Quotes from Jerry Bridges

The so-called sovereign nations of the world are not truly sovereign. They are nothing more than instruments in the hand of God to accomplish His will:

We are all sinners and are on an equal plane with one another. So we cannot exercise grace as God does, but we can relate to one another as those who have received grace and who wish to operate on the principles of grace.

The assurance here is that God will show compassion. It is not enough to say that He is compassionate, but He will show compassion.

If I complain about the difficult circumstances of my life, I impugn the sovereignty and goodness of God and tempt my listener to do the same.

He is with us in our troubles.

The good that God works for in our lives is conformity to the likeness of His Son.

Because His people were in union with Him, to persecute them was to persecute Him. This truth is no different today. You are in union with Christ, just as surely as the disciples were in the time of the book of Acts.

God's unfailing love for us is an objective fact affirmed over and over in the Scriptures. It is true whether we believe it or not. Our doubts do not destroy God's love, nor does our faith create it.

Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they've earned God's blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are sure they've forfeited God's blessing through disobedience or lack of discipline. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace - God's unmerited favor to those who deserve only His wrath.

It is vain to guard our minds and emotions against that which comes from without if we do not at the same time deal with habits of sin which are within. The battle for holiness must be fought on two fronts—without and within. Only then will we see progress toward holiness.

There is a vast difference between failing and becoming a failure. We become a failure when we give up—when we stop trying. But as long as we are working on those sinful habits, regardless of how often we fail, we have not become a failure, and we can expect to see progress.

Most of us probably entertain either of these attitudes on different days. On a good day (as we perceive it), we tend toward self-righteous Pharisaism. On a not-so-good day, we allow ourselves to wallow in a sense of failure and guilt. Either way we've moved away from the gospel of God's grace, trying to relate to God directly on the basis of our performance rather than through Christ.