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One of my favorite books of devotional readings is Paul Tripp’s New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional. 40 Days of Grace is one of four small books of forty devotionals that have been taken from that book. The other books are 40 Days of Faith, Hope and Love. My recommendation would be to read the original New Morning Mercies, rather than these individual books.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from 40 Days of Grace:
- Grace is the bottomless, treasure-laden mine of divine help. There simply is nothing comparable to God’s amazing grace.
- 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.
- You no longer have to hope and pray that someday you will measure up, because Jesus has measured up on your behalf.
- If you find more joy in serving God than yourself, you know that grace has entered your door, because only grace has the power to rescue you from you.
- You measure up in his eyes even on those days when you don’t measure up, because Jesus measured up on your behalf.
- 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.
- Only grace can cause you and me to abandon our confidence in our own performance and place our confidence in the perfectly acceptable righteousness of Jesus Christ.
- Real freedom is only ever found when God’s grace liberates you to live for one infinitely greater than you.
- Just as in the first moment we believed, we are always completely dependent on the grace of the Savior for every spiritual need.
- Grace forces you to feel the pain of your regrets, but never asks you to pay for them, because the price has already been paid by Jesus.
- We’re all still a bit of a mess; that’s why we need God’s grace today as much as we needed it the first day we believed.
- On your very worst day and on your very best day, you are blessed with pleasures that come right from the hand of God. That tells you that you don’t get these pleasures because you’ve earned or deserved them, but because he is a God of grace.
- Grace means that when God calls you, he goes with you, supplying what you need for the task at hand.
Click on ‘Continue reading’ for:
BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review…
BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Providence by John Piper
I’M CURRENTLY READING….
- Bryan Chapell Devotional. Daily Grace: 365 Daily Devotions Reflecting God’s Unlimited Grace is a new book of daily devotional readings by Bryan Chapell who served as President of Covenant Theological Seminary and more recently as Senior Pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois.
- Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy recently published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you’ve read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.”
- 23 Tips from 23 Years of Book Reading. As an avid reader, I appreciated these reading tips from Tony Reinke.
BOOK CLUB – Won’t you read along with us?
The providence of God is his purposeful sovereignty by which he will be completely successful in the achievement of his ultimate goal for the universe. God’s providence carries his plans into action, guides all things toward his ultimate goal, and leads to the final consummation.
John Piper draws on a lifetime of theological reflection, biblical study, and practical ministry to lead readers on a stunning tour of the sightings of God’s providence—from Genesis to Revelation—to discover the all-encompassing reality of God’s purposeful sovereignty over all of creation and all of history.
Exploring the goal, nature, and extent of God’s purposes for the world, Piper offers an invitation to know the God who holds all things in his hands yet remains intimately involved in the lives of his people.
You can download the PDF of the book free from Desiring God.
Watch this six-minute video as John Piper talks about the book, and this interview with Dr. Joe Rigney of Bethlehem College & Seminary.
This week we look at Chapter 23: A Bath of Truth and the Gift of Birth. Here are a few takeaways from the chapter:
- Christ walked into death of his own accord. And he walked out of his own accord.
- The praise of the glory of Christ, manifest supremely in dying and destroying death for his people, was the plan of the ages, and the purpose of all that has ever come to pass in the all-encompassing providence of God.
- It belongs to God, and God alone, to have absolute sway over life and death.
- Conception and birth are in the hands of the Lord.
