In His infinite wisdom, God allows trials in order to develop perseverance in us and to cause us to fix our hopes on the glory that is yet to be revealed… Our faith and perseverance can grow only under the pain of trial.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 112. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Any training – physical, mental, or spiritual – is characterized at first by failure. We fail more often than we succeed. But if we persevere, we gradually see progress till we are succeeding more often than failing. This is true as we seek to put to death particular sins. At first it seems we are making no progress, so we become discouraged and think, What’s the use?! I can never overcome that sin. That is exactly what Satan wants us to think. It is at this point that we must exercise perseverance. We keep wanting instant success, but holiness doesn’t come that way. Our sinful habits are not broken overnight. Follow-through is required to make any change in our lives, and follow-through requires perseverance.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 102. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God is worthy of my loving obedience because of who He is, not because of what He does.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 84. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
There is no question that obedience to God’s commands prompted by fear or merit-seeking is not true obedience. The only obedience acceptable to God is constrained and impelled by love, because “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). God’s law as revealed in His Word prescribes our duty, but love provides the correct motive for obedience. We obey God’s law, not to be loved, but because we are loved in Christ.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 92. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Obedience to the revealed will of God is often just as much a step of faith as claiming a promise from God.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 139. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
What is holiness? The best practical definition that I have heard is simply “without sin.” That is the statement that was made of the Lord Jesus’ life on earth (Hebrews 4:15), and that should be the goal of every person who desires to be godly. Granted, we will never reach that goal in this life; nevertheless it is to be our supreme objective and the object of our most earnest efforts and prayers.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 121. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 22. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
To be holy is to be morally blameless. It is to be separated from sin and, therefore, consecrated to God. The word signifies separation to God, and the conduct befitting those so separated… To live a holy life, then, is to live a life in conformity to the moral precepts of the Bible and in contrast to the sinful ways of the world. It is to live a life characterized by the “(putting) off of your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires… and (putting) on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22, 24).
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 16. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God intends the Christian life to be a life of joy – not drudgery. The idea that holiness is associated with a dour disposition is a caricature of the worst sort. In fact, just the opposite is true. Only those who walk in holiness experience true joy.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 154. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
We do have a responsibility to make wise decisions or to discover the will of God, whichever term we may prefer to use. But God’s plan for us is not contingent upon our decisions. God’s plan is not contingent at all. God’s plan is sovereign. It includes our foolish decisions as well as our wise ones.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 170. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Bible reading enables us…to enjoy communion with God as He speaks to us from His word, encouraging us, instructing us, and revealing Himself to us.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 39, www.navpress.com. Used by Permission. Get this book!
Habits are the thought and emotional patterns engraved on our minds. These internal habit patterns play just as forceful a role as external influences on our actions – in fact, perhaps more so.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 132. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Because we are sinful by nature, we have developed sinful patterns, which we call habits. Discipline is required to break any habit. If a boy has developed the wrong style of swinging a baseball bat, he cannot just decide to change instantly. He has developed a certain habit, and much discipline – much correction and training – is required to break that bad habit and develop a new one. In the same way, our patterns of disobedience to God have been developed over a number of years and are not broken easily or without discipline. Discipline does not mean gritting your teeth and saying, “I’ll not do that anymore.” Rather, discipline means structured, planned training. Just as you need a plan for regular Bible reading or study, so you need a plan for applying the Word to your life.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 100-101. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
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.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 91. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Principles in breaking sinful habits and acquiring new ones:
1. Habits are developed and reinforced by frequent repetition.
2. Never let an exception occur.
3. Diligence in all areas is required to ensure success in one area.
4. Don’t be discouraged by failure.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 133-134. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
One definition of faith might be “Obeying the revealed will of God and trusting Him for the results.”
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 144. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All Rights Reserved. Get this book!
God does not exalt His mercy at the expense of His justice. And in order to maintain His justice, all sin without exception must be punished. Contrary to popular opinion, with God there is no such thing as mere forgiveness. There is only justice.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 43. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God’s justice is inflexible. Justice may be defined as rendering to everyone according to one’s due. Justice means we get exactly what we deserve – nothing more, nothing less. In our human system of justice a tension often exists between justice and mercy. Sometimes one prevails at the expense of the other. But there is no tension with God. Justice always prevails. God’s justice must be satisfied; otherwise His moral government would be undermined.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 43. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God has provided all we need for our pursuit of holiness. He has delivered us from the reign of sin and given us His indwelling Holy Spirit. He has revealed His will for holy living in His Word, and He works in us to will and to act according to His good purpose. He has sent pastors and teachers to exhort and encourage us in the path of holiness; and He answers our prayers when we cry to Him for strength against temptation.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 156. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
As a young Christian I had the idea that all I had to do to live a holy life was to find out from the Bible what God wanted me to do and go do it. Christians with maturity will smile at this naïve assumption, but I see younger Christians starting off with the same air of self-confidence. We have to learn that we are dependent upon the enabling power of the Holy Spirit to attain any degree of holiness. Then, as we look to Him, we will see Him working in us – revealing our sin, creating a desire for holiness, and giving us the strength to respond to Him in obedience.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 76. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The habits of our old nature and the attacks of Satan are too strong for us to persevere unless the Holy Spirit is at work in us to create a desire for holiness. The Holy Spirit creates this desire, not only by showing us our sins, but also by showing us God’s standard of holiness. He does this through the Scriptures. As we read and study the Scriptures or hear them taught, we are captivated by the moral beauty of God’s standard of holiness.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 74. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Thankfulness to God is a recognition that God in His goodness and faithfulness has provided for us and cared for us, both physically and spiritually. It is a recognition that we are totally dependent upon Him; that all that we are and have comes from God.
The Practice of Godliness NavPress, 1996, p. 100. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Legalism does not consist in yielding obedience to the law. Rather, it is to seek justification and good standing with God through the merit of works done in obedience to the law – instead of by faith in Christ.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 91. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Legalism insists on conformity to manmade religious rules and requirements, which are often unspoken but are nevertheless very real… There are far too many instances within Christendom where our traditions and rules are, in practice, more important than God’s commands.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 120. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Quite possibly there is no greater conformity to the world among evangelical Christians today than the way in which we, instead of presenting our bodies as holy sacrifices, pamper and indulge them in defiance of our better judgment and our Christian purpose in life.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 109. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
As we become soft and lazy in our bodies, we tend to become soft and lazy spiritually. When Paul talked about making his body his slave, so that after having preached to others he himself would not be disqualified, he was not thinking about physical disqualification, but spiritual. He knew well that physical softness inevitably leads to spiritual softness. When the body is pampered and indulged, the instincts and passions of the body tend to get the upper hand and dominate our thoughts and actions. We tend to do not what we should do, but what we want to do, as we follow the craving of our sinful nature.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 111. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
We have to take control of our bodies, and make them our servants instead of our masters.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 111. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
To put to death the misdeeds of the body, then, is to destroy the strength and vitality of sin as it tries to reign in our bodies.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 84. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The Bible is full of God’s promises to provide for us spiritually and materially, to never forsake us, to give us peace in times of difficult circumstances, to cause all circumstances to work together for our good, and finally to bring us safely home to glory. Not one of those promises is dependent upon our performance. They are all dependent on the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 71. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
To be justified means more than to be declared “not guilty.” It actually means to be declared righteous before God. It means God has imputed or charged the guilt of our sin to His Son, Jesus Christ, and has imputed or credited Christ’s righteousness to us.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 36. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
As we come to Christ, then, empty-handed, claiming no merit of our own, but clinging by faith to His blood and righteousness, we are justified. We pass immediately from a state of condemnation and spiritual death to a state of pardon, acceptance, and the sure hope of eternal life. Our sins are blotted out, and we are “clothed” with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. In our standing before God, we will never be more righteous, even in heaven, than we were the day we trusted Christ, or we are now. Obviously in our daily experience we fall far short of the perfect righteousness God requires. But because He has imputed to us the perfect righteousness of His Son, He now sees us as being just as righteous as Christ Himself.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 107. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
We need to call sin what the Bible calls it and not soften it with modern expressions borrowed from our culture.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 28. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
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.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 44-45. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Compassion is the deep feeling of sharing in the suffering of another and the desire to relieve that suffering.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 188. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Few things are as dishonoring to the cause of Christ as Christians quarreling among themselves. Yet we expel people from our fellowship for adultery, while we tolerate discord between ourselves and other believers. We have failed to understand and obey the biblical imperative to “make every effort to do what leads to peace.”
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 163. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Wisdom an understanding and application of the moral principles of God.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 89. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com, All rights reserved. Get this book!
Before we can learn the sufficiency of God’s grace, we must learn the insufficiency of ourselves. The more we see our sinfulness, the more we appreciate grace in its basic meaning of God’s undeserved favor. In a similar manner, the more we see our frailty, weakness, and dependence, the more we appreciate God’s grace in its dimension of His divine assistance. Just as grace shines more brilliantly against the dark background of our sin, so it also shines more brilliantly against the background of our human weakness.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 144. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
One great paradox of the Christian life is that we are fully responsible for our Christian growth and at the same time fully dependent upon the Holy Spirit to give us both the desire to grow and the ability to do it. God’s grace does not negate the need for responsible action on our part, but rather makes it possible.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 198. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Have you ever thought about what it means to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind? I don’t think any of us fully plumb the depths of that commandment, but here are some obvious aspects:
1. Your love for God transcends all other desires (see Exodus 20:3).
2. Like David, you long to gaze upon His beauty and seek fellowship with Him (see Psalm 27:4).
3. You rejoice in meditating on His Word, and, like Jesus, you rise early to pray (Psalm 119:97, Mark 1:35).
4. You always delight to do His will, regardless of how difficult it may be (see Psalm 40:8, NASB).
5. A regard for His glory governs and motivates everything you do – your eating and drinking, your working and playing, your buying and selling, your reading and speaking – and, dare I mention it, even your driving (see 1 Corinthians 10:31).
6. You are never discouraged or frustrated by adverse circumstances because you are confident God is working all things together for your good (see Romans 8:28).
7. You recognize His sovereignty in every event of your life and consequently receive both success and failure from His hand (see 1 Samuel 2:7; Psalm 75:6-7).
8. You are always content because you know He will never leave you or forsake you (see Hebrews 13:5).
9. The first petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Hallowed be your name,” is the most important prayer you pray (see Matthew 6:9).
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 26-27. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God’s providence is His constant care for and His absolute rule over all His creation for His own glory and the good of His people.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 25. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Our reliance on the Spirit is not intended to foster an attitude of “I can’t do it,” but one of “I can do it through Him who strengthens me.” The Christian should never complain of want of ability and power.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 80. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
True salvation brings with it a desire to be made holy. When God saves us through Christ, He not only saves us from the penalty of sin, but also from its dominion.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 34. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
I acknowledge it often seems more difficult to trust God than to obey Him. The moral will of God given to us in the Bible is rational and reasonable. The circumstances in which we must trust God often appear irrational and inexplicable….Obeying God is worked out within well-defined boundaries of God’s revealed will. Trusting God is worked out in an arena that has no boundaries. We do not know the extent, the duration, or the frequency of the painful, adverse circumstances in which we must frequently trust God. We are always coping with the unknown.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 17. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
It is just as important to trust God as it is to obey Him. When we disobey God we defy His authority and despise His holiness. But when we fail to trust God we doubt His sovereignty and question His goodness. In both cases we cast aspersions upon His majesty and His character. God views our distrust of Him as seriously as He views our disobedience.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 18. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
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.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 18. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God’s plan and His ways of working out His plan are frequently beyond our ability to fathom and understand. We must learn to trust when we don’t understand.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 20. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
No detail of your life is too insignificant for your heavenly Father’s attention; no circumstance is so big that He cannot control it.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 40. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God is sovereign over people. He will move their hearts to cause them to do His will, or He will restrain them from doing anything contrary to His will. But it is His will, His agenda for our lives, that God will guard, protect, and advance. We must learn to live by His agenda if we are to trust Him.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 71. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
But though we should never ask a demanding “why?” we may and should ask God to enable us to understand what He may be teaching us through a particular experience. But even here we must be careful that we are not seeking to satisfy our souls by finding some spiritual “good” in the adversity. Rather we must trust God that He is working in the experience for our good, even when we see no beneficial results. We must learn to trust God when He doesn’t tell us why, when we don’t understand what He is doing.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 125. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God is able to work with or without human means. Though He most often uses them, He is not dependent upon them. Furthermore, He will frequently use some means altogether different from that which we would have expected. Sometimes our prayers for deliverance from some particular strait are accompanied by faith to the extent we can foresee some predictable means of deliverance. But God is not dependent upon means that we can foresee. In fact, it seems from experience that God delights to surprise us by His ways of deliverance to remind us that our trust must be in Him and Him alone.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 203. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Biblical love is not emotions or feelings, but attitudes and actions that seek the best interests of the other person, regardless of how we feel toward him.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 208. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Love binds together all virtues of Christian character. Love is not so much a character trait as the inner disposition of the soul that produces them all… Though love may be more a motivational force than an actual display of Christian virtue, it always results in actions on our part. Love inclines us and directs us to be kind, to forgive, to give of ourselves to one another.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 203. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Heart in Scripture is used in various ways. Sometimes it means our reason or understanding, sometimes our affections and emotion, and sometimes our will. Generally it denotes the whole soul of man and all its faculties, not individually, but as they all work together in doing good or evil. The mind as it reasons, discerns, and judges; the emotions as they like or dislike; the conscience as it determines and warns; and the will as it chooses or refuses – are all together called the heart.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 61. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
As we prayerfully expose ourselves to the Scriptures, we begin to understand what God’s will is regarding our conduct and character. And then as the Holy Spirit applies His word to specific areas of our lives, and as we are obedient to His promptings, we begin to develop Bible-based convictions. Our values begin to change so that God’s standard becomes our delight and our desire.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 124. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it another way: Grace and works are mutually exclusive. As Paul said in Romans 11:6, “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.” Our relationship with God is based on either works or grace. There is never a works-plus-grace relationship with Him.
Transforming Grace, NavPress, 1991, p. 22. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God’s wisdom is fathomless, His decisions are unsearchable, His methods are mysterious and untraceable. No one has ever even understood His mind, let alone advised Him on the proper course of action. How futile and even arrogant for us to seek to determine what God is doing in a particular event or circumstance. We simply cannot search out the reasons behind His decisions or trace out the ways by which He brings those decisions to pass.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 126. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God has given each of us a conscience, a moral compass within our hearts, bearing witness to His Law. In sinful or self-righteous people (that is, people whose dominant characteristics are either obvious sin or obvious self-righteousness) the conscience is to some degree “hardened.” That is, it is relatively insensitive to sin or its own self-righteousness. But in a growing Christian the conscience becomes more and more sensitive to violations of God’s Law. As a result, our consciences continually indict us, accusing us of not only particular sins, but, more important, of our overall sinfulness. We recognize more and more that specific acts of sin are simply the expressions of our still-wicked hearts.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 70. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The fruit of patience in all its aspects – long-suffering, forbearance, endurance, and perseverance – is a fruit that is most intimately associated with our devotion to God. All character traits of godliness grow out of and have their foundation in our devotion to God, but the fruit of patience must grow out of that relationship in a particular way.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 179. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The cure for impatience with the fulfillment of God’s timetable is to believe His promises, obey His will, and leave the results to Him. So often when God’s timetable stretches into years we become discouraged and…want to give up or try to work something out on [our] own.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 176. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Every day God patiently bears with us, and every day we are tempted to become impatient with our friends, neighbors, and loved ones. And our faults and failures before God are so much more serious than the petty actions of others that tend to irritate us! God calls us to graciously bear with the weaknesses of others, tolerating them and forgiving them even as He has forgiven us.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 174. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Patience does not ignore the provocations of others; it simply seeks to respond to them in a godly manner. It enables us to control our tempers when we are provoked and to seek to deal with the person and his provocation in a way that tends to heal relationships rather than aggravate problems. It seeks the ultimate good of the other individual, rather than the immediate satisfaction of our own aroused emotions.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 171-172. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
Patience is the ability to suffer a long time under the mistreatment of others without growing resentful or bitter.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 168. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The promises of the Bible are nothing more than God’s covenant to be faithful to His people. It is His character that makes these promises valid.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 115-116. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com, All rights reserved. Get this book!
I fear that all too often Christians may be less humane and considerate than nonbelievers. We think we are standing on principle when in reality we may be only insisting on our opinion.
The Practice of Godliness, NavPress, 1996, p. 187. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God does not believe for us, but He does through His Spirit create spiritual life in us so that we can believe. Faith is a gift of God. It is part of the whole salvation package that God gives to us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is not our contribution, so to speak, to God’s great plan of salvation. God does it all. Faith is part of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 135. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
We must not lose sight of the fact that God’s wrath is very real and very justified. We have all sinned incessantly against a holy, righteous God. We have rebelled willfully against His commands, defied His moral law, and acted in total defiance of His known will for us. Because of these actions were justly objects of His wrath.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 139. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God’s wrath arises from His intense, settled hatred of all sin and is the tangible expression of His inflexible determination to punish it. We might say God’s wrath is His justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which, because of our sin, is always judgment.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 52. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
God, by the very perfection of His moral nature, cannot but be angry at sin – not only because of its destructiveness to humans, but, more important, because of its assault on His divine majesty. This is not the mere petulance of an offended deity because His commands are not obeyed. It is rather the necessary response of God to uphold His moral authority in His universe. And though God’s wrath does not contain the sinful emotions associated with human wrath, it does contain a fierce intensity arising from His settled opposition to sin and His determination to punish it to the utmost.
Copied from The Gospel for Real Life by Jerry Bridges, © 2002, p. 53. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The extent of God’s love at Calvary is seen in both the infinite cost to Him of giving His one and only Son, and in the wretched and miserable condition of those He loved. God could not remove our sins without an infinite cost to both Himself and His Son. And because of their great love for us, both were willing—yes more than merely willing—to pay that great cost, the Father in giving His one and only Son, and the Son in laying down His life for us. One of the essential characteristics of love is the element of self-sacrifice, and this was demonstrated for us to its ultimate in God’s love at Calvary.
Trusting God, 1988, p. 138. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com, All rights reserved. Get this book!
The daily experience of Christ’s love is linked to our obedience to Him. It is not that His love is conditioned on our obedience. That would be legalism. But our experience of His love is dependent upon our obedience.
Copied from The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges, © 1996, p. 154. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.
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