40 Days To Discovering God's Big Idea For Your Life Order Printed Copy
- Author: Myles Monroe
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About the Book
In "40 Days to Discovering God's Big Idea for Your Life," Myles Monroe outlines a step-by-step process to help readers uncover their purpose and fulfill their potential. Through daily reflections and exercises, Monroe guides readers to connect with God's plan for their lives and live with intentionality and passion. The book offers practical advice and spiritual guidance to inspire readers to live a life aligned with their true calling.
Jerry Bridges
Jerry Bridges entered into the joy of his Master on Sunday evening, March 6, 2016, at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, the day after he suffered cardiac arrest. He was 86 years old.
Childhood
Gerald Dean Bridges was born on December 4, 1929, in a cotton-farming home in Tyler, Texas, to fundamentalist parents, six weeks after the Black Tuesday stock market crash that led to the Great Depression.
Jerry was born with several disabilities: he was cross-eyed, he was deaf in his right ear (which was not fully developed), and he had spine and breastbone deformities. But given his familyâs poverty, they were unable to afford medical care for these challenges.
The separatist church in East Texas where the Bridges were members had an altar call after every service. Jerry walked the aisle three times, at the ages of 9, 11, and 13. But he later realized that he had not been born again.
His mother Lillian passed away in 1944 when he was 14.
Conversion
In August of 1948, as an 18-year-old college student right before his sophomore year began, Jerry was home alone one night in bed. He acknowledged to the Lord that he was not truly a Christian, despite growing up in a Christian home and professing faith. He prayed, âGod whatever it takes, I want Christ to be my Savior.â
The next week in his dorm room at the University of Oklahoma he was working on a school assignment and reached for a textbook, when he noticed the little Bible his parents had given him in high school. He figured that since he was now a Christian, he ought to start reading it daily, which he did (and never stopped doing for the rest of his days).
The Navy
After graduating with an engineering degree on a Navy ROTC scholarship, he went on active duty with the Navy, serving as an officer during the Korean conflict (1951-1953). A fellow officer invited him to go to a Navigator Bible study. Jerry went and he was hooked. He had never experienced anything like this before.
When stationed on ship in Japan, he got to know several staff members of the Navigators quite well. One day, after Jerry had been in Japan for six months, a Navy worker asked him why he didnât just throw in his lot with the Navigators and come to work for them. The very next day, December 26, 1952, Jerry failed a physical exam due to the hearing loss in his right ear, and he was given a medical discharge in July 1953, after being in the Navy for only two years. Jerry was not overly disappointed, surmising that perhaps this was the Lordâs way of steering him to the Navigators.
When he returned to the U.S., he began working for Convair, an airplane manufacturing company in southern California, writing technical papers for shop and flight line personnel. It was there that he learned to write simply and clearlyâskills the Lord would later use to instruct and edify thousands of people from his pen.
The Navigators
Jerry was single at the time, living in the home of Navigator Glen Solum, a common practice in the early days of The Navigators. In 1955 Jim invited Jerry to go with him to a staff conference at the headquarters of The Navigators in Glen Eyrie at Colorado Springs. It was there that Jerry sensed a call from the Lord to be involved with vocational ministry. He was resistant to the idea of going on staff, but felt conviction and prayed to the Lord, âWhatever you want.â The following day he met Dawson Trotman, the 49-year-old founder of The Navigators, who wanted to interview Jerry for a position, which he received and accepted. Jerry was put in charge of the correspondence departmentâanswering letters, handling receipts, and mainly the NavLog newsletter to supporters.
When Trotman died in June of 1956 (saving a girl who was drowning), Jim Downing took a position equivalent to a chief operations operator. A Navy man, Jim Downing knew that Jerry had also served in the Navy and tapped him to be his assistant.
Jerry struggled at times in his role, unsure if this was his calling since his position was so different from the typical campus reps. After ten years on staff he told the Lord, âIâm going to do this for the rest of my life. If you want me out of The Navigators youâll have to let me know.â
Beginning in 1960, Jerry served for three years in Europe as administrative assistant to the Navigatorsâ Europe Director. In January of 1960, he read a booklet entitled The Doctrine of Election, which he first considered heresy but then embraced the following day.
In October of 1963, at the age of 34, he married his first wife, Eleanor Miller of The Navigators following a long-distance relationship. Two children followed: Kathy in 1966, and Dan in 1967. From 1965 to 1969 Jerry served as office manager for The Navigatorsâ headquarters office at Glen Eyrie.
From 1969 to 1979 Jerry served as the Secretary-Treasurer for The Navigators. It was during this time that NavPress was founded in 1975. Their first publications began by transcribing and editing audio material from their tape archives and turning them into booklets. They produced one by Jerry on Willpower. Leroy Eimsâwho started the Collegiate ministryâencouraged Jerry to try his hand at writing new material. Jerry had been teaching at conferences on holiness, so he suggested a book along those lines.
In 1978, NavPress published The Pursuit of Holiness, which has now sold over 1.5 million copies. Jerry assumed it would be his only book. A couple of years later, after reading about putting off the old self and putting on the new self from Ephesians 4, he decided to write The Practice of Godlinessâon developing a Christlike character. That book went on to sell over half a million copies, and his 1988 book on Trusting God has sold nearly a million copies.
Jerry served as The Navigatorsâ Vice President for Corporate Affairs from 1979 to 1994. It was in this season of ministry that Eleanor developed non-Hodgkinâs lymphoma. She went to be with the Lord on November 9, 1988, just three weeks after their 25th wedding anniversary. On November 24, 1989, Jerry married Jane Mallot, who had known the Bridges family since the early â70s.
Jerryâs final position with The Navigatorâs was in the area of staff development with the Collegiate Mission. He saw this ministry as developing people, rather than teaching people how to do ministry. In addition to his work with The Navigators, he also maintained an active writing and teaching ministry, traveling the world to instruct and equip pastors and missionaries and other workers through conferences, seminars, and retreats.
Lessons
In 2014, Jerry published a memoir of his life, tracing the providential hand of God through his own story: God Took Me by the Hand: A Story of Godâs Unusual Providence (NavPress, 2014). He closes the work with seven spiritual lessons he learned in his six decades of the Christian life:
The Bible is meant to be applied to specific life situations.
All who trust in Christ as Savior are united to Him in a loving way just as the branches are united to the vine.
The pursuit of holiness and godly character is neither by self-effort nor simply letting Christ âlive His life through you.â
The sudden understanding of the doctrine of election was a watershed event for me that significantly affected my entire Christian life.
The representative union of Christ and the believer means that all that Christ did in both His perfect obedience and His death for our sins is credited to us.
The gospel is not just for unbelievers in their coming to Christ.
We are dependent on the Holy Spirit to apply the life of Christ to our lives.
His last book, The Blessing of Humility: Walk within Your Calling, will be published this summer by NavPress.
Legacy
One of the great legacies of Jerry Bridges is that he combinedâto borrow some titles from his booksâthe pursuit of holiness and godliness with an emphasis on transforming grace. He believed that trusting God not only involved believing what he had done for us in the past, but that the gospel empowers daily faith and is transformative for all of life.
In 2009 he explained to interviewer Becky Grosenbach the need for this emphasis within the culture of the ministry he had given his life to:
When I came on staff almost all the leaders had come out of the military and we had pretty much a military culture. We were pretty hard core. We were duty driven. The WWII generation. We believed in hard work. We were motivated by saying âthis is what you ought to do.â Thatâs okay, but it doesnât serve you over the long haul. And so 30 years ago there was the beginning of a change to emphasize transforming grace, a grace-motivated discipleship.
In the days ahead, many will write tributes of this dear saint (see, e.g., this one from his friend, prayer partner, and sometimes co-author Bob Bevington). I would not be able to improve upon the reflections and remembrances of those who knew him better than I did. But I do know that he received from the Lord the ultimate acclamation as he entered into the joy of his Master and received the words we all long to hear, âWell done, my good and faithful servant.â There was nothing flashy about Jerry Bridges. He was a humble and unassuming manâstrong in spirit, if not in voice or frame. And now we can rejoice with him in his full and final healing as he beholds his beloved Savior face to face. Thank you, God, for this man who helped us see and know you more.
Jerry Bridges wrote more than 20 books over the course of nearly 40 years:
The Pursuit of Holiness (NavPress, 1978)
The Practice of Godliness (NavPress, 1983)
True Fellowship (NavPress, 1985) [later published as The Crisis of Caring (P&R, 1992); finally republished with a major revision as True Community (NavPress, 2012)]
Trusting God (NavPress, 1988)
Transforming Grace (NavPress, 1991)
The Discipline of Grace (NavPress, 1994)
The Joy of Fearing God (Waterbrook, 1997)
I Exalt You, O God (Waterbrook, 2000)
I Give You Glory, O God (Waterbrook, 2002)
The Gospel for Real Life (NavPress, 2002)
The Chase (NavPress, 2003) [taken from Pursuit of Holiness]
Growing Your Faith (NavPress, 2004)
Is God Really in Control? (NavPress, 2006)
The Fruitful Life (NavPress, 2006)
Respectable Sins (NavPress, 2007) [student edition, 2013]
The Great Exchange [co-authored with Bob Bevington] (Crossway, 2007)
Holiness Day by Day (NavPress, 2008) [a devotional drawing from his earlier writing on holiness]
The Bookends of the Christian Life [co-authored with Bob Bevington] (Crossway, 2009)
Who Am I? (Cruciform, 2012)
The Transforming Power of the Gospel (NavPress, 2012)
31 Days Toward Trusting God (NavPress, 2013) [abridged from Trusting God]
God Took Me by the Hand (NavPress, 2014)
The Blessing of Humility: Walk within Your Calling (NavPress, 2016)
For an audio library of Jerry Bridgesâ talks, go here.
Funeral
Visitation for Jerry Bridges was held on Thursday, March 10, 2016, from 5 to 8 pm, at Shrine of Remembrance (1730 East Fountain Blvd, Colorado Springs, CO 80910).
The memorial service was held on Friday, March 11, 2016, at 2 pm at Village Seven Presbyterian Church (4055 Nonchalant Circle South, Colorado Springs, CO 80917).
Banished from Humanity
The safest road to hell is the gradual one â the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. âC.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis said many profound and fascinating things about hell. Some are biblically precise, while others are more abstract and subject to misunderstanding. In some cases, his views are not solidly biblical. But many of his insights on hell are true to Scripture, and some of his speculations are compelling food for thought. Hell: Grave Injustice or Ultimate Justice? Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce, âThere are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, âThy will be done,â and those to whom God says, in the end, âThy will be done.ââ Of course, God does not fully let people have their way, since it is clear, for instance, that the rich man in Luke 16 wants out of hell but cannot escape it. Lewisâs point is, when someone says, âI do not want to have a relationship with God,â in that limited sense they ultimately get their way. The unbelieverâs âwishâ to be away from God turns out to be his worst nightmare. Nonetheless, those who do not want God do want goodness and happiness. But what makes anything good is God. Second Thessalonians 1:9 describes hell like this: âThey will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord.â Where God withdraws, there can be no good. So, in Lewisâs terms, the unbeliever gets what he wants â Godâs absence â yet with it gets what he doesnât want â the loss of all good. C.S. Lewis said of hell, âThere is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of our Lordâs own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reasonâ (The Problem of Pain). Most of what Lewis says here is solidly biblical. Where there may be a chink in his logic is exactly where it is for many of us. We wish there were no hell â and imagine this comes from our sense of goodness and kindness. But God could remove hell yet chooses not to. Do we have more confidence in our goodness than his? What are we to do with Revelation 18:20, where God brings down his wrath on Babylonâs people, then says, âRejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!â? Doesnât this suggest that in heaven we will see sinâs horrors clearly and have far stronger convictions about hellâs justice? Hell is not pleasant, appealing, or encouraging. But neither is it evil; rather, it is a place where evil is judged. Indeed, if being sentenced to hell is just punishment, then the absence of hell would itself be evil. Hell Itself Is Morally Good, Because a Good God Must Punish Evil Most of us imagine that we hate the idea of hell because we love people too much to want them to suffer. But that implies God loves them less. Our revulsion is understandable, but what about hell makes us cringe? Is it the wickedness thatâs being punished? Is it the suffering of those who might have turned to Christ? Or do we cringe because we imagine hellâs punishments are wicked or disproportionate? These very different responses expose different views of God. Perhaps we hate hell too much because we donât hate evil enough. This is something that could have been developed more in Lewisâs thinking. The same could be said of many of us. If we regard hell as a divine overreaction to sin, we deny that God has the moral right to inflict ongoing punishment on any humans. By denying hell, we deny the extent of Godâs holiness. When we minimize sinâs seriousness, we minimize Godâs grace in Christâs blood, shed for us. For if the evils he died for arenât significant enough to warrant eternal punishment, perhaps the grace displayed on the cross isnât significant enough to warrant eternal praise. How Jesus Viewed Hell In the Bible, Jesus spoke more about hell than anyone else did. He referred to hell as a real place (Matthew 10:28; 13:40â42; Mark 9:43â48). He described it in graphic terms: a fire that burns but doesnât consume, an undying worm that eats away at the damned, and a lonely, foreboding darkness. âPerhaps we hate hell too much because we donât hate evil enough.â Some believe in annihilationism, the idea that hellâs inhabitants do not suffer forever, but are consumed in judgment â so their eternal death means cessation of existence. Edward Fudge, in his book and DVD The Fire That Consumes, defends this position. Itâs an argument I have considered seriously, one that holds up to much of the Old Testament revelation, but which I find very difficult to reconcile with Jesusâs words: âAnd these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal lifeâ (Matthew 25:46). Or with the words of Revelation 20:10, which speak of not only Satan but two human beings, the Antichrist and the false prophet, being cast into the lake of fire and âtormented day and night forever and ever.â Revelation 14:11 appears to apply to a large number of people: âAnd the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever.â Christ says the unsaved âwill be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teethâ (Matthew 8:12). He taught that an unbridgeable chasm separates the wicked in hell from the righteous in Paradise. The wicked suffer terribly, remain conscious, retain their memories, long for relief, cannot find comfort, cannot leave their torment, and have no hope (Luke 16:19â31). In short, our Savior could not have painted a bleaker picture of hell. It is one that C.S. Lewis, with reluctance, believed and affirmed, bowing his knee in submission to a higher authority. If the evils Jesus died for arenât significant enough to warrant eternal punishment, then the grace displayed on the cross isnât significant enough to warrant eternal praise. Lewis said, âI have met no people who fully disbelieved in hell and also had a living and life-giving belief in Heavenâ (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer). The biblical teaching on both destinations stands or falls together. When heaven and hell are spoken of in Scripture, each place is portrayed as being just as real and, in some passages anyway, as permanent as the other. Lewisâs friend, Dorothy Sayers, said it well: There seems to be a kind of conspiracy to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of hell comes from. The doctrine of hell is not âmediaeval priestcraftâ for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christâs deliberate judgment on sin. . . . We cannot repudiate hell without altogether repudiating Christ. (Dorothy Sayers, Introductory Papers on Dante [Methuen, 1954], 44) The Problem of Emeth in âThe Last Battleâ Occasionally, Lewis seems to depart from the biblical doctrine of hell by supposing things that arenât stated in Scripture and appearing to contradict things that are. In The Last Battle, the soldier Emeth, who served the demon Tash, is welcomed into heaven though he did not serve Aslan, the Christ figure, by name. Because the young man thought he was worshiping and pursuing the true God (emeth is a Hebrew word for faithfulness or truth), Aslan told Emeth, âChild, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.â Some have used this passage to charge Lewis with being a universalist, though Lewisâs other writings clearly show he was not. But this passage does imply Lewis believed in a kind of inclusivism, where in some cases, mentally responsible people who have not embraced Christ in this life may ultimately be saved. The criterion for salvation, then, is not believing in Jesus while still here (John 1:12; 14:6; Acts 4:12; Romans 10:9â10). Rather, in some cases, God may consider it sufficient that someone has followed a false god with true motives. In the story, Emeth asks Aslan a significant question: âLord, is it then true . . . that thou and Tash are one?â Aslanâs response leaves no room for confusion: The Lion growled so that the earth shook and said, âIt is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oathâs sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. . . . Beloved . . . unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.â (The Last Battle) Aslan categorically affirms he and Tash are in no sense alike. Indeed, Aslan despises the demon! There is nothing in Lewis indicating a belief that âall roads lead to heaven.â On the contrary, all who are in Aslanâs Country are there by only one way â the way of Aslan. Emeth is saved by Aslan â no one and nothing else. Emeth is the one exceptional case in an account involving thousands of Tashâs servants, all of whom appear to have perished. Emeth seems to be Lewisâs one hopeful exception, certainly not the rule. Emethâs Better Parallel: Cornelius The Bible clearly states that âit is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgmentâ (Hebrews 9:27). There are accounts in Scripture of people continuing to exist after they die (Luke 16:19â31) but no account of someone making a decision to turn to Christ after death. âI have met no people who fully disbelieved in hell and also had a live-giving belief in Heaven.â C.S. Lewis Bible believers are naturally perplexed by Emethâs story and how to reconcile it with Lewisâs orthodox statements about salvation, heaven, and hell. But we should certainly welcome the biblical kind of inclusivism that offers the gospel to everyone, and rejoices that people of every tribe, nation, and language will worship God together forever (Revelation 5:9â10; 7:9). We should celebrate stories like that of Cornelius, whose service God accepted even before drawing him to a full understanding of the gospel (Acts 10:2, 22, 31). Emethâs story would have paralleled Corneliusâs if Aslan had come to the young man before his death. That would have been my preference, certainly. But even with occasional imperfections, of which Emeth may be most prominent, the great truths of The Chronicles of Narnia remain clear, strong, and biblically resonant. So do the remarkable insights about heaven and the new earth (Randy Alcorn) in Lewisâs writings. People sometimes ask me why I tolerate Lewisâs more troubling doctrine. My answer is that his trajectory is toward the gospel, not away from it, and that God has used him to speak into my life Christ-centered and paradigm-shifting biblical truths. I do not have to embrace 100 percent of what Lewis said to benefit from that 85 percent that is so incredibly rich. Because Our Choices in This Life Shape Us Forever, God-Rejecters Might Be as Miserable in Heaven as in Hell In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis spoke to those who argue against the doctrine of hell: In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a question: âWhat are you asking God to do?â To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But he has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does. He adds this oft-quoted statement: âThe damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; the doors of hell are locked on the inside. . . . They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved.â If Lewis means that those in hell refuse to give up their trust in themselves to turn to God, I think heâs right. While they long to escape from hell, that is not the same as longing to be with God and repenting. Lewis speaks in The Great Divorce of âthe demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that hell should be able to veto heaven.â Heaven and hell are places defined, respectively, by Godâs presence or absence, by Godâs grace or wrath. Whose we are, not where we are, determines our misery or our joy. To transport a man from hell to heaven would bring him no joy unless he had a transformed relationship with God, a regenerating work that can be done only by the Holy Spirit (John 1:12â13; 3:3â8; Romans 6:14; 1 Corinthians 2:12, 14). To the person sealed forever in righteousness, God will remain wondrous; to the one sealed forever in sin, God will remain dreadful. If we reject the best gift that a holy and gracious God can offer us, purchased with his blood, what remains, in the end, will be nothing but hell. Lewis also said in The Great Divorce, âAll that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.â This too is insightful but can be taken too far. One can desire joy outside of God and not find it, of course, but I take it that Lewis speaks of one who earnestly seeks the true God, the source of all joy. This is suggested in Jeremiah 29:13: âYou will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.â And Matthew 7:7: âAsk, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.â âTo the person sealed forever in righteousness, God will remain wondrous; to the one sealed forever in sin, God will remain dreadful.â I think Lewis, who loved great stories, would agree that hell is a place with no story, no plot â ongoing suffering coupled with eternal boredom. Ironically, Satan labors to portray heaven, from which he was cast out, as boring and undesirable. The Bible, on the other hand, portrays the new heavens and the new earth as the setting for joy without end. If we think correctly about heaven, we will realize that because God is infinitely great and gracious, heaven is the ultimate adventure while hell is the ultimate sinkhole. Perhaps the best last word to give Lewis is this: âTo enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanityâ (The Problem of Pain). Article by Randy Alcorn