New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

Hope is not a thing, not a location, not a situation, not an experience. Hope is a person, and his name is Jesus.

What we’re all searching for is hope that won’t disappoint us, that won’t leave us hopeless in the end. And we all want to convince ourselves that what we have placed our hope in will deliver. What are you asking of something when you place your hope in it? You’re asking it to give you peace of heart. You’re asking it to give your life meaning. You’re asking it to give you purpose and direction. You’re asking it to give you a reason to continue. You’re asking it to help you get through difficulty and disappointment. You’re asking it to free you from envy or anxiety. You’re asking it to give you joy in the morning and rest at night.

Romans 5:1–5 talks about a hope that won’t disappoint you even in times of suffering. Maybe you’re thinking, “Where can I find that hope?” Sturdy hope that does not vanish with the constant changes in situations, locations, and relationships that make up all of our lives—hope that simply will never, ever disappoint us—can be found in only one place. It is not to be found in a certain thing. It is, in fact, a person, Jesus. Whether you have realized it or not, he is what your hoping heart has been searching for, because what you’ve really been searching for is life, real heart-changing, heart-satisfying life—life to the fullest, life abundant. People can love and respect you, but they can’t give you life. Situations can make your life easier, but they can’t give you life. Locations can bring some changes to your life, but they can’t give you life. Achievements can be temporarily satisfying, but they can’t give you life. True lasting hope is never found horizontally. It’s only ever found vertically, at the feet of the Messiah, the One who is hope. Place your hopeful heart in his hands today.

Your little kingdom of one cannot compete with the glory of the kingdom of God, which is yours by grace and grace alone.

Here is what is important for us to understand. God didn’t give us his grace in order to make our little claustrophobic kingdoms of one work, but to invite us to a much, much better kingdom. We think we know what is best for us, but we don’t. We think we are able to rule our own lives, but we aren’t. We set our hearts on things that we think will make us happy, but they won’t. We think that we can defend ourselves against temptation, but by ourselves we can’t. Every human being is in need of a king. All human beings need the rescue, forgiveness, justice, mercy, refuge, and protection that they are unable to give themselves.

The beauty of the work of Christ is not only that in his life, death, and resurrection we are offered forgiveness forever, but that with it we are welcomed into the kingdom of the universe’s most powerful and only perfect king. He blesses us with what no human kingdom can ever give. He showers us with forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, and hope. He protects us when we don’t have the sense to protect ourselves. He rules over all the moments that seem to us to be out of control. He sets up his kingdom in our hearts, rescuing us from all the other things that would rule us. And he patiently teaches us that we weren’t created to live as kings, anxiously working to set up our own little kingdoms. He teaches us what it means to rest in his kingship and to live for his glory. And he encourages us with the truth that his kingdom will never, ever end. Are you loading kingly burdens on your shoulders today, trying to build what you cannot build and forgetting what God has already built for you? Or are you resting in the peace that it is the good pleasure of your Lord to give you his kingdom?

Theology without love is simply very bad theology.

Mercy for others will reveal your ongoing need for mercy, driving you to the end of yourself and into the arms of your merciful Savior.

It’s natural to want mercy for yourself but justice for others. It’s natural to be very aware of the sin of others, yet blind to your own.

Christ’s second reason for telling this story was to reveal our hearts. You see, we’re all the unjust servant. We celebrate God’s mercy but scream at our children when they mess up. We sing of amazing grace but punish our spouses with silence when they offend us. We praise God for his love but forsake a friendship because someone has been momentarily disloyal. We are thankful that we’ve been forgiven but say that a person who is suffering the result of his decisions is getting what he deserves. We bask in God’s grace but throw the law at others. We’re simply not that good at mercy because we tend to see ourselves as more deserving than the poor and needy.

We’re all slaves; the question is, to whom or to what? Everyone is willing to make sacrifices; the question is, to whom or for what? We all follow sets of rules; the question is, whose and for what? We all give our hearts to something; the question is, to whom or to what? We were never hardwired to be free, if by “freedom” we mean an independent, self-sufficient life. We were created by God to be connected to something vastly bigger than ourselves. We were designed to have our lives organized and directed by an agenda that is bigger than our truncated personal desires and goals. We were carefully built by God to have every aspect of our personhood connected to him and his plans for us, and when we reject him, we don’t live autonomously; we replace him with something or someone. So God in grace doesn’t set you free, because he knows you wouldn’t be free. You and I would quickly enslave ourselves once again. Because sin still lives in our hearts, we’re all slaves going somewhere to happen. And the sad reality is that it doesn’t take much to enslave us again to a person or a thing that begins to function as our replacement messiah. So what does grace offer you? The answer is the world’s most wonderful, heart-satisfying, life-changing, and hope-producing slavery. The one who is the final definition of love, wisdom, mercy, and power makes us his slaves. He who alone is able to give us life enslaves our hearts to him. His absolute rulership over every area of our lives is not a ...

What is the most needed, yet the most dangerous, prayer you could ever pray? It is the one prayer that takes you beyond the small-picture hopes and dreams that kidnap so much of your prayer. It is all right to pray about your job, marriage, family, finances, house, children, retirement, vacation, investments, church, health, government, and the weather, but it is not enough. This kind of prayer follows the “right now-me” model of prayer. It is about life right here, right now and about what I have come to think that I need right here, right now. Yes, God cares about your present life. He gives you grace for this moment. Right now he is with, for, and in you. But he calls you to view yourself and your life from a perspective that goes far beyond this moment and extends far beyond your ability to diagnose what you truly need. The one prayer Christ calls us all to pray requires us to let go of our momentary agendas and take up his eternal one. It requires us to surrender our distorted sense of need to his perfect sense of what is best. It is the “forever-you” model of prayer. It requires you to take the long view—to let go of your hold on your life and surrender to the kingship of another. It is captured by a few dangerous words. Why “dangerous”? Because they have the power to turn your life upside down, to make you a very different you than you have been. Here is what we have been called to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, right here, right now in my life as it i...

Face it, your most brilliant act of righteousness wouldn’t measure up to God’s standard; that’s why you’ve been given the grace of Jesus.

The more you understand the magnitude of God’s grace, the more accurate will be your view of the depth of your unrighteousness; and the more you understand the depth of your unrighteousness, the more you will appreciate the magnitude of God’s gift of grace. The person who is comfortable in his own righteousness hasn’t really understood grace, and the person who is unimpressed by God’s grace hasn’t really understood his sin. So let’s talk about the essentiality of God’s grace. To talk about the essential nature of God’s grace means first talking about the disaster of sin. Sin isn’t primarily about acts of rebellion. Sin is, first of all, a condition of the heart that results in acts of rebellion. You and I commit sins because we are sinners. The condition of sin, into which every person who has ever lived was born, renders each of us unable to live up to God’s standard. Sin leaves us without the desire, will, or ability to do perfectly what God declares is right. Whether it’s a situation in which we try and fail or a moment when we rebel and don’t care, the playing field is level—we all fall short of God’s standard. Read Romans 3. It is a devastating analysis that shows us all to be in a dire and unalterable spiritual condition. We are all unable, we are all guilty, and there is not a thing we can do to help ourselves. None of us is good in God’s eyes and none of us can satisfy his requirement. It is an inescapable, humbling, and sad reality. But God didn’t leave us in this...

If you’re God’s child, it’s no more you against the world than it was David, by himself, against the great warrior Goliath.

I love the story of the Israelite army in the Valley of Elah as they faced the Philistine army (1 Samuel 17). On the first day of the face-off, out came that giant warrior, Goliath, and called for Israel to send out its best man to do battle with him. Remember, these Israelite soldiers were the army of the Most High God, the Lord almighty, who had promised that he would deliver these enemies into their hands. Yet what did the soldiers do in the face of Goliath’s challenge? They were immediately filled with fear and withdrew to their tents to commiserate. You can imagine them saying, “What are we going to do; what are we going to do?” This was their response for forty days. Why didn’t these solders stand up to Goliath’s challenge? Why didn’t they fight in the name of the Lord? The answer is clear and unavoidable—they were an army of identity amnesiacs. Because they had forgotten who they were, they were filled with fear and drew a fallacious spiritual conclusion. They compared their puny selves to this massive warrior and concluded there was no path to victory. David showed up to deliver a lunch to his brothers. He wondered why this Philistine was permitted to taunt God’s army. He shockingly said that he would go; he would answer this man’s challenge. Was he arrogant? Was David delusional? No, he knew who he was. He understood what it means to be a child of the living God. David drew the right spiritual conclusion. It was not little him against this huge warrior. No, it was...

In grace, he leads you where you didn’t plan to go in order to produce in you what you couldn’t achieve on your own.

The Bible calls you, as a believer, to live with three realities in view. The first greets you every day. It is the reality that you live in a world that has been dramatically broken by sin and does not function the way God intended.

The second reality is that even though we are God’s children, we lack the power on our own to fight the spiritual battles in which the world of sin and temptation engages us.

We should pray for purity of desire, wisdom to recognize the enemy’s tricks, and strength to fight the battles we can’t avoid. All of this comes out of a humble recognition that wrong doesn’t always look wrong to us. What God says is dangerous doesn’t always seem dangerous. Evil doesn’t always appear so evil in our eyes. So we need protection, not just from external temptation but from our own blind eyes and wandering hearts.

Finally, you and I are welcomed as God’s children to rest in the reality that in this fallen world that throws temptation at us every day, we are never, ever alone. God is with us. He provides the safety we could never provide for ourselves. He fights on our behalf even when we don’t have the sense to resist. He gives us wisdom and strength at those moments when that’s exactly what we need. You and I can face the harsh realities of life in this broken world with courage an...

God’s grace not only provides you with what you need, but also transforms you into what he in wisdom created you to be.

Your biggest need (and mine) is a fully restored relationship with God.

But God does even more than this. As great as is the miracle that sinners, by grace, can be restored to God, he knows that there is something else that must be addressed. Sin not only left us separate from God, it left us damaged too. The damage of sin extends to every aspect of our personhood. So God not only meets our deepest need; he commits himself to the long-term process of personal heart and life transformation. He is not satisfied that we have been restored to him; he now works so that we will become like him. Paul says it this way: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). So God has welcomed you into his arms, but he’s not satisfied. He will not leave his work of redemption until every heart of every one of his children has been fully transformed by his powerful grace. Now that we are with him by grace, he works by the very same grace so that we will be like him.

Every day you preach to yourself some kind of gospel—a false “I can’t do this” gospel or the true “I have all I need in Christ” gospel.

I find myself saying it over and over again. When I do, people often laugh, but I’m really quite serious. No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do. It’s a fact that you and I are in an endless conversation with ourselves. Most of us have learned that it’s best not to move our lips because people will think we’re crazy, but we never stop talking to ourselves. In this inner discussion, we’re always talking about God, life, others, and ourselves, and the things we say to ourselves are very important because they are formative of the things we desire, choose, say, and do. What have you been saying to you? What have you been saying to you about yourself? What have you been saying to you about God? What have you been saying to you about life, meaning and purpose, right and wrong, true and false, and good and bad?

The answer to the big question we have proposed is really quite easy and straightforward. What is God up to right here, right now? Redemption! He is actively working on sin’s final defeat and our complete deliverance. He is working out the spoils of the victory that Christ accomplished on the cross of Calvary. Listen to the encouraging words of 1 Corinthians 15:25–26: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Now, you and I need to understand two things in these words that answer our question. What is God doing? First, he’s reigning! No, your world is not out of control. No, the bad guys are not going to win. No, sin will not have the final victory. Because your world is not out of control but under God’s careful redemptive control, you can have hope even when it looks to you as if darkness is winning the day. What is God doing? This passage gives a second answer. He is putting the enemies of his redemptive purpose under his feet. He will crush enemy after enemy until the last enemy, death, is defeated. He will not sit down, he will not rest, he will not relent until sin and death are completely defeated and we are finally and forever delivered. Hope right here, right now doesn’t rest in your understanding or strength, but in the sin- and death-defeating rule of the King of kings and Lord of lords. His reign is your present protection and your future hope.

You don’t have to be anxious about the future. A God of grace has invaded your life, and he always completes what he starts.

No, our rest is in the person who holds our individual futures in his wise and gracious hands. We have peace because we know that he will complete the good things that he in grace has initiated in our lives. He is faithful, so he never leaves the work of his hands. He is gracious, so he gives us what we need, not what we deserve. He is wise, so what he does is always best. He is sovereign, so he rules all the situations and locations where we live. He is powerful, so he can do what he pleases, when he pleases. Paul says it well in Philippians 1:6: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Are you experiencing anxiety because you’ve forgotten who you are and what you’ve been given? Are you experiencing the fear that results from trying to know what you’ll never know? He knows, he cares, and he will complete the job he’s begun.

Corporate worship is designed to humble you by pointing out the depth of your need and enthrall you by pointing to the glory of God’s provision.

We all work to convince ourselves that we are better off than we are. We all want to believe that we are not that sinful after all. We compare ourselves to those who seem more sinful than us. We rewrite our history to make ourselves look better than we really are. We evaluate ourselves by looking into mirrors other than the one truly accurate mirror, the mirror of the Word of God. We list our good deeds to ourselves. We argue to ourselves and to others that what looked like sin was not sin at all. It is all a function of the delusional self-righteousness of sin. It involves daily acts of self-atonement. It is us working to convince ourselves that we really don’t need the amazing grace of a faithful, loving Savior. At street level, we all tend to back away from the radical message that we all say we believe. It is a shocking denial of sin and a minimizing of the grace that is a sinner’s only hope.

You see, when you understand the free gift of God’s provision of grace, you aren’t afraid to admit to the depth of your sin, and it is only when you have admitted the disaster of your sin that you are excited about the grace of Christ Jesus. Corporate worship really does confront us with the fact that we are worse off than we thought and that God’s grace is more amazing than we ever could have imagined. We will continue to need that reminder until our sin is no more and we are with him and like him forever. Corporate worship is not a thankless duty for the religiously committed. No, it’s another gift of mercy from a God of glorious grace (see Heb. 10:23–25).

Quit being paralyzed by your past. Grace offers you life in the present and a guarantee of a future.

He may have been the hardest person I ever counseled. He was self-assured and controlling. He argued for the rightfulness of everything he had ever done. He acted like the victim when in fact he was the victimizer. He had crushed his marriage and alienated his children. He loved himself and had a wonderful plan for his life. It was his will in his way at his time. He made everyone a slave to his plan or he drove them out of his life. He made incredible sacrifices to get what he wanted but chafed against the sacrifices God called him to make. But in a moment of grace I will never forget, he quit fighting, controlling, and defending. He asked me to stop talking and said: “Paul, I get it. I have been so busy being God that I have had little time or interest in serving God.” It was one of the most accurate moments of self-diagnosis I had ever experienced. He was right. No sooner had the words come out of his mouth than he began to weep like I had never seen a man weep. His body shook with grief as grace began its work of freeing him from his bondage to himself.

I knew there was only one way to help him. It was the only way because he didn’t want my help. He was only four years old and had already begun to deny his weaknesses. He desperately wanted to be independently strong and wise, but he wasn’t. He wanted to believe that he didn’t need the wise words and strong arms of a parent, but he did. He wanted to believe that he knew more than he did and had more ability than he had. So he fought my parenting care once again. Then it hit me—he needed to experience his weakness so that he would run for my care. So I walked away. No, not because I was mad at him and walking away was the best way to punish him. I walked away because I loved him and it was the best way to get him to seek and esteem that love. I knew what would happen. I knew he could not do what he was fighting so hard to do independently. I knew that at some point he would give up, admit his weakness to himself, and seek my help. About a half hour later, I heard the pitter-patter of his little feet on the hallway floor. He peeked around the corner and said, “I can’t do it.” I said, “What do you want Daddy to do?” And he said words that were good for his heart to say: “I need your help.”

So God, in grace, grants us power in the person of the Holy Spirit, who lives inside each of his children. We simply are no longer left to the resources of our own strength (see Eph. 3:20–21). To remind us of who we are, what we need, and what we’ve been given, God will walk down the hallway and let us experience our weakness once again so that we will seek and celebrate the strength that is only ever found in him. When he does this, it is not an act of divine anger but a response of tender parental grace—the kind of grace you and I will continue to need until grace has finished its work.

Faith isn’t natural for us. Doubt is, fear is, and pride is, but faith in the words and works of another isn’t, and for that there’s grace.

God hasn’t just forgiven you—praise him that he has—but he has also called you to a brand-new way of living. He has called you to live by faith. Now, here’s the rub. Faith is not normal for us. Faith is frankly a counterintuitive way for us to live. Doubt is quite natural for us. Wondering what God is doing is natural. It’s normal to think your life is harder than that of others. Envying the life of someone else is natural. Wishing life were easier and that you had more control is natural. It’s typical for you and me to try to figure out the future. Worry is natural. Fear is natural. Wanting to give up is natural. It’s natural to wonder if all of your good habits make a difference in the end. It’s normal to be occasionally haunted by the question of whether what you have staked your life on is really true. But faith isn’t natural. This means that faith isn’t something you can work up inside yourself. Faith comes to you as God’s gift of grace: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Not only is your salvation a gift of God, but the faith to embrace it is his gift as well. But here is what you need to understand: God not only gives you the grace to believe for your salvation, but he also works to enable you to live by faith. If you are living by faith, you know that you have been visited by powerful transforming grace, because that way of living just isn’t normal for you and me. If your way of living...

Tear up your list and throw it away—what God has planned for you is better than anything you’ve dreamed of for yourself. It is the big delusion, the height of arrogance, the seductive trap, the big, dark danger. It leads nowhere good. It’s destiny is death. It sat at the center of the disaster in the garden. It propelled the sad rebellion of Adam and Eve. It tempts us all again and again in situation after situation, location after location, relationship after relationship. We fall into thinking what multitudes of our lost forefathers thought. We buy into this one fateful thought, that perhaps we’re smarter than God, that maybe our way is better than his way. Only grace can deliver the deluded from the danger that they are to themselves.

God’s grace will expose what you want to hide, not to shame you, but to forgive and deliver you.

Sin turns all of us into citizens of the night. Sin causes all of us to be committed to low-light living. We hide, we deny, we cover, we lie, we excuse, we shift the blame, we rationalize, we defend, and we explain away. These are all acts of darkness by people who fear exposure.

Grace shatters our darkness. Grace explodes on us with penetrating, heart-exposing light. Grace illumines our dank hallways and our dark corners. The Son of grace shines the light of his grace into the darkest recesses of our hearts, not as an act of vengeance or punishment, but as a move of forgiving, transforming, and delivering grace. He dispels our self-inflicted darkness because he knows that we cannot grieve what we do not see, we cannot confess what we have not grieved, and we cannot turn from what we haven’t confessed. The light has come. Run to the light; it is not to be feared. Yes, it is the light of exposure, but what will be exposed has already been covered by the blood of the One who exposes it.

There are two lies that tempt each of us somehow, some way. They are the lies that fueled the disastrous choice of Adam and Eve in that moment of temptation in the garden. Yes, it is true, these lies have as much power today as they did then.

The first is the lie of autonomy. This lie says that you are an independent human being with the right to live as you wish.

The second lie is the lie of self-sufficiency, which tells me that I have everything I need within myself to be what I was created to be and to do what I was designed to do.

So Jesus calls us to reject the lie and come to him. Under his yoke is the only place where true freedom can be found. He says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30). There is freedom to be found, but not in empty promises of autonomy and self-sufficiency. True freedom is only ever found when grace ties your heart to Christ. Freed from trying to be what you can’t be and to do what you were not designed to do, you are now free to carry the light burdens of forgiveness-giving and life-restoring grace.

In Christ, you have everything you need to live in peace with God and the people he has placed in your life.

Grace produces what you and I desperately need but have no power to produce on our own—vertical and horizontal peace. Jesus really is the Prince of Peace! Sin alienates us from God and one another. Sin makes us the enemies of God and casts us into constant conflict with other people.

This is the good news of the gospel. Peace came. Peace lived. Peace died. Peace rose again. Peace reigns on your behalf. Peace indwells you by the Spirit. Peace graces you with everything you need. Peace convicts, forgives, and delivers you. Peace will finish his work in you. Peace will welcome you into glory, where Peace will live with you in peace and righteousness forever. Peace isn’t a faded dream. No, Peace is real. Peace is a person, and his name is Jesus.

Don’t fear your weaknesses—God supplies all the strength you need. Be afraid of those moments when you think you’re independently strong.