Renee Emerson

Respectable Sins by Jerry Bridges (Navpress) is the best thing I’ve read (besides the Bible) to facilitate spiritual growth in years…since Piper’s Desiring God, I think, and I read that when I still lived in Boston. Lauren had been going through this with her college study group, so I’m borrowing her copy–all highlighted and sticky-noted and you know, the good stuff, the stuff that shows a book was really dug into.

This book is most certainly worthy of digging in to. I read it cover to cover in about two days (thanks to spring break and more free time than usual!). It was extremely convicting; instead of doing a cursory sweep over the broader and “less deadly” sins, it goes in depth on what Bridges calls “respectable sins”:
* ungodliness
* anxiety and frustration
* discontentment
* unthankfulness
* pride
* selfishness
* lack of self-control
* impatience and irritability
* anger
* judgmentalism
* envy, jealousy, and the like
* sins of the tongue
* worldliness

Personally, I struggle with some if not all of these sins on a daily basis; so over the next few weeks, I’m going to go through each chapter again and spend some time studying it. I think I’ll post my notes and the scriptures I’m going over here. Reading this book has opened my eyes to so many sins that I accepted as “oh everyone feels that way” or “everyone does that” or “that is just a natural reaction” without seeing them for what they really are: sin.