New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

When amazing realities of the gospel quit commanding your attention, your awe, and your worship, other things in your life will capture your attention instead. When you quit celebrating grace, you begin to forget how much you need grace, and when you forget how much you need grace, you quit seeking the rescue and strength that only grace can give. This means you begin to see yourself as more righteous, strong, and wise than you actually are, and in so doing, you set yourself up for trouble.

Awe-inspiring mercies Rebuking mercies Strengthening mercies Hope-giving mercies Heart-exposing mercies Rescuing mercies Transforming mercies Forgiving mercies Provision-making mercies Uncomfortable mercies Glory-revealing mercies Truth-illumining mercies Courage-giving mercies.

Even the most regular, seemingly unimportant tasks of my life must be shaped and directed by a heartfelt desire for the glory of God.

Let’s start the new year by admitting that there is nothing less natural for us than to live for the glory of another. This admission is the doorway not to despair, but to hope. God knew that in your sin you would never live this way, so he sent his Son to live the life you couldn’t, to die on your behalf, and to rise again, conquering sin and death. He did this so that you would not only be forgiven for your allegiance to your own glory, but have every grace you need to live for his. When you admit your need for help, you connect yourself to the rescue he has already provided in his Son, Jesus. Reach out for hope by reaching out for the rescue again today.

Your rest is not to be found in figuring your life out, but in trusting the One who has it all figured out for your good and his glory.

But sin makes this drive and these gifts dangerous. They tempt us to think that we can find our hearts by figuring it all out. It’s the “If only I could understand this or that, then I’d be secure” way of living. But it never works. In your most brilliant moment, you will still be left with mystery in your life; sometimes even painful mystery. We all face things that appear to make little sense and don’t seem to serve any good purpose. So rest is never found in the quest to understand it all. No, rest is found in trusting the One who understands it all and rules it all for his glory and our good.

God is with you in your moments of darkness because he will never leave you. But your darkness isn’t dark to him. Your mysteries aren’t mysterious to him. Your surprises don’t surprise him. He understands all the things that confuse you the most. Not only are your mysteries not mysterious to him, but he is in complete charge of all that is mysterious to you and me.

If you obey for a thousand years, you’re no more accepted than when you first believed; your acceptance is based on Christ’s righteousness and not yours.

The fact is that sin is a bigger disaster than we think it is and grace is more amazing than we seem to be able to grasp that it is. No one who really understands what Scripture has to say about the comprehensive, every-aspect-of-your-personhood-altering nature of sin would ever think that anyone could muster enough motivation and strength to rise to God’s standard of perfection. The thought that any fallen human being would be able to perform his or her way into acceptance with God has to be the most insane of all delusions. Yet we all tend to think that we are more righteous than we are, and when we think this, we have taken the first step to embracing the delusion that maybe we’re not so bad in God’s eyes after all. This is why the reality check of Romans 3:20 is so important. Paul writes, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight.” If you prayed every moment of your life, you could not pray enough prayers to earn acceptance with God. If you gave every penny of every dollar that you ever earned in every job you ever had, you could not give enough to deserve acceptance with God. If every word you ever spoke was uttered with the purest of conscientious motivations, you would never be able to speak your way into reconciliation with God. If you gave yourself to an unbroken, moment-by-moment life of ministry, you could never minister enough to achieve God’s favor. Sin is too big. God’s bar is too high. It is beyond the reach of every human being ...

This is why God, in love, sent his Son: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). You see, there was and is no other way. There is only one portal to acceptance with God—the righteousness of Christ. His righteousness is given over to our account; sinners are welcomed into the presence of a holy God based on the perfect obedience of another. Christ is our hope, Christ is our rest, Christ is our peace. He perfectly fulfilled God’s...

Contentment celebrates grace. The contented heart is satisfied with the Giver and is therefore freed from craving the next gift.

The problem is that nothing in creation can give you these things. Creation was never designed to satisfy your heart. Creation was made to be one big finger pointing you to the One who alone has the ability to satisfy your heart. Many people will get up today and in some way will ask creation to be their savior, that is, to give them what only God is able to give.

Here is one of the most beautiful fruits of grace—a heart that is content, more given to worship than demand and more given to the joy of gratitude than the anxiety of want. It is grace and grace alone that can make this kind of peaceful living possible for each of us. Won’t you reach out today for that grace?

Here was my functional theology of my life as a child of God: I knew that by grace I had been granted God’s forgiveness and I knew that I had been graced with an all-inclusive pass into eternity, but I thought that between now and then, my job was to just gut it out. It was my responsibility to identify sin, to cut it out of my life, and to give myself to living in a much better, more biblical way. I tried this, trust me; I tried it and found it didn’t work. I messed up again and again. It seemed that I failed more times than I succeeded. I became more and more frustrated and discouraged. It felt as if I had been drafted into a game that I had no ability to play by someone who kept perfect score. I can remember the moment in college when it all came to a head. It was six o’clock in the morning, as I was having the devotions that I really didn’t want to have, when I finally put my head down on my desk and cried, “I can’t do what you’re asking me to do!” Then I read the next chapter in my daily Bible reading, and by God’s grace it was Romans 8.

I need the presence and power of the Holy Spirit living inside me because sin kidnaps the desires of my heart, blinds my eyes, and weakens my knees. My problem is not just the guilt of sin; it’s the inability of sin as well. So God graces his children with the convicting, sight-giving, desire-producing, and strength-affording presence of the Spirit. It can’t be said any better than Paul says it at the end of his discussion of the gift of the Spirit: “He gives life to your mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11, my paraphrase).

I don’t know how much you’ve thought about this, but faith isn’t natural for you and me. Doubt is natural. Fear is natural. Living on the basis of your collected experience is natural. Pushing the current catalog of personal “what-ifs” through your mind before you go to sleep or when you wake up in the morning is natural. Living based on the thinking of your brain and your physical senses is natural. Envying the life of someone else and wondering why it isn’t your life is natural. Wishing that you were more sovereign over people, situations, and locations than you will ever be is natural. Manipulating your way into personal control so you can guarantee that you will get what you think you need is natural. Looking horizontally for the peace that you will only ever find vertically is natural. Anxiously wishing for change in things that you have no ability to change is natural. Giving way to despondency, discouragement, depression, or despair is natural. Numbing yourself with busyness, material things, media, food, or some other substance is natural. Lowering your standards to deal with your disappointment is natural. But faith simply isn’t natural to us.

For the believer, fear is always God-forgetful. If God is sovereign and his rule is complete, wise, righteous, and good, why would you fear?

The words of Hezekiah, king of Judah, ring as true today as they did in the scary moment centuries and centuries ago when they were first spoken. Judah had been invaded by the powerful king of Assyria, Sennacherib. Hezekiah prepared and armed Judah for battle, but that is not all he did. He addressed the people with a more significant issue. He knew that in these moments God’s people were often given to fear, and he knew where that fear came from. Often in these moments of challenge the people of God would panic because they were identity amnesiacs. They would forget who they were as the children of God and they would forget who God is in all his almighty power and glory. So at this moment, Hezekiah knew that he couldn’t just be a good king and a skilled general; he must also be a wise pastor to his people. As they were preparing for the Assyrian onslaught, Hezekiah didn’t want the people of Judah to think that they were left to their battle courage, their war experience, and their skill with weapons. He wanted them to know that they had been amazingly blessed with another ingredient, one that they could not, must not forget. So he said: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him. . . . With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles” (2 Chron. 32:7–8). There will be a moment when you will ask, “Where is courage to be found to face what I am facing?”...

The DNA of joy is thankfulness. Have you noticed that entitled, complaining people don’t happen to be very joyful?

If you have been freed from needing success and acclaim to feel good about yourself, you know grace has visited you.

Here’s what happens to us all—we seek horizontally for the personal rest that we are to find vertically, and it never works. Looking to others for your inner sense of well-being is pointless. First, you will never be good enough, consistently enough, to get the regular praise of others that you are seeking. You’re going to mess up. You’re bound to disappoint. You will have a bad day. You’ll lose your way. At some point, you’ll say or do things that you shouldn’t. Add to this the fact that the people around you aren’t typically interested in taking on the burden of being your personal messiah. They don’t want to live with the responsibility of having your identity in their hands. Looking to people for your inner self-worth never works.

The peace that success gives is unreliable as well. Since you are less than perfect, whatever success you are able to achieve will soon be followed by failure of some kind. Then there is the fact that the buzz of success is short-lived. It isn’t long before you’re searching for the next success to keep you going. That’s why the reality that Jesus has become your righteousness is so precious. His grace has forever freed us from needing to prove our righteousness and our worth. So we remind ourselves every day not to search horizontally for what we’ve already been given vertically. “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever” (Isa. 32:17). That righteousness is found in Christ alone.

God calls you to persevere by faith, and then, with powerful grace, he protects and keeps you.

Let me state it plainly: your hope is not to be found in your willingness and ability to endure, but in God’s unshakable, enduring commitment to never turn from his work of grace.

Your hope is that you have been welcomed into communion with One who will endure no matter what.

Why is this so important to understand? Because your endurance will be spotty at best. There will be moments when you will forget who you are and live as a grace amnesiac. There will be times when you will get discouraged and for a while quit doing the good things God calls you to do. There will be moments, big and small, when you will willingly rebel. You may be thinking, “Not me.” But think with me—when you, as a Christian, say something nasty to another person, you...

You see, perfect endurance demands just that, perfection, and since none of us is there yet, we must look outside ourselves for hope. Your hope of enduring is not to be found in your character or strength, but in your Lord’s. Because he will ever be faithful, you can bank on the fact that he will give you what you need to be faithful too. Your perseverance rests on him, and he defines what endurance looks like! It is the grace of endurance granted to you by the God of endurance that provides you with everything you need to continue to be what he calls you to be and do what he calls you to do between this moment and the moment when you cross over to the other side. When difficulty expose...

But your welcome into God’s family turns all of this upside down. God not only forgives your sins and guarantees you a seat in eternity, but welcomes you to a radically new way of living. This new way of living is not just about submitting to God’s moral code. No, it is about God covenantally committing himself to be faithful to you forever, unleashing his wisdom, power, and grace for your eternal good. Think about this. The One who created and controls the world, the One who is the ultimate definition of what is loving, true, and good, and the One who alone has the power to finally defeat sin has chosen, because of his grace, to wrap his arms of faithful love and protection around you, and he will not let you go.

You can take your life off your shoulders because God has placed it on his. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter how you live, but that your security is not found in your faithfulness, but in his. He can be trusted even when you cannot. He will be faithful and good even when you’re not. He will do what is right and best even when you don’t. And he is faithful to forgive you when convicting grace reveals how unfaithful you have been. Rather than giving you license to do whatever, this truth should give you motivation to continue. His grace calls you to invest in the one thing that will never come up short, and that one thing is the faithfulness of your Lord.

Don’t be discouraged today. You can leave your “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” in the hands of the One who loves you and rules all things.

Even though you’re a person of faith who has acquired some degree of biblical literacy and theological knowledge, there’s one thing you can be sure of—God will confuse you. Your theology will give you only a limited ability to exegete your experiences. The commands, principles, and case studies of Scripture will take you only so far in your quest to figure out your life. There will be moments when you simply don’t understand what is going on. In fact, you will face moments when what the God who has declared himself to be good brings into your life won’t seem good. It may even seem bad, very bad.

Now, if your faith is based on your ability to fully understand your past, present, and future, then your moments of confusion will become moments of weakening faith. But the reality is that you are not left with only two options—understand everything and rest in peace or understand little and be tormented by anxiety. There is a third way. It really is the way of true biblical faith. The Bible tells you that real peace is found in resting in the wisdom of the One who holds all of your “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” in his loving hands. Isaiah captu...

Real, sturdy, lasting peace, peace that doesn’t rise and fall with circumstances, isn’t to be found in picking apart your life until you have understood all of the components. You will never understand it all because God, for your good and his glory, keeps some of it shrouded in mystery. So peace is found only in trust, trust of the One who is in careful control of all the things that tend to rob you of your peace. He knows, he understands, he is in control of what appears to be chaos, he is never surprised, he is never confused, he never worries or loses a night’s sleep, he never walks off the job to take a rest, he never gets so busy with one thing that he neglects another, and he never plays favorites. You need to remind yourself again and again of his wise and loving control, not...

Unlike human love, which is often fickle and temporary, God’s love never fails, no matter what.

I love Psalm 136. I love all of the psalms, but Psalm 136 blows me away every time I read it. I love the repetition that makes this psalm stand out from all the others. I love the fact that Psalm 136 is a history psalm that, because of its refrain, gets turned into a love poem. I love that it affirms again and again what we desperately need to hear again and again—not once or twice, but twenty-six times! Now, I think that whenever God speaks, you and I should humbly shut up and listen, but I also think that we should pay careful attention to those places where God chooses to repeat himself, and even more so when he repeats himself so many times!

The second reason God repeats this refrain is that we have no experience in our lives of this kind of love. You always begin to understand anything that is new to you from the vantage point of your own experience. All the human love we’ve experienced has been flawed in some way. But not God’s; his love is perfect and perfectly steadfast forever. It is the single most stunning reality in the life of a believer. God has placed his love on us and he will never again remove it. There’s a reason to continue, no matter how hard life seems and how weak you feel.

There’s not a day without sin rearing its ugly head and not a day in which God’s abundant mercies are not new.

They really are the two foundation stones of a God-honoring life. They must be held together; neither side can be forsaken. Every day you and I give empirical evidence to the existence of both. Here are these foundation-stone realities: you still have sin living inside you and God is abundant in mercy. You and I must stand on both these stones. Letting go of either casts us into danger. Because I am a sinner, I need mercy, and because God is merciful, I can face the reality of my sin. The words in Nehemiah 9 describe us all: “They . . . did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules” (v. 29). Maybe it’s a thoughtless word, a selfish act, a prideful thought, a moment of envy, a flash of lust, a willing act of disobedience, an attitude of vengeance, or a minor moment of thievery; maybe it’s wanting your glory more than God’s, failing to give grace where grace is needed, bending the truth, giving in to an addiction, or working to make these kinds of things in your life look not as bad as they actually are. In some way, we all give daily proof to the truth that sin still lives inside us. None of us is yet sin-free. We all continue to fail in word, thought, desire, and action. It is humbling but important to admit, because it’s only when you admit how deep and comprehensive your problem is that you get excited about the rescue that only God’s mercy can supply.

We aren’t just left in our sins. Nehemiah 9 continues, “Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God” (v. 31). You can be courageous in admitting your sin precisely because God is richly abundant in his mercy. He comes to you in mercy not because you are good but because you are a sinner, and he knows that because of this condition, you are unable to help yourself. Since sin means that you are a bigger danger to you than anything else in your life and since it is impossible for you to run from you, there is only one hope for you. It is that someone with power, wisdom, and mercy will invade your life, forgive your sins, and progressively deliver you...

To think today, when your life doesn’t work as planned, that it’s out of control is to forget that Jesus reigns for your sake and his glory.

What are you facing today that you wouldn’t be facing if you were in control? What are you required to deal with that you really wish you could avoid? Where have your plans dripped like sand through your fingers? Where would you like to take back choices and redo decisions? Where do you tend to look over the fence and wish you had someone else’s life? Where do you feel troubled, inadequate, weak, defeated, overwhelmed, alienated, or alone? Where do thoughts of the past tend to flood you with regret, or visions of the future make you a bit afraid? What causes you to wish life was easier or at least a bit more predictable? If you could change a couple of things in your life right now, what would they be? Where does it feel to you as if you’re on an amusement park ride that you never intended to be on? If you’re not in one of the moments I’ve described above, you will be someday, and you are near to someone who is. Life in this fallen world is often very hard. This world and everything in it are not functioning the way God intended. The brokenness of this fallen world will enter your door and somehow alter the trajectory of your life. In those moments, it is tempting to conclude that life is all about surviving the chaos. You feel that you don’t have much power, you have been confronted with the fact that there’s not much that you control, and you have no idea of what might be lurking around the corner. It all seems impossible and scary.

But this is not where God’s Word leaves us. Yes, it does confront us with our smallness, weakness, and lack of control, but it doesn’t leave us there. The Bible declares something to us that is the opposite of the way we tend to think. It tells us that the difficulties that we face every day, the seeming chaos that regularly greets us, are not the result of the world being out of control, but the result of the reign of One who is in complete control. Paul says in E...

So no matter how it looks to you at street level, your world is not out of control; no, it is under careful rule. As radical as that thought is, it’s not radical enough, because it does not do justice to all that Paul says. Paul wants you to know something else. That rule has you in view! Right now, Jesus rules...

If you look into the mirror of God’s Word and see someone in need of grace, why would you be impatient with others who share that need?

Maybe one of the biggest sins in our relationships with one another is the sin of forgetting. I wish I could say that this is not my problem, but it is. It is so easy to forget how profound your need of grace is, and it is equally easy to forget the amazing grace that has been freely showered upon you. And when you forget the grace that you’ve been given, it becomes very easy to respond to the people around you with nongrace. It is very clear that grace toward others isn’t best born out of duty. Pretend with me that I plop down on the couch next to my dear wife, Luella, and say these words: “You know, Luella, I have come to the realization that it’s my duty to be gracious to you. So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give you grace, not because I really want to, but because I guess it’s what I have to do.” Do you think that Luella would be encouraged by that statement for a moment? I think not. A joyful life of grace toward others grows best in the soil of gratitude. When I really reflect on who I am, when I take time to consider the grace that I couldn’t have earned, achieved, or deserved but which has been lavished on me, and when I remember that that grace came at the cost of the life of another, then I am joyfully motivated to give that grace to others.

But here is the radical truth of the gospel. Hope is not a situation. Hope is not a location. Hope is not a possession. Hope is not an experience. Hope is more than an insight or a truism. Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus!

When we ask the present to give us what only eternity can give, we end up driven, frustrated, discouraged, and ultimately hopeless.

“What is this schizophrenia?” you ask. It is the fact that we declare that we believe in forever, yet we live as if this is all there is. This functional contradiction between our belief system and our daily living cannot work. Here’s why. First, you cannot make any sense out of the Christian life without eternity. This is the whole argument of 1 Corinthians 15. If the One you’ve given your life to doesn’t ultimately fix all that sin has broken, so that you can live with him forever without its effects, what is your faith worth? Second, you and I have been hardwired for eternity. Ecclesiastes 3:11 declares that God has placed eternity in every person’s heart. That means everyone hungers for paradise. No one is satisfied with things the way they are. So either you try your hardest to turn your life right here, right now into the paradise it will never be and therefore become driven and disappointed, or you live in this broken world with the rest and peace that comes from knowing that a guaranteed place in paradise is in your future. You’re sad that things are as broken as they are, so you work to be an agent of change in God’s gracious and powerful hands, but you’re not anxious or driven. You know that this world is not stuck and that it hasn’t been abandoned by God. You know that God is working his eternal plan. He is moving things toward their final conclusion. You can’t see it every day, but you know it’s true. In the middle of your sadness there is celebration, because ...

You and I don’t need to be rescued only from the idols around us. No, we need to be rescued from our idolatrous hearts.

I found myself trying to get through the busy streets to our vehicle, and as I did I kept saying to myself, “I thank God I’m not like these people, I thank God I’m not like these people.” Then it hit me—I am! No, my idols aren’t the dark idols of formal religion; they’re the subtle idols of my everyday world. They’re things that claim the place in my heart that only God should have. And they are just as vomitous to my Lord as that idol was to me. At that moment, I confessed to the worship war that takes place in my heart every day. I cried out for the rescue that only the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ could provide and I longed for the day when that war would finally be over.