Beginning tomorrow, we will start posting a daily reading (Monday - Friday) from the book Gospel Meditations by Paul David Tripp. Join us each morning for a quick, but powerful reminder to rest in God's presence!
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I am not a poet; I am a pilgrim.
I am not attracted to formal, overly romantic Christian verse, but I think that we do not train our eyes to see enough, our hearts to consider enough, and our emotions to celebrate enough the glories of the grace that is showered down on us in a thousand ways every day. What you are about to read are notes from my journey through the struggle of God’s amazing grace. These are my meditations on the intersection between God’s ever-present grace and my ever-present battle to live out of the resources of that grace while I walk my way through this sadly broken and dysfunctional world. You may be wondering why I used both the words “glories” and “struggle” to describe a life of grace. Well, God’s grace is glorious. It is the single stellar glory of the life of God’s children. There is no glory in this created world, no matter how beautiful, that can compete with the beauty of God’s rescuing, forgiving, transforming, empowering, and delivering grace. There is no human achievement, no personal accomplishment, and no community victory that can do for us what God’s grace can do. There is nothing that we can be given that can accomplish in us and for us what God’s grace can. The love of no one in our lives has the power to do what the amazing grace of God’s boundless love can do for us. This grace really is so counterintuitive and mind-blowing that we will spend all of eternity performing exegesis on it, celebrating it, and worshiping the Giver for it.
Yet, between the “already” of our conversion and the “not yet” of our home-going, God’s grace doesn’t always look like grace. Instinctively we think that God’s grace will be a warm hug, a cool drink, an encouraging word, or a motivating insight. We look for grace to relieve and release us, and sometimes it does, but God’s grace regularly comes to us in uncomfortable forms. God’s grace causes us to face things in ourselves that are hard to see, consider, accept, and confess. Often God’s grace takes us into things we would like to avoid, things that are hard, discouraging, and sad. God’s grace will not only give us wonderful gifts, but it will also take precious things away from us. It will not only tell us the best news ever, it will also force us to accept the worst news we could ever be told. It will not only tell us that God is strong, but it will remind us of how weak we are without him. It will not only gift us with incredible wisdom, it will require us to face the fact that sin reduces all of us to fools. God’s grace will not only introduce us to the only one in the entire universe that is truly worthy of our worship, but will also expose the catalog of God’s replacements that regularly capture the affections of our hearts.
One of the primary struggles of the Christian life is this; grace doesn’t always seem attractive to us. You see, there is often a difference between what we think we need and what our God of grace knows that we need. And even if we are right in knowing what we need, we fail to understand what is necessary to produce that needed thing in us. So, often we’d rather have a season when life is easy, predictable, and the people around us are drama-free, then we would like
to have a season where transforming grace takes us to new depths of humility, understanding, maturity, and worship. So in each of our lives grace is both a glory and a struggle.
What you are about to read are my honest meditations on that struggle. They are my spontaneous responses to my journey through glory and struggle. They are:
celebratory hymns disappointing cries
pleas for help
groans of confusion
shouts of joy
theological mediations desperate requests
heartfelt confessions
hope for help in temptation quiet contemplations
honest notes along the journey
They were not written as I sat looking out the window of my country cottage (I don’t have one of those) over a pastoral scene on a poet’s retreat. They were written:
early in the morning
late at night
in physical suffering waiting for tea at Starbucks on the plane
in the car
in the middle of a meal
when my heart was broken
when my heart was filled with joy when I was at the end of my rope when what was around me was hard when what I saw in me caused grief when God seemed distant
when I saw my sin clearly
when I basked in God’s forgiveness
when weakness seemed in me and all around me when I knew God was near
when resting in grace was a struggle
when I knew I’d have strength for the battle when grace seemed glorious after all
These meditations have been generating and marinating for years. They are the transparent interactions of one man with the Savior of grace. My hope is that this volume will help you to see the Savior more clearly, to understand his grace more deeply, to confess your struggle more honestly, to worship him more fully, and to find in these meditations the motivation to continue to follow the Savior even when he’s leading you into unexpected and hard places. My prayer is that these mediations will stimu- late a worship, rest, and celebration in you that the difficulties of life, this side of eternity, will not have the power to end.
