Book Review: Trusting God by Jerry Bridges

To all of you who have been pulling your hair out wondering why I haven't posted anything in many weeks (all two of you): breathe a sigh of relief. You can thank NavPress for the breach in writer's block. And you can blame my friends over at the Christians in Context blog for making me OK with the writer's block in the first place (click here for a further explanation).

I've signed on to be a book review blogger for a couple of publishers, and I couldn't be happier about the book I got from NavPress for our maiden voyage.

Trusting God by Jerry Bridges turned into something I was not expecting, and I was all the happier for it. I have read enough defenses for the sovereignty of God, both philosophical and apologetical. Instead, Bridges presents a biblically-grounded celebration of the sovereignty of God in all things.

His central theme asserts that we can only trust God when bad things happen if He is totally sovereign, wise, and loving. This in response to the age old question of evil: either evil came about because God is all-powerful but not all-loving, or because God is all loving but not all-powerful. Rabbi Harold Kushner chose the latter in his best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a position that Bridges references (and refutes) throughout the book.

Instead, Bridges presents a God that is both powerful and loving, both sovereign and wise. He does it with the awareness of the tensions between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, yet he does not rely on speculation or philosophy. Rather he draws heavily from both the Old and New Testament to defend a sovereignty that overcomes evil, a sovereignty that secures the glory of God and the good of His people, a sovereignty that can be trusted.