Quotes from Jerry Bridges

All that Christ did in both His life and death, He did in our place as our substitute.

Our trust in God must be based, not on someone else's experience, but upon what God has told us about Himself in His Word.

Our lives are also cluttered with a lot of "if onlys." "If only I had done this," or "if only that had not happened." But again, God has no "if onlys." 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. Just

We can put this down as a bedrock truth: 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.

Just as we should learn to stop asking why, or searching for rational explanations, or seeking to discover what "good" there is in our own adversities, so we must also learn to quiet our hearts in regard to God's government of the universe.

our innate tendency to think our country is always right. We assume that God will bless our side with victory. The Bible does not support such a view. In fact, according to biblical history, God sometimes uses an evil nation to punish another one, then in turn punishes the first nation for its sin.

I believe that human morality, rather than flagrant sin, is the greatest obstacle to the gospel today.

if we want to live less stressful lives, we must learn to live with a single agenda: God's agenda.

Every desire to read the Bible and to do God's will, every manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit, be it ever so small, was the living result of my being in Christ.

What was it that caused such a dramatic mood change in the heart of the writer? He turns from the circumstances at hand to the Lord.

If God controls the circumstances of the sparrow, how much more does He control the circumstances that affect us?

Saying no to ungodliness and worldly passions basically means a decisive break with those attitudes and practices. In one sense, this decisive break is a divine act that occurred when we died to the dominion of sin in our lives. In another sense, we're to work out this breach with sin by putting to death the misdeeds of the body (Romans 8:13).

We, too, if we would speak of the Lord's great faithfulness, must turn from our circumstances to the Lord.

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.

That is, all that God does or allows in all of His creation will ultimately serve His glory. As John Piper says in his book Desiring God, "The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy himself forever."[ 3]

We must learn to live by His agenda if we are to trust Him.

One of the best kept secrets among Christians today is this: Jesus paid it all. I mean all. He not only purchased your forgiveness of sins and your ticket to heaven, He purchased every blessing and every answer to prayer you will ever receive. Every one of them - no exceptions.

We must see our circumstances through God's love instead of, as we are prone to do, seeing God's love through our circumstances.

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.

Some of the Corinthian Christians persisted in disobedience to the point where God had to take their lives (1 Corinthians 11:30).

the pursuit of holiness is a joint venture between God and the Christian.

The reality, though, is that our very best efforts at following his example are always imperfect and defiled by our sinful nature. By contrast, his obedience was always perfect and complete and never defiled. Therefore, we should always look first at what Jesus did as our representative before looking at him as our example.

As Lamentations 3:33 states, "For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.

Why is this such a well-kept secret? The core issue is that we don't believe we're still spiritually "bankrupt." Having come into God's kingdom by grace alone solely on the merit of Another, we're now trying to pay our own way by our performance. We declared only temporary bankruptcy; we're now trying to live by good works rather than by grace.