New Morning Mercies

A good friend of mine sent me a devotional book by Paul David Tripp last year that has been such a blessing to me, and I want to recommend it to you, it is “New Morning Mercies.” I feel like each day was written just for me and for the current day we are living in.

I want to share a portion of one of the daily devotions here:

“I wish I could say that I never look for life where it can’t be found, but the temptation to do this still haunts me. As much as we all know that there is only one true God, we still hunt for God-replacements. We all still tend to look horizontally for what we will only ever find vertically. There are times when we ask creation to be our Savior.

• • We attach our identity to the respect of another.
  • We draw too much of our sense of well-being from our physical appearance.
  • We think material possessions have the power to make us happy.
  • We attach our meaning and purpose to our achievements.
  • We ask our jobs to make us content.
  • We try to base our identity on our children.
  • We attach our sense of spiritual well-being to the “perfect” church.
  • We base our identity on our education.
  • We ask our spouses to make us happy.
  • We look to food and drink to satisfy and calm us.
  • We continually say, “If only I had ________, then my life would be ___________.”
  • We attach our identity to the luxury of our cars or the affluence of our neighborhoods.

The list is really endless. There is nothing in creation that you can’t try to turn into your personal messiah, but it never, ever works. The creation can never, ever give you what the Creator alone can. It makes no sense at all to desperately look for what you have already been given by your Savior.”

I would highly recommend you purchase this devotional if you don’t already have it, and if you do, then enjoy going through it again this year!