New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

We’re all failures. Own it; it will be good for you. There is not a day in any of our lives when we don’t lay down empirical evidence that we are failures. Maybe it’s in an unkind word, an ugly thought, or an ungodly desire. Maybe it’s in a moment of selfish envy or unbridled greed. Maybe it’s in a moment of pride, when we have to be the center of attention or steal some of God’s glory. Perhaps it’s in acts of gluttony or in the desires of lust. Maybe it’s in an instance when our hearts are cold and lack sympathy for the poor or the suffering. Maybe it shows itself when we are jealous of the beauty or power of another. Perhaps it’s revealed when we surrender our hearts once again to some earthbound idol. Perhaps it shows itself when we take what is not ours to take or fail to give what we have been called to give. Somehow, some way, we all do it every day—we fall short of God’s righteous standard.

Now, when confronted with your failure—and you will be if you’re at all humble and honest—you have only three choices. You can commit to be an evidence denier, working to convince yourself that you’re okay when you’re really not okay. You can comfort yourself with plausible arguments for your righteousness, giving ease to your conscience. Or, in the face of your failure, you can wallow in guilt and shame, beating yourself up because you did not do better and working hard to hide your failure from God and others. Or, in the brokenness and grief of conviction, you can run not away from God but to him. You can run into the light of his holy presence utterly unafraid, filled with the confidence that although he is righteous and you are not, he will not turn you away. You can do this because your standing with him has never been based on your righteous performance, but on the perfect obedience of your Savior. Because you are in him, you are counted by God as righteous and therefore accepted into his holy presence forever and ever and ever.

You can bow at his feet and confess your sins, knowing that you will receive grace and not punishment, because righteous Jesus took the full brunt of your penalty so that you would never, ever bear it.

It feels good to think that your biggest problems in life exist outside you and not inside you, but the problem is that it simply is not true.

Sin is a matter of the heart before it is ever an issue of our behavior. This means that your and my biggest problem in life exists inside us and not outside us.

I am in desperate need of the grace that is alone able to rescue me from me.

God’s grace is grace for the heart, and that is very good news.

You are tempted to think that because you’re God’s child, your life should be easier, more predictable, and definitely more comfortable. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. Instead, it reveals that struggles are part of God’s plan for you.

God’s grace is not always pleasant. It often comes in the form of something we never would have chosen to go through if we were controlling the joystick.

We all tend to look for life in all the wrong places.

We all carry around with us our personal catalog of “if-onlys.”

Whatever sits on the other side of your “if-only” is where you are looking for life, peace, joy, hope, and lasting contentment of heart.

The problem is that you continue to spend money on what

won’t fill you and to work too hard to get what won’t ever satisfy you. It is a big, disastrous spiritual mess that leaves you fat, addicted, in debt, and with a still unsatisfied he...

You heart will rest only when it finds its rest in God, and God alone.

Why would you frantically look to creation to give you what you already have been given in Christ? Why would you ask this broken world to be your savior when Jesus has come as

your Savior to supply in his grace everything that you need?

By grace, he makes you the place where he dwells. This means you are never in a situation, location, or relationship by yourself. He is always with you.

And because he is always with you, you are never

left to the limited resources of your own wisdom, strength...

I don’t understand much, but of this I am sure—he is with me, he is in me, and he is for me.

What we are all going through right here, right now is a massive, progressive process of values clarification and heart protection. God is daily employing the brokenness of this present world to clarify your values.

The people in our lives fail us. Relationships sour and become painful. Our physical bodies weaken. Flowers die and food spoils. All of this is meant to teach us that these things are beautiful and enjoyable, but they cannot give us what we all long for—life.

He is protecting us from us. Our hearts can be so fickle. We can worship God one day, only to turn and give the worship of our hearts to something else the next.

He works through loss to protect us from giving our allegiance to things that will never, ever deliver what our hearts seek. This is all designed to deepen our love and worship of him.

Your Lord knows that even as his child your heart is still prone to wander, so in tender, patient grace he keeps you in a world that

teaches you that he alone is worthy of the deepest, most worshipful allegiance of your heart.

Now, this means that when you sin, desiring, thinking, saying, or doing what is wrong in God’s eyes, your conscience bothers you. What we’re talking

about here is the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit.

When your conscience bothers you, you have only two choices. You can gladly confess that what you’ve done is sin and place yourself once again under the justifying mercies of Christ, or y...

makes what God says is wrong acceptable to your conscience. We are all so good at doing this. We are good at pointing to something or someone who justifies what we have done. We are all very good at systems of sel...

The fact of the matter is that none of us are grace graduates,

We are all in daily and desperate need of forgiving, rescuing, transforming, and delivering grace.

you resist humble acknowledgment of your sin, you resist the ever-present Redeemer who is making that sin known to you. He does this not to humiliate or punish you, but because he loves you so much that he will not turn from his...

He takes your failure and employs it as a tool of grace. He uses the “death” of the fallen world to motivate you to reach out for life. The hardest things in your life become the sweetest tools of grace in his wise and loving hands. So be careful how you make sense of your life. What looks like a disaster

may in fact be grace. What looks like the end may be the beginning. What looks hopeless may be God’s instrument to give you real and lasting hope. Your Father is committed to taking what seems so bad and turning it into something that is very, very good.

No one is more influential in your life than you are, because no one talks to you more than you do. We never stop talking to ourselves. We are in a constant conversation with ourselves

about God, others, ourselves, meaning and purpose, identity, and such. The things you say to you about you, God, and life are profoundly important because they form and shape the way you then respond to the things that God has put on your plate. You see, you are always preaching to yourself some kind of worldview, some kind of “gospel,” if you will. The question is, in your private

moment-by-moment conversation, what are you...

“dead man’s cross, live man’s empty tomb” gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, which the world sees as utter foolishness, is in fact the wisest of wisdom. It is the only way to make sense out of life. It is the only lens through which you can see life accurately.

wisdom that really does give a final and reliable answer to the fundamental questions of life that every person asks.

And at the center of this message of wisdom is not a set of ideas but a person who, in his life and death, offers you not only answers, but every grace you need to be what you were creat...

God chooses for you to be weak to protect you from you and to cause

you to value the strength that only he can give. In this way, the weaknesses that he sends your way are not impediments to the good life. They are not in the way of his loving plan. They are not signs of his lack of care. They are not indicators of the failure of his promises. They do not expose gaps in the theology that we hold dear. They are not indications that the Bible contradicts itself when it says that God will meet all of your needs. No, these weaknesses are tools

of his zealous and amazing grace. They protect you from the arrogance of self-reliance that tempts us all. They keep you from thinking that you’re capable of what you’re not. They remind you that you are needy and were created to be dependent on One greater than you. They cause you to do what all of u...

When you tell yourself that you are strong, you quit being excited about God’s rescuing, transforming, and empowering grace.

Paul actually celebrated his weaknesses, because as he did, the power of God rested upon him. He didn’t live a fearful, discouraged, and envious life; he was content because he knew weakness is the doorway to real power, power that only God can and willingly does supply.

You see, Jesus didn’t simply come to rescue disembodied souls. Yes, he saves our souls from eternal damnation, and for that we should be eternally grateful. But he also came to unleash his powerful restoring grace as far as the furthest effect of sin. He came to restore every single thing that sin has broken. He came to fix it all! His redemptive mission is as

complete as sin’s destruction is comprehensive.

Revelation 21:5, and so should you: “Behold, I am makin...