The Bookends of the Christian Life by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington

Now onto the best book of February. The Bookends of the Christian Life is a phenomenal read for any Christian looking to find a practical way to learn and apply some basic biblical truths about walking a life that is fully reliant on the Holy Trinity. I'm fairly new to the reformed doctrine, and greatly needed and appreciated this book. (Thanks Jessica) I've spent my whole life in Americanized churches being spoon-fed a sugar coated Jesus. Because just like medicine, apparently, sugar makes everything go down easier. However, finding who God truly is has been very freeing, albeit confusing and foundation shaking. Which is good and an experience everyone needs.

Okay, now back to the point. I didn't make this blog to get into theological debates, so I'll stop now and move onto the book synopsis.

This book focuses on 2 "bookends", as they refer to it. 1.) The righteousness of Christ and 2.) The power of the Holy Spirit. It explains, with complete biblical grounding, how apart from Christ's righteousness we are completely depraved and worthless. But by the grace and mercy of God and the sacrifice of his son, we can have a relationship with the one living God. But we need to understand our sin is every present and only by leaning on Christ's righteousness daily do we have any right before God. We have to see and understand our total depravity and our total dependence on Jesus daily to be free of Gospel enemies. But with an understanding of our total dependence on Jesus, comes the need for the power of the Holy Spirit and the understanding of what it means to practice dependent responsibility and have the help of the Spirits encouragement.

Creating a summation of this book is difficult for me. It's so full of wonderful, biblical, practical gems. And I feel I most certainly did not correctly capture the description of this book. But I urge any and all to get a copy of this book and read it. If I could afford to, I'd buy it for everyone. It's that good... even for a theological simpleton like me!