Sex and money, Tripp, Paul David

--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.

Money. The thought of it can be overwhelming, and the pursuit of it can be addicting.

Our society constantly promises us that money will provide what we want--success, comfort, peace, and happiness--leading our fickle hearts to trust money for things it was never intended to give us. Even if we think we know what the Bible says about money, there seems to be a gap between our theology and our everyday money struggles.

In this practical and hopeful book, best-selling author Paul David Tripp shows us how to view and interact with money in a God-honoring way. Through chapters that expose the depths of our heart struggles and our need for grace, this book offers a roadmap to find peace, generosity, and joy in the world that God created.

Sometimes life just hurts.

Out of nowhere, death, illness, unemployment, or a difficult relationship can change our lives and challenge everything we thought we knew--leaving us feeling unable to cope. But, in the midst if all this pain and confusion, we are not alone.

Weaving together his personal story, pastoral ministry experience, and biblical insights, best-selling author Paul David Tripp helps us trust God in the midst of suffering. He identifies traps to avoid in our suffering and points us instead to comforts to embrace. This raw yet hope-filled book will help you cling to God's promises when trials come and move forward with the hope of the gospel.

There is nothing more important to consistent, faithful, patient, loving, and effective parenting than to understand what God has given you in the grace of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Understanding God's grace will change you, and as it changes you, it will change the way you relate to and parent your children.

God doesn't call people to be parents because they are able. If you read your Bible carefully, you will understand that God doesn't call able people to do important things. Abraham wasn't able. Moses wasn't able. David wasn't able. The disciples weren't able, and the story goes on.

The reason for this is that there are no able people out there. They just don't exist. And they surely don't exist as parents. God did not create human beings to be independently able; he designed us to be dependent. It's not a sign of personal weakness or failure of character to feel unable as a parent. None of us has the natural storehouse of wisdom, strength, patience, mercy, and perseverance that every parent needs in order to do his or her job well.

Since independent ability, like independent right-eousness, is a delusion, why would a God of perfect wisdom ask inadequate people to do such an important job? The answer is so crucial to grasp.

God calls unable people to do important things because ultimately what he's working on is not your immediate success, but that you would come to know him, to love him, to rest in his grace, and to live for his glory. God calls unable people to do the impossible so that in your search for help, you would find more than help--you would find him.

God never sends you into anything without going with you. He never tells you to do something without giving you what you need to do it. This is the story of the whole Bible. This is why God sent his Son to earth. But what does this have to do with parenting? Everything It means that if you are God's child--if you have placed your trust in his Son, Jesus Christ, as your Savior from your inherent sin--it is impossible for you to be left to your own limited package of resources.

God is in you and with you In the morning, when you dread getting out of bed and facing another hard parenting day, God is with you. He is with you when your children are in your face and disrespectful. He is with you when you fall into bed with a combination of exhaustion and regret. He gifts you with his presence. And he will not turn his back on you until what he has called you to do as a parent is complete.

What do you have as a Christian parent? You have the best thing ever and with it you have hope. You have God in every moment of the day. But, will you remember that you do?

God's grace works to open your eyes to see yourself as a parent accurately.

If you fall into thinking that you (as the parent) keep God's law perfectly, then you expect the people around you to do the same. This self-righteousness will have a negative effect on your relationship with your children and the way you handle their weakness and failures.

So here's what God does in all of our lives. He uses things like our marriages and our parenting to expose thoughts, attitudes, and desires in our hearts that we previously denied were there. God uses irritation, impatience, anger, and lack of gentleness and joy to show how much we need his forgiving and transforming grace.

God's plan is to make his invisible grace visible to children by sending parents of grace to give grace to children who need it. And parents who know they need grace tend to want to give grace to children who are just like them.

God's grace grows and changes you as a parent.

--Paul David Tripp

Best-selling author Paul David Tripp invites you into his personal reflections on his experience of God's ever-present grace through the ups and downs of his life. He shares his celebrations, disappointments, cries for help, confessions, and confusions in the form of 120 meditations that were written over many years through various joys and struggles.

Vulnerable yet pastoral and wise, these meditations in the form of verse showcase how God's amazing grace intersects with the mundane, unexpected, messy, and beautiful moments of everyday life.