Transforming Grace

A few weeks ago, I finished Transforming Grace by Jerry Bridges.  I loved most of the book.  I disagreed with Bridges view on suffering and adversity.  However, I would recommend the book to people because of his great explanation of grace through all of life.

I have posted previously on the book so I have picked several quotes from the second half of the book.

We are responsible to clothe ourselves with Christlike character, but we are dependent on God's Spirit to produce with us His "fruit." We cannot make one inch of progress in sanctification apart from the powerful working of the Spirit in us.

Instead, we have developed another brand of legalism, a brand that is concerned, not with salvation, but with how we live the Christian life. I call this "evangelical legalism."

They (fences) begin as a sincere effort to deal with real sin issues. But very often we begin to focus on the fence we've built instead of the sin it was designed to guard against. We fight our battles in the wrong places; we deal with externals instead of the heart.

God never wastes pain. He always causes it to work together for our ultimate good, the good of conforming us more to the likeness of His Son. 

God's grace is sufficient. It is sufficient for all your needs; it is sufficient regardless of the severity of any one need.

And because of Jesus' atoning sacrifice, God's throne is no longer a throne of judgment and wrath for us, but it is now a throne of grace.

so the regular intake of God's Word is necessary to sustain a healthy spiritual life and to regularly appropriate His grace.

Prayer is probably the most important way we can be a minister of grace to someone else.

We actually ought to "say grace" continually throughout the day for the temporal and spiritual blessings that come our way so abundantly.