Quotes from Paul David Tripp

I've already written in this book, rules don't have the power to deliver your children from this condition, but the powerful, transforming grace of God does.

It's hard to grasp, but try; there will be a day when you will look back at this huge and horrible thing, and it will look to you like a little thing. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16—17, "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

May your kingdom come in all that I think, desire, and say. May your kingdom come in my marriage and in my family. May your kingdom come in my work. May your kingdom come in my leisure. May your kingdom so rule my heart that stepping over your boundaries would no longer be attractive to me.

God is not working to deliver to you your personal definition of happiness. If you're on that agenda page, you are going to be disappointed with God and you are going to wonder if he loves you. God is after something better—your holiness, that is, the final completion of his redemptive work in you.

You see, you and I only ever really understand the painful trials of this moment when we look at them through the lens of eternity.

Our agenda, our definition of what a good God should give us, is a life that is comfortable, pleasurable, and predictable; one in which there's lots of human affirmation and an absence of suffering. But consider God's agenda,

we look to creation for life, hope, peace, rest, contentment, identity, meaning and purpose, inner peace, and motivation to continue. The problem is that nothing in creation can give you these things. Creation was never designed to satisfy your heart. Creation was made to be one big finger pointing you to the One who alone has the ability to satisfy your heart.

God's mercy isn't generic. It is personal grace, situational care, and concrete help. It meets you right where you are and gives you just what you need. You

There is hope for your relationships; there are resources for the struggle, because you have inherited big, expansive, powerful, rescuing, and transforming grace. This grace is so huge and powerful that there is no way to wrap human words around it.

If you mourn the fallenness of your world rather than curse its difficulties, you know that grace has visited you.

The Bible declares he does over and over again. It tells us that God's eyes are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayers (Ps. 34:15).

Prayer calls me to abandon the present as my only lens on life and commit to look at life from the perspective of reality.