so, the wisdom of God is displayed when He brings good to us and glory to Himself out of confusion and calamity rather than out of pleasant times.

Sin is wrong, not because of what it does to me, or my spouse, or child, or neighbor, but because it is an act of rebellion against the infinitely holy and majestic God.