Quotes from Jerry Bridges

God never makes a mistake; God has no regrets. "As for God, his way is perfect" (Psalm 18:30). We can trust God. He is trustworthy.

He permits, for reasons known only to Himself, people to act contrary to and in defiance of His revealed will. But He never permits them to act contrary to His sovereign will.

It is enough to know that God can and does restrain the harmful acts of others toward us when that is His sovereign will. Furthermore, God, in His infinite wisdom and love, intends that good ultimately comes from those harmful acts.

And if God permits it, it is because the ungodly action is part of God's plan for him. No one can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it (see Lamentations 3:37).

How do we view those who do not show love for us? Do we see them as persons for whom Christ died or as persons who make our lives difficult? I

But when we complain about the weather, we are actually complaining against God who sent us our weather.

when we complain about the weather, we are actually complaining against God

Sometimes, according to the Bible, God even moves in the hearts of some people to act stubbornly.

His moral purity serves to magnify our impurity.

Furthermore, even a deep, penetrating sense of our sinfulness does not do justice to the reality of our predicament. Our need is not to be measured by our own sense of need, but by what God had to do to meet that need.

Well did the Puritan John Owen say, "Mortification from a self-strength, carried on by ways of self-invention, unto the end of a self-righteousness is the soul and substance of all false religion."[2] Mortification must be done by the strength and under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Our situation was so desperate that only the death of His own Son on a cruel and shameful cross was sufficient to resolve the problem.

For the LORD your God had made his spirit stubborn and his heart obstinate in order to give him into your hands, as he has now done" (Deuteronomy 2:30).

call, believe, hear, and preach.

Many people erroneously think that God can just forgive our sins because He is a loving God. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cross speaks to us not only about our sin but about God's holiness.

My purpose is not to attempt an explanation but rather to exhibit once again the Bible's consistent teaching that God is able and does move upon the hearts and minds of people to accomplish His purposes.

but rather that He works in His mysterious way through their wills to accomplish His purposes.

Do you need the good favor of a certain professor in order to get a good recommendation for a job? If that job is God's plan for you, God is able to and will move in the heart of that professor to give you a good recommendation.

Though the absolute sovereignty of God over our lives is consistently taught throughout Scripture, it is not the uncaring sovereignty of a despot but of a God who is just as loving and caring as He is sovereign. But we have to by faith believe that truth when His ways are different from that which we desire. My

George MacDonald: "I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about—born in God's thoughts—and then made by God is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking.

Lamentations 3:33). God does not delight in our sufferings. He brings only that which is necessary, but He does not shrink from that which will help us grow.

Your promotion, or lack of it, is in the hand of God. Your superiors are simply His agents to carry out His will.

As we do so, it will be helpful to keep in mind that the biblical writers never seemed to be aware of the problem, except for one statement by Paul in Romans 9:19-21. And Paul's statement seems to raise

make His purpose your purpose.