Jerry Bridges
Gentleness is an active trait, describing the manner in which we should treat others. Meekness is a passive trait, describing the proper Christian response when others mistreat us.Collection: Christian
Both gentleness and meekness are born of power, not weakness. There is a pseudo-gentlene ss that is effeminate, and there is a pseudo-meekness that is cowardly. But a Christian is to be gentle and meek because those are Godlike virtues... We should never be afraid, therefore, that the gentleness of the Spirit means weakness of character. It takes strength, God's strength, to be truly gentle.Collection: Christian
We all want Grace, but we cannot enjoy Grace when there is an attitude of comparing.Collection: Attitude
We need to approach the Bible each day with a spirit of deep humility, recognizing that our understanding of spiritual truth is at best incomplete and to some extent inaccurate ... we should approach the Scriptures in humility and expect the Spirit to humble us even further as we continue being taught by Him from His Word.Collection: Spiritual
God never allows pain without a purpose.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Perseverance
The pursuit of holiness is a joint venture between God and the Christian. No one can attain any degree of holiness without God working in his life, but just as surely no one will attain it without effort on his own part.Collection: Christian
If there is not at least a yearning in our hearts to live a holy life pleasing to God, we need to seriously question whether our faith in Christ is genuine.Collection: Heart
God's sovereignty does not negate our responsibility to pray, but rather makes it possible for us to pray with confidence.Collection: Responsibility
The sin of worldliness is a preoccupation with the things of this temporal life. It's accepting and going along with the views and practices of society around us without discerning if they are biblical. I believe that the key to our tendencies toward worldliness lies primarily in the two words “going along”. We simply go along with the values and practices of society.Collection: Lying
To derive the fullest comfort and encouragement from Romans 8:28 we must realize that God is at work in a proactive, not reactive, fashion. That is, God does not just respond to an adversity in our lives to make the best of a bad situation. He knows before He initiates or permits the adversity exactly how He will use it for our good.Collection: Fashion
Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace.Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God's blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God's blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God.Collection: Blessing
Christ exhausted the cup of God’s wrath. For all who trust in Him there is nothing more in the cup. It is empty.Collection: Wrath
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.Collection: Heart
We must pray constantly for His enabling grace to say no to temptation, of choosing to take all practical steps to avoid known areas of temptation and flee from those that surprise us.Collection: Temptation
True joy comes only from God and He shares this joy with those who walk in fellowship with Him.Collection: True Joy
Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centred than God-centred. We are more concerned about our own "Victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sin grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.Collection: Attitude
Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ's love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.Collection: Guilt
We need to call sin what the Bible calls it and not soften it with modern expressions borrowed from our culture.Collection: Expression
Peace should be a hallmark of the godly person, first because it is a Godlike trait: God is called the God of peace several times in the New Testament. He took the initiative to establish peace with rebellious men, and He is the author of both personal peace as well as peace among men. Peace should be part of our character also because God has promised us His peace, because He has commanded us to let peace rule in our lives and relationships, and because peace is a fruit of the Spirit and therefore an evidence of His working in our lives.Collection: Character
The pursuit of holiness must be anchored in the grace of God; otherwise it is doomed to failureCollection: Grace
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.Collection: Jesus
Perhaps we should stop talking about being faithful to have a quiet time with God each day, as if we were doing something to earn a reward. It would be better to talk about the privilege of spending time with the God of the universe and the importance for our own sake of being consistent in that practice.Collection: Practice
We don't have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.Collection: Trying
I realize anew that, just as we must learn to obey God one choice at a time, we must also learn to trust God one circumstance at a time. Trusting God is not a matter of my feelings but of my will. I never feel like trusting God when adversity strikes, but I can choose to do so even when I don’t feel like it. That act of the will, though, must be based on belief, and belief must be based on truth.Collection: Adversity
I warmly commend it to all Christians who want to grow in their faith.Collection: Christian
A son or daughter in any human family is either born to or adopted by the parents. By definition, a child can't be both. But with God we're both born of Him and adopted by Him.Collection: Daughter
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.Collection: Christian
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.Collection: Work Out
Faith enables us to obey when obedience is costly or seems unreasonable to the natural mind.Collection: Mind
We obey God's Law, not to be loved but because we are loved in Christ.Collection: Law
How then can we deal with our tendency toward worldliness? It is not by determining that we will not be worldly, but by committing ourselves to becoming more godly.Collection: Christian
Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of GodCollection: Character
The solution to staying on the right side of the fine line between using and abusing grace is repentance. The road to repentance is godly sorrow (2 Corinthians 7:10). Godly sorrow is developed when we focus on the true nature of sin as an offense against God rather than something that makes us feel guilty.Collection: Godly
Grace... expresses two complementary thoughts: God's unmerited favor to us through Christ, and God's divine assistance to us through the Holy Spirit.Collection: Two
Worship is the specific act of ascribing to God the glory, majesty, honor, and worthiness which are His.Collection: Honor
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.Collection: Hurt
We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Thankfulness
Nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truth that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ.Collection: Cutting
Holiness is not a series of do’s and don’ts but conformity to the character of God and obedience to the will of God.Collection: Character
In both its precepts and penalty, the law of God in its most exacting requirements was fulfilled by Jesus. And He did this in our place as our representative and our substitute.Collection: Jesus
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.Collection: Spiritual
Love provides the motive for obeying the commands of the law, but the law provides specific direction for exercising love.Collection: Exercise
Not only has the debt (of our sins) been fully paid, there is no possibility of ever going into debt again.Collection: Debt
Jesus did not die just to give us peace and a purpose in life; he died to save us from the wrath of God.Collection: Jesus
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.Collection: Grace
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.Collection: Commitment
We believers do need to be challenged to a life of committed discipleship, but that challenge needs to be based on the gospel, not on duty or guilt. Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ's love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.Collection: Challenges