New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

He gives what we never could have earned; why, then, do we turn and refuse to give until others have measured up to whatever

standard we hold them to?

When you remember how far you fall short, you are tenderhearted toward others who fall short, and you want for them the same grace that is your only hope.

you know that one of the biggest and most important battles children have with their parents is the battle of authority. The same is true of our relationship with God.

there are three recognitions that only grace can produce. The first recognition is that

there is One of ultimate authority who rules over this world and knows what is best. In this recognition is the acknowledgment that I am never ultimate, that even if I am the most powerful human being on earth, I am still a person under authority.

The second recognition is that the One who is the ultimate authority has clearly communicat...

Real life is found inside these boundaries, not in discovering and experiencing what’s outside of them. The third recognition is that on this side of eternity, I live in a world of moment-by-moment temptation.

So pray that these three recognitions will rule your heart today—that you’ll remember God’s authority, that you’ll love his law, and that you’ll have the desire and strength to resist temptation. There is ample grace for all of these things!

we are all very skilled at explaining away our wrong behavior by pointing to the situations, locations, events, and people in our lives. We work very hard to convince ourselves that the problem cannot be us. We take ourselves off the hook

We are all very good at swindling ourselves into thinking that what God says is wrong isn’t so wrong after all, or that our words and behavior tell us more about the situations and people in our lives than they do about us.

You are admitting that you can escape the evil in a certain location, you can avoid an evil situation, and you can run from an evil person, but you cannot run from yourself. Only grace has the power to rescue you from you and to deliver you from the most threatening evil of all—the evil that still resides in your heart. Cry out for that grace.

You may ignore his existence, you may think theologically that there is no God, but you cannot escape that you were crafted in his image and connected to him by means of creation.

You have to work to deny God’s existence because it is so readily visible everywhere you look.

God did this because he is a God of grace. He did this so that we would run to him and not from him. He did this so that we would recognize our position as his creatures and bow to his glory. He did this so that we would live in recognition of him.

In fact, you and I should live with the future in view every day of our lives. In some ways,

everything that we think, desire, decide, do, and say should be shaped by what is to come. But there is a huge difference between worrying about what you have no power over and resting in what God has revealed about his future plans for you.

God’s secret will is called his secret will precisely because it is secret! No, real hope is found in living inside the implications of what

it means that God holds your future in his wise, powerful, and gracious hands. Peter says, “Don’t ever let yourself forget that Jesus has purchased a future for you that is better than anything you could have dreamed of or planned for yourself.

Peter uses to describe our inheritance as the children of God: “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” Together they mean that this inheritance is protected and untouchable; nothing will be allowed to happen that would damage it in any way. It is absolutely secure.

So remember today that no matter how hard your story is right here, right now, it is guaranteed for you as God’s child that it will end better than anything you can now imagine, and that glory will never end!

You and I tend to want to point to anything we can to prove that we are not lawbreakers, but law keepers.

The sad reality is that alone, none of us is righteous. None of us measures up. None of us has any power whatsoever to keep the law so consistently as to achieve acceptance by a completely holy God.

He did what you could never do so that you would be welcomed into the arms of a righteous God and be fully accepted even though, in reality, you are anything but righteous.

We forget how magnificent our resources are in Christ, how complete his provision is, and how precious it is that he is always near. We forget how wise,

encouraging, protective, and freeing God’s Word is.

We forget that we have not only been blessed to be recipients of God’s grace, but have been called to be tools of that grace in the lives of others.

there is a war for control of our hearts.

This means that what rules our hearts shapes our words and actions.

Corinthians 5:15: “He died for all, that those who live might no longer

live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

Will we live for ourselves, reducing life down to the small confines of our wants, feelings, needs, demands, expectations, ...

Every day you attach the hopes and dreams of your heart, your satisfaction, and your joy to something. Every day you look to s...

you give yourself to something in the hope that it will give you peace and joy. Every day you attach your identity to something, and there are only two places to look. You are either looking for life in the creation and are on your way to crushing disappointment, or you a...

We are guilty. The cross purchased our forgiveness. We are unable. The Spirit gives us power. We are foolish. God’s Word provides wisdom.

I had no right to be with you, but you picked me up and placed me there. You fed me the life-giving nutrients of grace with your nail-scarred hands.

In the mundane moments of our daily lives, we buy into the fallacy that we can step over God’s loving and wise moral boundaries without consequences. In myriad little moments, we’re morally disloyal to the One who is our wisdom, righteousness, and hope.

These acts of disloyalty expose the war that still rages for the rulership of our hearts and the depth of our ongoing need for rescuing and forgiving grace.

first activate my internal defense system

work to erect arguments for my righteousness.

I work to convince myself and the person confronting me that I am righteous. In these two actions, not only am I negating empirical evidence of the sin that still resides in my heart, but I am also defending righteousness that doesn’t exist. Here’s the sad part: in doing both of these things, I’m devaluing the grace that is my only hope in life and death.

where the rubber meets the road in everyday life, self-righteousness stands in the way of that grace having functional and transformative value in my life.

Rather than my heart being ruled by God and motivated by God’s honor, my heart is ruled by my wants, my needs, and my feelings. If it is, I am always in some kind of conflict with you.

When we put ourselves where God alone belongs, conflict always results. It is all just another argument for the essentiality of God’s grace in Jesus.

So Jesus was willing to come and live the life we could not live and die the death that we deserved, but that’s not all he was willing to do. He willingly endured the Father’s rejection so that we would know his acceptance.

Your acceptance before God has been purchased and doesn’t need to be purchased again. As God’s child, there is nothing that you can do to get more of God’s acceptance and there is nothing you can do that would cause him to take your

acceptance away. Your acceptance with God is just as secure on your very worst day as it is on your very best day, because it was purchased once and for all by your suffering Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

you are looking horizontally for what will only ever be yours vertically. In other words, you are asking something in creation to do for you what only God can do.

No, the earthly glories that God created are to be like signposts that point us to the one glory that will ever satisfy our hearts.

So here’s the bottom line. If you seek satisfaction, satisfaction will escape your grasp. But if you seek God, rest in his presence and grace, and put your heart in his most capable hands, he will satisfy your heart as nothing else can. You were made for him. Your heart was