New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

never to be found in the degree of your love for God. It is only ever found in the magnitude of his love for you. This love is yours as a gift of his grace even on those days where your heart has run after other lovers. That’s just how beautiful and faithful his love for you really is.

Daily we are sad, mad, upset, or disappointed by something, and every day we are excited, happy, joyful, pumped, or thankful for something. It’s at the intersection between sadness and celebration that the true love of our hearts is exposed.

Think with me—when you look back on a good week, what are the things that excited you, satisfied you,

or otherwise made you so happy that you name it...

Or look at the other side. When you’re really disappointed with life, what is it that discourages you?

How much of your joy, celebration, grief, or anger in the last several weeks had anything whatsoever to do with the kingdom of God?

There are times when my heart grasps the magnitude of God’s grace, and I celebrate. There are times when I am captured by the work of God’s kingdom. There are moments when I do find joy in serving others. There are times when I am deeply content in the worship of God.

you will see that there is evidence of God’s transforming grace at work, but there is also evidence of the need for that grace to do more.

Yes, you have been and are being rescued, but your grief and celebration tell you that the war for your heart still rages on

you need for grace to continue to do its rescuing and transfor...

“For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25). Paul is saying that if it were possible for God to be foolish, his most foolish moment would be infinitely wiser than our wisest moment. How humbling!

Every instance of prayer is a confession in which I own my condition and embrace my need.

The heart of true prayer is vertical confession, not horizontal desire.

practical summary of the work of the gospel on your life: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” If someone were to ask you what in the world God is doing in your life right here, right now, what would you answer?

God has been and is exercising

his grace to bring real comfort to our hearts.

Here it is: despite our sin, you and I have been welcomed into an eternal relationship with the Lord almighty because Jesus fully met all the requirements of God that we failed to meet. We no longer have to fear God’s wrath. We no longer have to measure up in order to achieve his acceptance. We no longer have to hide in guilt or shame. We are God’s forever and ever.

never turn his back on us. He will never angrily throw our sin in our faces. He will never withdraw his presence and his promises, no matter how messed up we continue to be, because our standing with him is not based on our performance, but on the perfect record of his Son. But that is only one piece of God’s agenda.

by grace he is transforming our hearts so that in our work and our words we will progressively live as he chose us to live.

The only way I can escape the self-focused bondage of my love for me and actually begin to love others is for forgiving, liberating,

empowering, and eternal love to be placed in me. The more I am thankful for that love, the more I find joy in giving it to others.

Peace is not found in the degree of our faithfulness to God, but in the utterly unshakable nature of his faithfulness to the commitment of grace he has made to us.

He never threatens to withdraw his love in order to get his own way. He never keeps a record of wrongs against us so that he can use it to get something from us that he wants.

His faithfulness is not a demonstration of how well you’re

doing; no, it’s a revelation of how completely holy, righteous, kind, and good he is. He remains faithful even on your most unfaithful day.

if you’re God’s child, you have a Father in heaven!

That One who in

magnificent love put the plan of redemption in motion, so that at the right moment his Son came to live, die, and rise again so that we would have new and eternal life—that One is our Father. That King who won’t ever leave the work of his hands till everything he has purposed to do in us and in the world that he created has been fully done—that King is our Father.

He thinks of you with pure and faithful fatherly love. He acts toward you with the giving, providing, instructing, patient, and forgiving love of a perfect father.

is always with you. His hand is always upon you. He never stops watching you. His heart is always for you. He is always at work accomplishing his plans for you and through you. He lifts your burdens and lightens your load. He is your God, your Savior, your Friend—your Father.

Prayer is about something vastly bigger and more beautiful than laying before God your personal wish list for the day, because your life is meant to be about something bigger than that as well.

Prayer is, in itself, a recognition that

something exists in the world that is greater and more ...

Everything that I do and every request that I make of God is to be done in recognition that everything that exists, including me, was made for his glory.

I don’t really want to live for a greater glory. What I really want is for the people, places, and things in my life to serve the glory of my comfort and satisfaction.

This is what sin does to all of us. It causes us all to be little self-sovereigns and self-appointed mini-kings. What we really want is for our kingdoms to come and our will to be done right here, right now in our jobs

and families. We love being in control. We love getting our own way. We love being indulged and served. We live for being right. We have a wonderful plan for the people in our lives. It is humbling to admit, but we are more like the disciples than unlike them. So it was a moment of beautiful grace when Jesus looked at these self-oriented disciples and said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom”

I didn’t come to exercise my power to make your little kingdoms work, but to welcome you, by grace, to a much better kingdom than you could ever quest for on your own.” No matter how counterintuitive it is, it really is true that real ...

Hope in life is never about doing whatever you need to do to get your way. Hope in life is not found in expending all your resources, time, energy, and gifts to realize your personal dreams. Hope in life is not found in working yourself into as much control as possible over the people and situations in your life. In a word, hope is not found in your will being done.

Hope is found in only one place—in the wise and faithful rule of your Father in heaven.

So cry out for grace. The war between God’s will and your will has

not yet ended. The desire for God to exercise his power to deliver your personal dreams is not yet gone.

Ask him again to rescue you from you. Pray for the sense of heart to know that there is no safer place to be than in submission to the will of your Father in heaven.

When you’re joyfully willing to submit to the will of this One, you know grace has taken residence in your heart.

The children of Israel were entering the Promised Land, where abundant resources would be available to them and they would face the temptation of affluence. What is that? It is the temptation we all face, when things are going well and supplies are many, to forget our utter dependence on the power, goodness, and faithfulness of God for everything in life.

The prayer for daily bread reminds me that I am dependent on God for even the most

mundane needs of ...

Independency is a delusion. Even the most ardent atheist is dependent on God for his life and breath. No one is able to get what he needs for his physical existence on his own. No one lives a self-sufficient life.

“Look how successfully I have been able to care for me without any outside assistance.” No one! It really is true that “Every good and every perfect gift is from above”

We can all forget that we never could have earned or deserved the best things in our lives; they are only ours by means of grace. Here’s the problem: to the degree that you forget the grace that you have been given, to that same degree it is easier for you not to extend grace to others.