New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

by Paul David Tripp

Today the true love of your heart will be revealed by what you grieve and what you celebrate.

Our lives are shaped by grief and celebration. This isn’t true only for the grand, significant moments of our lives; there are ways in which every day of your life and mine is marked by moments of grief and celebration. 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 as a good week? When you are happy with a relationship in your life, what are you considering that gives you joy? Be honest as you read this—what is it that brings joy and satisfaction to your heart? Or look at the other side. When you’re really disappointed with life, what is it that discourages you? When you are envious of the life of another, what produces that envy? When you have lost your motivation to get up in the morning and face your day, what specifically has robbed you of your motivation? I plead with you to take time to let these questions function as a window to your heart. Here’s the bottom-line question: How much of your joy, celebration, grief, or anger in the last several weeks had anything whatsoever to do with the kingdom of God? Even when I type these words, I am convicted myself. I’m convicted by how much of my joy is connected to getting my own way, t...

Today you will be tempted to buy into the delusion that you’re smarter than God, that your way is better than his.

It is one of the functional contradictions of sin. Even though sin somehow, some way reduces us all to fools, at the very same time it also convinces us that we are smarter than God. While we name ourselves as wise, we look at things that God does or things that he calls us to do as utterly foolish. How many people have said, “How could you ever worship a God who would _____?” How many people have wondered, “If God really loved me, why would he _____?” How many people have said, “I don’t see what’s so wrong with a little _____”? How many have asked, “Is _____ really that bad?” We really do have the ability to convince ourselves that we know what’s best and that we really don’t need wisdom greater than our own. I am convinced that most of us do this far more often than we think. We minimize the danger of what God calls dangerous, we question the need for the boundaries that God has set for us, and, in the face of our own sin, we argue that it’s not so bad after all. Every day in some situation or relationship, we are tempted to think that we are smarter than God. Without the rescue of God’s grace, we are all wise fools heading for danger we simply don’t see. So we eat more than we should while denying the physical, empirical evidence of our foolishness. We spend ourselves into hopeless debt and are surprised when we can no longer pay our bills. We live selfishly and judgmentally in relationships and then wonder why so much tension and distance exist between us. That’s why P...

Prayer is abandoning hope of independent capability and believing that in Christ you’re given everything you need for life and godliness.

The tax collector prayed the prayer that should be on the lips of every one of us every time we pray. The mercy for which he cried is the mercy that each of us constantly needs. To reduce prayer to a grocery list of things that you want and think you need not only demeans prayer, but it also demeans the sacrifice of love that the One to whom you are praying made so that you and your prayers would be received. The heart of true prayer is vertical confession, not horizontal desire. The Pharisee’s prayer was not a prayer at all. He basically raised his head to heaven and said: “Here I am, God. I’m as righteous as I need to be, so I don’t really need your help at the moment.” He was revolted by the thought that he might be as sinful and needy as the low-life tax collector who stood not far from him. Self-righteousness crushes prayer, reducing it to an empty religious recitation spoken by one who sees himself as a grace graduate. Run to Jesus in your poverty and weakness, and know that he is never revolted when you do, but always greets you with arms of grace.

Jesus commands you to take up your cross and follow him, and then he gives you the strength to carry the load.

True, humble, joyful, and perseverant love is not born out of raw duty, but out of worshipful gratitude. We love because he first loved us.

As I wrote the character qualities of real love, “true, humble, joyful, and perseverant,” that you see in the statement above, my heart was filled with the sadness of conviction. I thought, “My love often fails to be true.” No, I don’t mean true as contrasted with fake. I’m not thinking here of hypocritical “I’m going to act like I love you even though I don’t” love. True here means “straight,” like the kind of arrow a marksman makes sure to pull out of his quiver. He wants a completely straight arrow so that when it leaves the bow, it won’t veer off in the wrong direction. True here means consistent, reliable, and not apt to go in some unloving direction. Sadly, there is still inconsistency in my love. When someone disagrees with me, when someone gets in the way of my plan, when I am forced into an unexpected wait, or when someone gets what I think I deserve, it is very tempting for me to respond in a less-than-loving way. The second word, humble, explains why I respond as I do. I still lack humility. I still tend to make life about my plan, my feelings, my desires, and my expectations. I am still tempted to assess the “good” of a day by whether it pleased me versus whether I pleased God and was loving toward others. I still am tempted to live as if I own my life and still fail to remember that I was bought with a price. And all of this causes love to be burdensome rather than joyful, the third descriptive word. It really is true that when you’re living for you, the call ...

God’s care for you is secure because it does not depend on your faithfulness, but on his.

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thess. 5:23–24). You and I live between the “already” and the “not yet.” Already God has set his plan of grace in motion. Already the prophets have spoken. Already Jesus has come. Already he has suffered and died. Already he has risen in victory from the tomb. Already the Spirit has come. Already the Word has been given. But not yet is God’s work in the world finished. Not yet is his work in our hearts done. Not yet is the last enemy under his feet. Not yet is he ready to say: “Beloved, all things are now ready. Enter into my final kingdom.” We are right smack dab in the middle of the world’s most important incomplete process—sanctification. None of us is yet what grace makes it possible for us to be. The battle with sin and temptation still goes on. The war for what will effectively and functionally rule our hearts still rages. We are not yet even near being blameless in and of ourselves. No, the reality is that between the already and the not yet of God’s transforming process, we are all a bit of a mess. We still fall into temptation. We still give way to wrong thoughts and desires. We still say things that we should never say. We still behave in ways that expose the sin that is still in our hearts. So there is simply no way our personal security can be found...

There is no situation or location where I am ever alone, because my heavenly Father is always with me.

It is such an astounding reality that it is almost impossible for us to comprehend the full meaning of it. It assaults the way we so often think about our identity. It confronts our discouragements and fears. It exposes our self-oriented neediness and our addiction to the acceptance of others. It is the only place where we can find security that stays, that doesn’t ride that scary roller-coaster of ever-changing people and situations. It is one of the most amazing, life-altering gifts of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a deeply personal, heart-satisfying recognition that we must carry with us wherever we go. The opening line of Jesus’s model prayer for his disciples (Matt. 6:9–13) teaches this unspeakably marvelous truth: if you’re God’s child, you have a Father in heaven! Stop for a moment and let that sink in. What a glorious and encouraging way Christ instructs us to begin our prayers. We are to begin with the most shocking and encouraging of all things that our minds could ever consider. That being who has such incomparable wisdom and power that he was able to design and create everything that exists—that being is our Father. That deity who has been able, by the exercise of supreme authority, to control every event of history; to have his will done in every location; and to completely control every life of every person who has ever lived—that deity is our Father. That One who in magnificent love put the plan of redemption in motion, so that at the right momen...

You could do nothing more important than to wake up every morning of your life and remind yourself that the One who created and controls everything that exists has been made, by grace, to be your 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. He 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, yo...

In the little moments of daily life, I must live for a greater honor and glory than my own.

This deep and abiding recognition of the grandeur and glory of God is meant to shape and direct everything in my life. 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. This reality rips a hole in my heart and exposes what is there. 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. Submitting my life to the holy name of God reminds me that I need to pray for something else—grace. Without rescuing grace, I will continue to live as a glory thief, and so will you. Thankfully, that grace is ours in Jesus our Lord.

I must remember that God didn’t give me grace for my kingdom to work, but to capture me for a better kingdom.

The good life is not found in the success of my will, but in the submission of all things to God’s will.

I am not independent or self-sufficient, but dependent on the goodness of God for my needs.

I must always remember the grace I am daily given and extend that grace to the people in my life.

We can all be so forgetful. We can all fail to remember the magnificence of the love and mercy that has been showered down on us. 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. To the extent that you forget how much you’ve been forgiven, to that same extent it is easier for you not to forgive the people in your life. If you fail to carry around with you a heart of gratitude for the love you’ve been so freely given, it is easy for you not to love others as you should. It is and always has been true that no one gives grace better than a person who is deeply persuaded that he needs it himself and that it has been graciously supplied by a God of tender mercy. 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? The call to forgive immediately exposes our need for forgiveness. The call to give grace reveals how much we need grace. The call to forgive is at the very same time a call to remember and to be thankful. 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. May God give us the grace to remember and the willingness to give to others what ...

I rest assured that I am loved by a holy God. His will for me is always right, good, and true.

“But why, Dad, why can’t I? All the others kids are doing it. I just don’t understand why you have to say no all the time. I don’t get why this is such a big deal. Can’t I do it just this one time?” I can’t tell you how many times we had this conversation. Sometimes it was a quick plea, thankfully followed by submission. At other times it disintegrated into a major, volume-raised debate. But each time it was an instructive reminder. It’s a sad but obvious fact—sinners don’t like boundaries. Sinners tend not to esteem rules. Sinners don’t like to be told what to do. Sinners don’t tend to love authority. Sinners tend to want to author their own moral codes. So you can’t even pray this prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” unless grace has visited you. Only powerful, rescuing grace can take you from “Let me do what I want to do” to “Guard me against the temptation to do what you know is best for me not to do.” If you’re a parent or can honestly reflect on your childhood, 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. You don’t have to read any further than the third chapter of the Bible to see that battle break out and alter the entire course of human history. In this request, 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 r...