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Review Summary: This Book Kept Me From a Great Deal of Depression |
Date: 2008-05-06 |
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Details: I liked this book so much that the majority of my senior paper was written on it.
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Review Summary: This book is one of the best I've read |
Date: 2008-02-22 |
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Details: Jerry Bridges presents a challenging way of pursuing holiness. He encourages us to pursue holiness ALL THE TIME within God's grace! The first few chapters he explains the gospel clearly setting up the basis to pursue holiness. It is definetely one of the best books I've read. I have bought 4 copies of this book because I keep giving it away to friends! |
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Review Summary: A Call To Faithfulness |
Date: 2007-11-04 |
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Details: Bridges pastorally and beautifully interacts with the mainstream question of grace applied - almost in the same vein as John Murray's 'Redemption: Accompllished and Applied'
But this book is not 'theology proper' - no visible call is made to any Creeds or Confessions. No revealing chapter is dedicated to so great a God. Bridges only explicates the biblical view and provides us with rational motivation to seek to do so.
It serves the layman well, and seeks to direct our focus away from the 'blessings-to-be-had' and 'immediate-gratification' culture and context.
A good book for the avid reader on grace.
'pursue, make every effort, strive, persecute' - all the same Gk root word.
'An understanding of how grace and personal, vigorous effort work together is essential for a lifelong pursuit of holiness.' pg 13
'It is only the joy of hearing the Gospel and being reminded that our sings are forgiven in Christ that will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery.' pg 21
'The Gospel is meaningful for us only to the extent that we realize and acknowledge that we are still sinful.' pg 22
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Review Summary: Life Changing |
Date: 2007-03-11 |
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Details: It's rare that I would call any book life changing, but for me, this was. Although a life-long Christian, I never really understood the concept of grace. Once I understood God's grace to me, it changed me life. I felt released from guilt. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. I first did it as a women's study, but you could certainly do it alone. |
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Review Summary: Holiness and Grace |
Date: 2006-12-27 |
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Details: This book is written as a marriage of two of Jerry Bridges' earlier books, The Pursuit of Holiness and Transforming Grace. In this volume he takes the two seemingly opposite concepts of the believer's responsibility to be holy versus the work of God's grace in the believer's life and welds them together, showing how they are both complimentary and necessary to the Christian experience. His theme in this portion of the book is that "you must learn to preach the gospel to yourself" - a refrain which embraces the scope of the entire work. Once he has established both the necessity of dependence upon God's grace and the necessity of engaging in spiritual disciplines, he turns his focus to the latter theme and sets forth six spiritual disciplines to which believers are called to pursue. They are (1) a discipline of dependence in which the believer trusts while he also labors, (2) a discipline of commitment to the cause of Christ, (3) a discipline of convictions in which the believer bends his mind to the Word of God, (4) a discipline of choices in which the believer puts his fleshly desires to death while putting on Christ, (5) a discipline of watching in which the believer recognizes his weaknesses and plans to avoid those pitfalls, and (6) a discipline of adversity.
This book is eminently practical as it sets forth, not only the basis of Christian growth as being rooted in the cross, but also in specific personal disciplines in which every Christian needs to partake. Bridges gives an excellent reminder of the importance of a gospel-centered ministry, not only with regard to evangelism of the unsaved, but the use of the gospel as it relates to the ongoing Christian life. He calls us to preach the gospel to ourselves - to run to the cross and to live constantly under its shadow and thereby find both forgiveness as well as motivation and strength for living a holy life.
As I read through the book, I found myself returning time and time again to the cross. The use of his disciplines provides a "nuts and bolts" approach to taking these teachings out of the classroom and applying them in a very personal way. |
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out of 20 Reviews
