Book Review: Trusting God Even When Life Hurts by Jerry Bridges

Some of you may recall that I’m focusing on TRUST as a word of the year. In having identified this word as what I felt God wanted me to focus on, I also decided to challenge myself to read at least 6 books this year on trust.

Trusting God Even When Life Hurts

I started Trusting God by Jerry Bridges several months ago. I put it down after the second chapter when the author had not defined ‘in control’ nor ‘sovereign’. It seems like a pretty basic thing to define these things when they are literally in every chapter if not every page of the book. Alas, the author not only did not define them, but used them interchangeably. I simply don’t agree with the two being the same; ‘in control’ is NOT the same as ‘sovereign.’

So, it took a while for me to pick up the book again. I tried the next several months, again telling myself that I needed to finish another trust book.

Does God really intend for us to suffer?

I unfortunately found more and more to disagree with in this book. For a book with the title ‘Even When Life Hurts’, the book expressly said it would not address the suffering of our lives. Oh yes, examples were given, but no attempt to explain why this happens other than ‘God wills your suffering’ were given. And frankly, I don’t think God designed this world with the intention for us to struggle – after all he designed the world as Eden, not the fallen one. He’s working with the fallen one, but it wasn’t ‘Plan A’. Throughout the book, it felt like Bridges was saying that God’s ‘Plan A’ was for us to suffer, for people to be murdered in the street, for children to be born with diseases and syndromes.

No acknowledgement of sin impacts on God’s plans

It is startling to read that the author believes God intended these things, willed them. Then he says to lean on the fact that God will work it all for our good and his glory. This is certain, God will work things for our good and his glory. But to read that he causes such terrible things just for that is too much for me to believe. I can’t say that I know the answer, but I think that Bridges was getting there when he said, ‘…our sinful nature distorts that which God has made,’ (p. 172). But he doesn’t dig into the effect of sin on God’s will and our lives and suffering.

I found only the final two chapters (of 14) good. That trust is about choice and thanking him always are both worth exploring, but even then, it wasn’t all worth recommending.

Just 1 star of 5

I had high hopes for this book but have to give it 1 star because I don’t think it would be comforting nor spur others on to trust God. It also never addresses the issue ‘when life hurts.’