The Discipline of Grace: God's Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness

Life changing - why mature Christians still desperately need the Gospel every day.

Jerry Bridges wrote "The Discipline of Grace" to connect the understanding of God's grace in Jesus Christ and seeking holiness. Unless our growth in holiness is anchored in God's grace poured out in Jesus, then we drift into the rocky shoals of temptations, attempt to scale the cliffs of

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self-improvement, or wash up on the sandbars of helplessness. This book is a lighthouse that guides the reader away from these pit-falls.

The book speaks most strongly to those Christians who desire with all their hearts to follow God. To quote Mr. Bridges,
"We do not become more holy either by discipline or by dependance. Neither do we become more holy by committing ourselves to God, or by developing Bible-based convictions. We become more holy by obedience to the Word of God by choosing to obey His will as revealed in the Scriptures in all the various circumstances in our lives."

In "The Discipline of Grace," he shows the way all these other concepts contribute to reaching the place of a heart-felt desire to obey Him.

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I give it 5 stars but I prefer the word awesome versus amazing. Awesome in that Jerry Bridges does a great teaching of God's grace, His discipline and the need to preach the gospel to ourselves, as in believers, daily.

Bridges writes in a manner that is easy to grasp and retain for those who like me

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can't easily grasp those deep thinking theologians. That is not to say Bridges is not a deep thinking theologian, he is and shows it by taking the deep to shallow waters for us who zone out when reading in deep waters.

This is only the second book I've read by Jerry Bridges (the other being 'Gospel for Real Life') but his ability to teach solid gospel in 'shallow waters' led me to use three of his books; The Gospel for Real Life: Turn to the liberating Power of the Cross, Growing Your FAith: How to Mature in Christ and Trusting God Even When Life Hurts as part of the curriculum in the Discipleship 101 program I teach in Soldiers of Christ Prison Ministries, the ministry God has called me to steward.

If you are like me and feel the challenge of reading books that go deep and comprehending was is written, give Jerry Bridges series of books a try.

As an FYI the reason it took 2.5 months to read is it was read as a weekly group study.

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Highly recommended. Jerry Bridges thoroughly explores the application of the gospel to the Christian believer. Pursuing holiness is neither a matter of passivity nor of gritting one's teeth and trying harder, but of daily preaching the gospel to oneself and, from the gracious knowledge of

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acceptance and of sin's broken dominion, pressing on in the joyful duty of discipleship. Bridges offers a number of practical helps for doing this.

I definitely had some "ouch" moments of realizing I do not take God's holiness, or my own conforming to Christ, anywhere near as seriously as I should. Convicting in the best way. Yet, it's wonderful to read a book like this that leaves me feeling energized and hungry rather than laden with guilt.

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Hand in hand with other books on the spiritual disciplines, this brings the balance of recognizing that our disciplines are meaningless without the work of Christ; they must bring us closer to God to have purpose in our spiritual growth. While the author acknowledges that we have a role in

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disciplining ourselves in study, prayer, etc., he reminds over and over to stop putting the pressure on ourselves to perform and look to God and seek to develop our relationship with Him.

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