40 Days of Grace E-Book

Paul David Tripp

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: 40 Days Devotionals
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

"Grace is more than just a story, it's more than just a theology, and it's more than just a powerful force—no, grace is a person, and his name is Jesus. Jesus is the grace of God." —Paul David Tripp There is nothing we can do to earn God's grace—it is a gift. Through 40 daily meditations from his best-selling devotional New Morning Mercies, popular author and speaker Paul David Tripp explores the role grace plays in the everyday life of a Christian. He reminds us that God, in his infinite mercy, can radically transform even the weakest people by the life-changing power of his grace through his Son, Jesus Christ.

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40

Days

of

Grace

Books by Paul David Tripp

A Quest for More: Living for Something Bigger Than You

Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide for Parenting Teens (Resources for Changing Lives)

Awe: Why It Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do

Broken-Down House: Living Productively in a World Gone Bad

Come, Let Us Adore Him: A Daily Advent Devotional

Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry

Forever: Why You Can’t Live without It

Grief: Finding Hope Again

How People Change (with Timothy S. Lane)

Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands: People in Need of Change Helping People in Need of Change (Resources for Changing Lives)

Journey to the Cross: A 40-Day Lenten Devotional

Lead: 12 Gospel Principles for Leadership in the Church

Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God

My Heart Cries Out: Gospel Meditations for Everyday Life

New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional

Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family

Redeeming Money: How God Reveals and Reorients Our Hearts

Sex in a Broken World: How Christ Redeems What Sin Distorts

Shelter in the Time of Storm: Meditations on God and Trouble

Suffering: Eternity Makes a Difference (Resources for Changing Lives)

Suffering: Gospel Hope When Life Doesn’t Make Sense

Teens and Sex: How Should We Teach Them? (Resources for Changing Lives)

War of Words: Getting to the Heart of Your Communication Struggles (Resources for Changing Lives)

What Did You Expect?: Redeeming the Realities of Marriage

Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy

40

Days

of

Grace

Paul David Tripp

40 Days of Grace

Copyright © 2020 by Paul David Tripp

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

The devotions in this book appeared previously in Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).

Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing, 2020

Printed in the United States of America

All Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-7429-0 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7432-0 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7430-6 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7431-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tripp, Paul David, 1950– author. 

Title: 40 days of grace / Paul David Tripp. 

Other titles: Forty days of grace

Description: Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020. | “The devotions in this book appeared previously in Paul David Tripp, New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).”

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022784 | ISBN 9781433574290 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433574306 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433574313 (mobipocket) | ISBN 9781433574320 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Consolation—Meditations. | Grace (Theology)—Meditations. 

Classification: LCC BV4905.3 .T686 2020 | DDC 242/.2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022784

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2020-12-29 10:42:16 AM

Introduction

Grace is a thunderous, expansive, powerful, and life-altering word. Other than the word God, there is no more important word that the human mind could consider and the mouth could speak. Grace is the ultimate spiritual game changer. It is the one thing that has the power to change you and everything about you. It is what all human beings need, no matter who they are or where they are. Men and women need grace, the young and old need grace, the rich and poor need grace, the popular and forgotten need grace, and the weak and powerful need grace. You could dig into grace every day of your life and not reach the bottom of its power and glory. Grace is the bottomless, treasure-laden mine of divine help. There simply is nothing comparable to God’s amazing grace.

Grace explodes into your life in a moment, but will occupy you for all of eternity. It is the most transformational word in the Bible that you hold dear. In fact, your Bible is the cover-to-cover story of God’s grace. It is the best of stories, the story of the undeserved redemption of lost ones and rebels. God’s word records for us how God reached into the muck and mire of our sin-broken world to rescue us, not because of what he saw in us but because of what was in him. Grace is why God sent his Son into this world to do for us what we could not do for ourselves—to transform us from what we are (sinners separated from him) into what we are becoming (Christ-like and with him forever). John Newton, in his famous hymn, really did choose the best word ever to describe God’s grace: amazing.

Grace is a wonderful story and the best gift ever. Grace is a jewel of God’s character and the only reliable place to rest your hope. Grace is a tool that God uses to transform you, but it also defines the nature of his relationship to you. Because you are God’s child, grace is something you’ll never deserve but can always expect. Grace is a theology that you could study forever and the sweetest invitation you will ever receive. Grace will devastate you while giving you a peace of heart and a rest of soul you have never experienced before. Grace will require you to confess your unworthiness but will never, ever make you feel alone and unloved.

Grace will remind you again and again that you have no ability whatsoever to earn God’s favor, but it will dispel your fear of not measuring up. Grace will confront you with the reality that you are way less than you thought you were while it comforts you with the promise that you can be way more than you ever imagined. Grace will repeatedly put you in your place but will never harm you by putting you down.

Grace will call you to examine yourself with honesty and humility, but will free you from being paralyzed by fearful introspection. God will ask you to admit to your catalog of weaknesses while at the same time empowering you with newfound strength. Grace will keep reminding you of what you are not so you will receive God’s welcome to what you can now be. Yes, grace will drive you to the end of yourself while it holds before you the promise of fresh starts and new beginnings. Grace will blow up your little kingdom of one while it introduces you to a much better, more glorious King. Grace will work to expose your blindness while it gives you eyes to see. Grace will make you sadder than you have ever been in your life and give you cause for a joy and celebration that nothing or no one can take away. Grace is more than just a story, it’s more than just a theology, and it’s more than just a powerful force—no, grace is a person, and his name is Jesus. Jesusis the grace of God.

So I invite you to invest the next forty days in digging into the mine of God’s grace with me. As we dig, pray for eyes that can see and a heart ready to receive the most wonderful, rescuing, forgiving, and transforming gift that has ever been given—God’s amazing grace in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Day 1

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 sorry, helpless, and hopeless state. He sent his Son to do what we could not do, to die as we should have died, and to rise again, defeating sin and death. He did all this so that we could rest in a righteousness that is not our own, but a righteousness that fully satisfies God’s requirement. So, unable as we are, we are not without hope. We can stand before a perfectly holy God, broken, weak, and failing, and be completely unafraid because we stand before him in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You no longer have to hope and pray that someday you will measure up, because Jesus has measured up on your behalf. How could you hear better news than that?

For further study and encouragement

Galatians 3:15–29

Day 2

Grace has the power to do what nothing else can do—rescue you from you, and in so doing, restore you to what you were created to be.

They’re the two essential parts of redemption, rescue and restoration, and you and I can’t do either one for ourselves. But it’s hard to admit that we have a problem that we cannot solve. We like to convince ourselves that our anger tells us more about the flawed people we live near than it tells us about ourselves. We like to think that our impatience is more about the poor planning or character of the people we have to deal with every day. We like to think that our sin can be blamed on the temptations of the fallen world around us. When we do or say what is wrong, we tend to point to a boss, a spouse, one of our children, a friend, a difficult situation, a busy day, the fact that we aren’t feeling well, bad parents, some injustice, or a long catalog of other excuses. But the Bible is quite clear. We all suffer from the same terminal disease. None of us has escaped it. It’s not caused by the people or situations around us. We brought this destroyer into the world with us. David says it this way: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Ps. 51:5).

You and I can try as we might to fool ourselves. We can work as