New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

designed to be controlled by worship of him. Your inner security is meant to come from rest in him. Your sense of well-being is intended to come from a reliance on his wisdom, power, and love. The reality is this—God is the peace that you’re looking for. He is the satisfaction that your heart seeks. He is the rest that you crave, the joy you long for, an...

We all dream of independent strength and ability. We all crave independent knowledge and wisdom. We all want righteousness of our

But the fact is that not only were we not created to be independent, but also sin has ravaged us and left us even weaker and more needy.

the great danger is your

delusion of strength, because if you think you’re strong, then you don’t seek the help that you desperately need from the One who is the ultimate source of strength of every kind.

Grace exposes how deep your need really is, then takes you by the hand to where lasting strength can be found.

Abraham wasn’t relying on what he could see or understand. No, he was at rest because he acted on the firm platform of God’s commands, as well as his presence, promises, faithfulness, and power.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all

unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Doing what you want to do, when you want to do it, and how you want to do it has never been the good life; it never leads to anything good. Making up your own rules and following your own paths leads to disaster. God calls you to himself and commands you to follow him so that, by grace, he may free you from you.

As Creator, God designed you to live a dependent life. You were built for a life of loving, worshipful dependency and obedience. You and I just don’t have the power and wisdom we would need to live an independent existence. To try to live life completely independent of God is like trying to drive a beautiful boat down a superhighway.

The entrance of sin into the world and into our hearts teaches us that we were not hardwired for independence.

The fall made us all a danger to ourselves. Because of the sin in us, we think bad things, we desire bad things, we are attracted to bad things,

and we choose bad things—and we are blind to much of this going on inside of ourselves. So not only do we need God’s presence and his wisdom to guide and protect...

It really is true that individualism is a delusion, that joyful submission is the good life, and that Jesus alone is able to transport you from one to the other. If you find more joy in serving God than yourself, you know

that grace has entered your door, because only grace has the power to rescue you from you.

You’ve been bought with a price, so you don’t belong to you anymore.

But these glories were created and placed in our lives for a purpose. All of the glories of the physical created world serve this one purpose—to remind us of and point us to the glory

of God. We were never meant to live for earthbound glory.

The sign is

not the thing; the sign points you to the thing. The same can be said of physical creation. It is not the thing that you were made to live for. It was made to point you to the thing you were made to live for, and that thing is God and God alone.

There is never a day when you aren’t greeted by those glories. But it is vital to remember that the glories that surround you every day in the world that God made are not meant to be your stopping point, because you were created to live for a greater, more glorious glory—the glory of God.

it is only God’s glory that has the power to rescue you from all the earthbound glories that so easily capture your heart.

So your gracious care comes to me in uncomfortable forms: the redeeming care of disappointment, the unexpected trial, suffering, loss.

The person next to you is never a safe source of your happiness because that person is

flawed and will inevitably fail you in some way. Only God is ever a safe keeper of the security, peace, and rest of your soul. Here is the bottom line—earth will never be your savior.

God promises to provide, but he calls us to labor, pray, and give.

God alone has the power to save, but he calls us to witness, testify, proclaim, teach, live, and preach. You see, God not only determines outcomes, but he rules over the means by which those

outcomes are r...

So in the face of the depth and heinous character of all of our rebellion against God and his glory, it would be amazing if we were not exterminated. It would be an act of wondrous grace for God to recognize that we exist. But he has done so much, much more than this. By

means of the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, he has made a way for us to be welcomed into an intimate familial relationship with him.

So grace lets you have it all—everything, that is, that you need. Grace makes the King of kings your Father and his Savior Son your brother.

It’s called spiritual blindness. Sin blinds, and because it does, the sin inside me keeps me from seeing me with clarity. Sin is self-excusing and self-aggrandizing. Sin is self-righteous and other-blaming. Sin is self-atoning; it easily rationalizes away my wrongs. Sin allows me to

feel all right about what God says is very wrong. The personal sight system that God wired into every human being has been terribly broken by sin.

We all suffer from spiritual blindness. But that is not all. We all also suffer from the fact that we live most of the time blind to our blindness. We don’t see ourselves

with clarity, but we think we do, and we don’t know ourselves with accuracy, but we are convinced we do. This is why we all tend to be offended when someone points out a sin, weakness, or failure.

Empowered by the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit, it is the universe’s most accurate mirror. Stand in front of it and you will see yourself as you really are. The diagnostic accuracy of the Bible is perfect.

You don’t need to be afraid of all the dark things you don’t see in yourself but which Scripture reveals about you, because all of those dark things have been covered by and defeated by the powerful grace that is yours in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

We all carry around with us personal hopes and dreams. We all surrender our hearts to some kind of expectation. We all silently wish that things could be different than they are. We all hope in something and we all hope for something.

Hope always has three elements—an assessment, an object, and an expectation.

First, hope looks around and assesses that something or someone could be better than it is; that that something or someone is somehow broken. If things were as perfect as they could be, you wouldn’t need to hope. Second, hope always has an object. It is the thing that you bank your hope on. You ask the object of your hope to fix what is broken or to deliver what is desired

or needed. Third, hope has an expectation. This is what you ask the object of your hope to give you, what you hope the...

in the situations, experiences, physical possessions, locations, and relationships of everyday life. There are two problems with looking horizontally. First, all of these things suffer from some degree of brokenness. They are part of the problem, and because they are, they are unable to deliver what you’re seeking. Also, these things were never made to be the source of your hope,

Paul says it all in Romans 5:5 when he tells us that hope in God will never put us to shame. It will never embarrass us by failing to deliver. In those words, Paul tells us where hope can be found. It is found only vertically. Only when God is your hope is your hope sure and secure.

Only he is able to give you the life that your heart seeks. Only he is able to give your soul the rest that it needs. Only he can deliver the internal peace that is the hunger of

every human...

We were created to live in a forever relationship with a forever God forever.

They put all their hopes and dreams in the right here, right now situations, locations, possessions, positions, and people of their daily lives.

Your eternity amnesia makes you unrealistically expectant, vulnerable to temptation, all too driven, dependent on people and things that will only disappoint you, and sadly susceptible to doubting the goodness of God.

And Scripture is clear—this is not paradise, and it won’t be. Rather, this moment is a time of preparation for the paradise that is to come, where everything that sin has broken will be fully restored to what God originally intended it to be.