Jerry Bridges
Jerry Bridges
Jerry Bridgeswas an evangelical Christian author, speaker and staff member of The Navigators. Born in Tyler, Texas, United States, he was the author of more than a dozen books, including The Pursuit of Holiness, which has sold more than one million copies. His devotional Holiness Day By Day garnered the 2009 ECPA Christian Book Award for the inspiration and gift category, and The Discipline of Grace received a similar award in 1995 for the Christian living category...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth4 December 1929
CountryUnited States of America
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.
If we are going to learn to trust God in adversity, we must believe God will allow nothing to subvert His glory so He will allow nothing to spoil the good He is working out in us and for us.
Worship from the heart in times of adversity implies an attitude of humble acceptance on our part of God's right to do as He pleases in our lives.
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.
Which of us, then, does not offend frequently with our tongue? The real problem, however, is not our tongues but our hearts.
Introspection can easily become the tool of Satan, who is called the accuser. One of his chief weapons is discouragement. He knows that if he can make us discouraged and dispirited we will not fight the battle for holiness.
We fail to see the gospel as the solution to our greatest problem-our guilt, condemnation, and alienation from God. Beyond that, we fail to see it as the basis of our day-to-day acceptance with Him. As a result, many believers live in spiritual poverty.
Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God.
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.
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.
The level of our obedience is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us.
If we want proof of God's love for us, then we must look first at the Cross where God offered up His Son as a sacrifice for our sins. Calvary is the one objective, absolute, irrefutable proof of God's love for us.
When we commit ourselves to the pursuit of holiness, we need to ensure that our commitment is actually to God, not simply to a holy lifestyle or a set of moral values ... offer yourselves to God, and in doing that commit yourselves to the pursuit of holiness in order to please Him.
Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God