Best-selling author Jerry Bridges passed away today at the age of 86. He was not only a friend, he was a big influence on my Christian life, and I know many of you could say the same thing. His writings were as wonderful as they were authentic, and I've always had the sense that his books were really the product of the deepest wrestlings that he faced in his own walk with the Lord.

Over the years, I've had the honor to interview Jerry several times, and in the winter of 2011, I asked him, looking back over his 60-plus years as a Christian, what were the hard-won lessons that he would want younger believers to take from his life today? Here's what he said.

Well, there are probably five significant truths that I would like for a young believer to know. Unfortunately, I learned these over a period of a number of years, simply because I was not exposed to the right kind of teaching. I'll just take them in the chronological order in which I learned them.

It doesn't mean that this should be true. In fact, if I were going to reverse the chronology, I would certainly do that. But the first thing I learned, which really began my walk with the Lord, is that the Bible is meant to be applied specifically in our daily lives, because most people just have the idea that, you know, if I don't murder somebody or don't do these things, I'm okay.

But I learned that the Bible was meant to be applied in my daily life. I was a young officer in the U.S. Navy at the time. I was serving under a commanding officer who was not easy to get along with. He had almost no people skills. And those of us who were younger officers resented him.

And one day I read 1 Timothy 6, 1, and I'm going to be quoting from the King James Version, "Let as many servants as are under the oak count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed." And immediately I made the application of the principle, "Let a young officer who's serving under a difficult commanding officer count him worthy of all honor.

For God's sake." So that was a specific application. That's what I mean to be very specific and very practical in the application of Scripture. Chronologically, the second great truth that I learned was union with Christ, that I am in Christ as the vine and the branches or have that living union.

So Christ and I have that living union. I live in Him, He lives in me, and I depend upon Him for the power to live the Christian life. The third significant truth that I learned was the doctrine of election, that I'm a Christian because God chose me from before the foundation of the world.

And when I was first exposed to that, there was a brand new thought, and I pushed back. I thought, "My friend, oh, she's gotten into heresy." But God in His grace opened my eyes to the truth, and I remember very well my reaction as soon as it just sort of hit me all of a sudden.

And I just dropped to my knees, and I thought of Romans 12, 1, "I appeal to you by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice." And I remember saying, "God, I've done this before, but I've never understood Your mercy, Your grace as I do right now." And so that was it.

Again, chronologically, the next great truth that I learned was the necessity of preaching the gospel to myself every day, of learning to look to Christ as my righteousness rather than to my own performance. And then I think the next one, I had in my early Christian life, I'd gone from the extreme, one extreme, what I call self-effort, this is what the Bible says, "Just obey it," to the opposite extreme, "You can't do anything.

You just trust Jesus to live His life through you." These are two ditches you want to stay out of. And after wrestling through both of those, the Lord opened my eyes from the Scriptures to see that what the Bible teaches is what I call dependent responsibility. I am responsible to deal with sin.

I am responsible to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, but I'm dependent on the enabling power of Christ through the Holy Spirit to enable me to do that. And then I would say the last significant thing that I would want to say to them, and I'd have to work out the sequence in which I would do this, and it probably would depend on tailoring it to their situation.

But the last one that I've learned is an increased awareness of our dependence upon the Holy Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, both as the one who is the director of our Christian growth. Just as an athletic team needs a coach, so we need the Holy Spirit to coach us, to point out our weaknesses, to help us, so He gives us direction.

Then He works in us Himself. The technical term is monergistic, which means He works by Himself apart from our input. And then He also works synergistically, which means He enables us to work. And I would say in the last couple of years of my own life, thinking now 63 years, that an increased awareness in my absolute dependence on and my appreciation for the work of the Holy Spirit has been that.

So I would say those are the great truths I've learned. And I see no reason why a new Christian cannot at least begin to learn these right up front. There's no point in having to work through 50 years of difficult experience like I had to do, just give it all right up front, in small doses of course, just like you go to school and you're taught to read and then you're taught to count and then you get into fractions and things like that.

So I really think that what I, and I've tried to do this in my books, is to help people to learn some of these great truths early on so they don't have to make all the mistakes that I made. There's an old, I think it's a German proverb, "Too soon old, too late smart." I think that describes my Christian life.

But I think it doesn't have to be that way. That's right. Unless you're German like me, we learn very slowly. Yes. Well, that is wonderful. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for the model that you give this younger generation of a man who is willing to learn all throughout life, willing to grow, willing to preach the gospel to himself every day.

You're quite a model, and I'm very grateful to God for you. Well, it's all by His grace, as you know. Paul says, "But by the grace of God, I am what I am." That was bestselling author Jerry Bridges talking with me back in the fall of 2011. Jerry passed away today at the age of 86.