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If you are a reader of my first homeschooling site, Preschoolers and Peace, you might remember my post from a few years ago praising a then-new devotional from Paul Tripp. I would be amiss if I didn't mention it as one of my favorite books for the This Week's Read series, because it bears repeating, or discovering it for the first time if that's you!
In the world of devotionals, it's difficult to find one that isn't bent on Christian behavior, or what we must do, or how we must perform. They can be exhausting and defeating at best; anti-Jesus at worst.
It took me way too many years to discover that the gospel - purely this - is the singular motivator for any behavior change in my life. The simple fact that Jesus took all of that yuck, carried it upon Himself, killed it at the cross, and then told us all that He'd finished it, once and for all, is a compelling and absolutely freeing truth that needs nothing added to it whatsoever. Nothing. Jesus plus nothing.
All the books and speakers and stuff that tell me what I must now do, in addition to what Jesus already did, wipe me out. I can't obtain their standards, but we aren't meant to! Jesus is. That's what I want to read, every day, because when I read what Jesus did for me, I want to run to Him and fall at His feet and worship Him and say, "Yes, Lord! How are you going to make me more like you today?"
And this devotional does just that. Paul David Tripp's New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional centers each day's reading on the most important thing: Jesus. Not me, not how i behave, not you. Jesus!
