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About the Book
"Loving" by Karen Kingsbury tells the story of Bailey Flanigan and Cody Coleman, two young adults who navigate the challenges of love, faith, and relationships as they navigate through life's ups and downs. As they face obstacles and uncertainties, they must learn to trust in God's plan for their lives and find strength in their love for each other. This heartwarming novel explores themes of forgiveness, redemption, and the power of love to overcome all obstacles.
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 family’s 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, ”God whatever it takes, I want Christ to be my Savior.”
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 didn’t 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 Lord’s 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 clearly—skills 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, “Whatever you want.” 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 department—answering 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, “I’m going to do this for the rest of my life. If you want me out of The Navigators you’ll have to let me know.”
Beginning in 1960, Jerry served for three years in Europe as administrative assistant to the Navigators’ 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 Navigators’ 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 Eims—who started the Collegiate ministry—encouraged 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 Godliness—on 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 Navigators’ Vice President for Corporate Affairs from 1979 to 1994. It was in this season of ministry that Eleanor developed non-Hodgkin’s 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 ’70s.
Jerry’s final position with The Navigator’s 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 God’s 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 “live His life through you.”
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 combined—to borrow some titles from his books—the 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 “this is what you ought to do.” That’s okay, but it doesn’t 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, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” There was nothing flashy about Jerry Bridges. He was a humble and unassuming man—strong 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 Bridges’ 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).
What Does Ongoing Sin Say About Me
One of the most common questions a Christian can ask is also one of the most troubling: What does my ongoing sin say about me? The question is common because all Christians deal with ongoing sin, and many with patterns of repetitive sin. And the question is troubling because it ushers us into one of the great tensions of Scripture. We know, on the one hand, that “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). And we know, on the other hand, that “no one born of God makes a practice of sinning” (1 John 3:9). Every Christian sins — even every day (Matthew 6:11–12) — yet some practices of sin throw doubt on a person’s claim to be born of God. So, what distinguishes Christians from the world when it comes to sin? Puritan pastor Richard Baxter, writing to “melancholy” (or depressed) Christians, offers one fruitful answer: Remember what a comfortable evidence you carry about with you that your sin is not damning while you feel that you love it not but hate it and are weary of it. Scarce any sort of sinners have so little pleasure in their sin as the melancholy, or so little desire to keep them, and only beloved sins undo men. ( The Genius of Puritanism , 88–89) Christians commit sins. At times, they may even commit grievous sins, as David and Peter did. But Christians do not love their sins. And only beloved sins undo us. Our Complex Hearts Of course, Baxter’s answer forces us to ask another question: How can we know whether we hate or love sin? Answering that question requires great care. We find many people in Scripture, for example, who only seemed  to hate their sin. Israel’s wilderness generation “repented and sought God earnestly” at times, but in the end “their heart was not steadfast toward him” (Psalm 78:34, 37). The Pharisees likewise appeared to hate sin — yet beneath their religious exterior they were “lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). The love of sin, though smothered for a time, was never quenched. Alternatively, we can find cases where genuine Christians, often immature ones, seemed for a time to love sin. Some surprising sins appear in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, for example, yet godly grief could also follow, and with it a restored indignation against sin (2 Corinthians 7:10–11). How then can we tell whether, under all our conflicting feelings and internal wrestlings and contradictory actions, our fundamental attitude toward sin is an increasing hatred  or love ? We might begin by prayerfully asking ourselves four smaller questions. How do you commit your sin? Although we all sin, we do not all sin in the same way. The Old Testament distinguishes between types of transgressions, ranging from less severe unintentional sins to sins committed “with a high hand” (Numbers 15:22, 30). Our own sins likewise fall on a spectrum between defiant and reflexive — between those we pursue  and those that pursue us . If sin is a snare (Proverbs 5:22), then sometimes we walk into it with eyes wide open, and other times we find our foot caught before we know what happened. A mother may speak a harsh word, for example, after slowly brewing the cauldron of her self-pity — or she may do so in a rush of unlooked-for impatience. Similarly, a husband may indulge an illicit sexual image because he went looking for a website — or because a billboard went looking for him. The mother and the husband sin in both cases, but how  they do so — especially as a characteristic practice — reveals much about their heart’s orientation. Ongoing patterns of planned, premeditated sin expose a heart whose affections are dangerously entangled. “Christians commit sins. But Christians do not love their sins. And only beloved sins undo us.” In one sense, of course, we play the role of both pursuer  and pursued  whenever we sin. Even the most defiant sins have spiritual forces of evil behind them (Ephesians 2:2); even the most reflexive sins reveal a twisted inner willingness (James 1:14). More than that, genuine Christians still can fall into patterns of pursuing  sin for a season. At times, we contradict the life of Christ within us and step into snares that we see. But in general, those who hate sin move — gradually but genuinely — farther from planned, pursued sins the longer they are in Christ. How far have you come? Now for a complication. Although everyone who hates sin gradually moves away from planned, pursued sins, we start moving from different spots. Some begin walking toward Mount Zion from Moab; others from as far as Babylon. And as with any journey, distance  (though important) matters less than direction . Some people, by virtue of God’s common grace, enter Christ with great degrees of decency and discipline. And others enter Christ with self-control threadbare, a conscience almost seared, and a soul still bearing the claw marks of addiction. Both receive in Christ the same Spirit, one “of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). But if we expect their progress toward Christlikeness to look the same, we deny their radically different starting places. Imagine, for example, the sin of drunkenness, which falls nearer the defiant  side of the spectrum. A night of drunkenness for the first Christian may raise a serious concern: here is a planned, pursued sin unknown even in his pre-Christian days. But for the second Christian, a night of drunkenness may be only one brief backward step on an otherwise forward journey. (Which is no reason, of course, for resting satisfied with even one backward step: repentance means opposing all known sin now , not on a gradually reduced schedule.) The Christian life goes “from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18); the sky above us “shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Proverbs 4:18); we travel “from strength to strength” (Psalm 84:7). But as important as asking, “How far along are you?” is “How far have you come?” How do you confess your sin? Just as we can commit sin in more ways than one, so we can confess sin in more ways than one. While some confess with sincere resolve not to commit that sin again, others confess with silent resignation to sin’s power in their lives. The second kind of confession, as John Piper puts it, expresses guilt and sorrow for sinning, but underneath there is the quiet assumption that this sin is going to happen again, probably before the week is out. . . . It’s a cloak for fatalism about your besetting sins. You feel bad about them, but you have surrendered to their inevitability. Those who confess in this way often treat forgiveness as only a balm for a wounded conscience, and not also as a sword for the fight against sin. They hate the guilt  that sin brings, but they may not hate the sin itself , or at least not enough to rage against the lie that sin is ever inevitable. To be sure, those who hate sin often need to confess the same sins repeatedly (especially sins of the more reflexive kind), even over years and decades. But apart from some regrettable seasons, their confessions hold no hints of fatalism or inevitability. Rather, their confessions match the pattern of Proverbs 28:13: Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper,      but he who confesses and forsakes them  will obtain mercy. Those who confess sin sincerely also strive to forsake sin completely. So, when they rise from their knees and return to the battle, they do not hold their weapon loosely, as one who expects defeat. They enter with head held high, shielded with new mercy, clothed with fresh power. How do you fight your sin? Some of the clearest displays of our loves and hates appear on the battlefield. While some fight their sin half expecting and (if truth be told) half hoping to lose, others learn to fight like their souls are at stake — like Jesus spoke seriously, even if not literally, when he talked about cutting off hands and tearing out eyes (Matthew 5:29–30). Sin haters walk through this world armed with spiritual weapons (Romans 8:13; Ephesians 6:17) — not to harm others, but to harm every enemy within themselves. They watch and pray against temptation, needy enough to ask for daily deliverance (Matthew 6:13). They resolve to make no provision for the flesh, even if doing so requires abstaining from otherwise neutral substances, situations, and forms of entertainment (Romans 13:14). Their battle plans are not vague (“Read the Bible and pray more”) but specific (“Wake up at 6:00 to read and pray for an hour”). And though they know that no wall of accountability can rise higher than their sin, they also live like they are dead without help (Hebrews 3:13). “Sin seems beloved to us only when Christ does not.” And what’s more, they do not fight for a day or a season or a year, but for a life. They know this warfare ends only when their breath does (2 Timothy 4:7). So, though they sometimes feel weary in the war, they refuse to lie down on the battlefield. In time, fresh strength comes from above, fresh resolves fire from within, and despite many discouragements and defeats, they make progress. Those who, at bottom, still love their sin will not fight their sin like this . They may raise a resistance of sorts, but not a whole-souled war. We cannot kill what we still love. Better Beloved So then, how do you commit your sin? How far have you come? How do you confess your sin? How do you fight your sin? Questions like these call for our attention — but only some of our attention. Self-examination can help us discern the state of our souls, but it cannot change the state of our souls. Wherever we find ourselves in these questions, if we would hate sin increasingly, then only one path lies before us: love Christ increasingly. Richard Baxter’s contemporary John Owen once wrote, Be frequent in thoughts of faith, comparing [Christ] with other beloveds, sin, world, legal righteousness; and preferring him before them, counting them all loss and dung in comparison of him. ( A Quest for Godliness , 206) Sin seems beloved to us only when Christ does not. So go ahead and compare your sins to him: their blackness with his light, their shame with his glory, their cruelty with his mercy, their hell with his heaven. For now, we see only the rays of Christ’s beauty. But even the faintest of them outshines the most attractive sin. Only beloved sins undo us. And the only Savior from beloved sins is a beloved Christ.
