Paul David Tripp Quotes & Sayings

The Bible tells you that real peace is found in resting in the wisdom of the One who holds all of your "what-ifs" and "if-onlys" in his loving hands. Isaiah captures this well with these comforting words: "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you" (Isa. 26:3). Real, sturdy, lasting peace, peace that doesn't rise and fall with circumstances, isn't to be found in picking apart your life until you have understood all of the components. You will never understand it all because God, for your good and his glory, keeps some of it shrouded in mystery. So peace is found only in trust, trust of the One who is in careful control of all the things that tend to rob you of your peace. — Paul David Tripp

It is a fundamental denial of your humanity to narrow the size of your life to the size of your own existence, — Paul David Tripp

Personal ministry is not about always knowing what to say. It is not about fixing everything in sight that is broken. Personal ministry is about connecting people with Christ so that they are able to think as he would have them think, desire what he says is best, and do what he calls them to do even if their circumstances never get "fixed." It involves exposing hurt, lost, and confused people to God's glory, so that they give up their pursuit of their own glory and live for his. — Paul David Tripp

What do I really want in life: the success of God's agenda of grace or the fulfillment of my catalog of desires? — Paul David Tripp

Only love for Christ has the power to incapacitate the sturdy love for self that is the bane of every sinner, and only the grace of Christ has the power to produce that love. — Paul David Tripp

In the family, life is brought not only to our doorstep, but into our kitchens, bedrooms, and dens. In the family, life is happening all around us, and it begs to be questioned, evaluated, interpreted, and discussed. There is no more consistent, pregnant, dynamic forum for instruction about life than the family, because that is exactly what God designed the family to be, a learning community. — Paul David Tripp

Biblical literacy and theological expertise are not, therefore, the end of the Word but a God-ordained means to an end, and the end is a radically transformed life because the worship at the center of that life has been reclaimed. — Paul David Tripp

The minute you hear a sermon on materialism, you're glad somebody else is there to hear it. — Paul David Tripp

Biblical faith lives at the intersection of shocking honesty and glorious hope. — Paul David Tripp

We must not offer people a system of redemption, a set of insights and principles. We offer people a Redeemer. — Paul David Tripp

In the center of the kingdom of God, you do not find a gargantuan palace inhabited by an unapproachable king. No, in the center of the kingdom of God is a bloody cross, on which hung a broken King, who welcomes us as we are. — Paul David Tripp

Sin is much more than doing the wrong thing. It begins withloving, worshiping, and serving the wrong thing. — Paul David Tripp

For the church to be the church - not just a place where you can find ministry but where the people are a ministering community - every believer must accept his or her role in the life of every other believer. — Paul David Tripp

Corporate worship is a regular gracious reminder that it's not about you. You've been born into a life that is a celebration of another. — Paul David Tripp

Listen to the present tense gospel in the words of Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ [a statement of historical redemptive fact]. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me [a statement of present redemptive reality]. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me [living in light of the gospel right here, right now]. — Paul David Tripp

This is the good news of the gospel. Peace came. Peace lived. Peace died. Peace rose again. Peace reigns on your behalf. Peace indwells you by the Spirit. Peace graces you with everything you need. Peace convicts, forgives, and delivers you. Peace will finish his work in you. Peace will welcome you into glory, where Peace will live with you in peace and righteousness forever. Peace isn't a faded dream. No, Peace is real. Peace is a person, and his name is Jesus. — Paul David Tripp

The more you understand the magnitude of God's grace, the more accurate will be your view of the depth of your unrighteousness ; and the more you understand the depth of your unrighteousness , the more you will appreciate the magnitude of God's gift of grace. — Paul David Tripp

Because of our forgetfulness, God has created the physical world to be mnemonic, to help us daily remember that we are not alone, that we are not at the center, that life is not primarily about us, and that there is a grander story than the little stories of our individual lives. Physical things are meant to remind us of the grandeur and glory of the One who created all those things, set them in motion, and keeps them together by the awesome power of his will. — Paul David Tripp

Christ's sacrifice satisfied the Father's anger so that, as his child, you will receive his discipline but need not fear his wrath. — Paul David Tripp

What will it be for you today - the discontent of doubt and fear or the contentment of peace and rest? — Paul David Tripp

It is a sweet thing that we serve a dissatisfied God who has destinations in mind for us that we would never choose for ourselves. It really is a good thing that he will not be satisfied until he has gotten us exactly where he created us and re-created us to be. Most of us would have been satisfied to stay at home, and many of us would have quit the journey long before it was completed. But our heavenly Father won't give up until each one of his children has completed the journey. — Paul David Tripp

How many believers really live a lifestyle that results from believing that God has graced them to be not just recipients of the work of his kingdom but instruments of the work of the kingdom as well? When you believe this, you live with a constant ministry mentality that results in an everyday ministry lifestyle. — Paul David Tripp

Because we are self-focused, we tend to be scorekeepers, constantly comparing our piles of stuff to the piles of others. It's a life of discontentment and envy. Envy is always selfish. — Paul David Tripp

If I am seeking to get identity from you ,I will watch you too closely, listen to you too intently, and need you to fundamentally. I will ride the roller coaster of your best and worst moments and everything in between. And because I am watching you too closely, I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, frustrated, disappointed, hopeless, and angry. I will be angry not because you are a sinner but because you have failed to deliver the one thing I seek from you: identity. But none of us will ever get the well-being that comes from knowing who we are from our relationships. Instead we will be left with damaged relationships filled with hurt, frustration and anger. — Paul David Tripp

If eternity is the plan, then it makes no sense to shrink your living down to the needs and wants of this little moment. — Paul David Tripp

Sin doesn't always look sinful to us; sometimes it looks beautiful. That's why we need grace to see sin for what it really is - dark, dangerous, enslaving and destructive. — Paul David Tripp

Next time you face the unexpected, a moment of difficulty you really don't want to go through, remember that such a moment doesn't picture a God who has forgotten you, but one who is near to you and doing in you a very good thing. He is rescuing you from thinking that you can live the life you were meant to live while relying on the inadequate resources of your wisdom, experience, righteousness, and strength; and he is transforming you into a person who lives a life shaped by radical God-centered faith. — Paul David Tripp

People struggling with life in a fallen world often want explanations when what they really need is imagination. — Paul David Tripp

Only when I focus on the holiness and glory of God am I able to see myself with accuracy. — Paul David Tripp

Real comfort is found when I understand that I am held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in my life is God's love, a love that no one can take away. When my identity is rooted in him, the storms of trouble will not blow me away.

This is the comfort we offer people. We don't comfort them by saying things will work out. They may not. The people around them may change, but they may not. The Bible tells us again and again that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God's ever-faithful love. — Paul David Tripp

The fact that you live in a broken-down house in the midst of restoration makes everything more difficult. It removes the ease and simplicity of life. It requires you to be more thoughtful, more careful. It requires you to listen and see well. It requires you to look out for difficulty and to be aware of danger. It requires you to contemplate and plan. It requires you to do what you don;t really want to do and to accept what you find difficult to accept. You want to simply coast, but you can't. Things are broken and they need to be fixed. There is work to do. — Paul David Tripp

Your theology won't always work toward your obedience, because your use of theology is dictated by the condition of your heart. If your heart is not submitting to the plan of God, you will actually use your theology to justify things that should not be justified. — Paul David Tripp

Love is daily admitting to yourself, your spouse, and God that you are not able to love this way without God's protecting, providing, forgiving, rescuing, and delivering grace. — Paul David Tripp

Discontent is good if it makes you long for home, but bad if it makes you doubt the One who prepares a place for you in his home. — Paul David Tripp

We love ourselves so much that we have little energy left to love the One who is love. — Paul David Tripp

The struggle of midlife is fundamentally rooted in the idolatries of the heart. — Paul David Tripp

When awe of God has captured your heart, ministry will fill your schedule. You won't need the church to schedule ministry for you; you will approach work, marriage, parenting, extended family, friendships, and community with a ministry mentality. — Paul David Tripp

No one celebrates the presence and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ more than the person who has embraced his desperate and daily need of it. — Paul David Tripp

We, with all of our sin, weakness, and failures are welcome to do what should blow our minds. We are not only tolerated by God at a distance; no, we are welcomed into intimate personal communion with the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the creator, the sovereign, the Savior. We, as unholy as we are, are told to go with confidence into his holy presence. — Paul David Tripp

I understand why many people who call themselves Christians are not excited about grace. If you think your environment is your problem, you won't esteem grace, but once you admit that you're your biggest problem, you will celebrate the grace that rescues you from you. — Paul David Tripp

That one special thing that you always wanted to accomplish never gets done because you lived each day under the tyranny of the urgent. — Paul David Tripp

Could it be that desire for a good thing has become a bad thing because that desire has become a ruling thing? — Paul David Tripp

We are all capable of fighting for what has little value while forgetting things of transcendent value. — Paul David Tripp

If you are in Christ, you've been chosen to transcend the borders of your own glory, to reach out toward a greater glory, the glory of God. — Paul David Tripp

If praise is celebrating God's awesome glory, then complaint is antipraise. — Paul David Tripp

When Jesus touches me with his rescuing grace, he is freeing me from my bondage to me! — Paul David Tripp

You can tell yourself that God's not fair, or you can thank Him that He's not fair. If God was fair, we would be doomed and condemned. — Paul David Tripp

Self-righteousness means you don't see yourself or the other person with accuracy. It means you see his or her speck as a log and your log as a speck. So you are condemning of him or her and excusing of yourself. You treat the other person with judgment while you respond to yourself with patience. — Paul David Tripp

You cannot ask for forgiveness without acknowledging that there is something in life that is more important than the progress of your own kingdom. — Paul David Tripp

Here is one of the most beautiful fruits of grace - a heart that is content, more given to worship than demand and more given to the joy of gratitude than the anxiety of want. — Paul David Tripp

God is the ultimate musician. His music transforms your life. The notes of redemption rearrange your heart and restore your life. His songs of forgiveness, grace, reconciliation, truth, hope, sovereignty, and love give you back your humanity and restore your identity. — Paul David Tripp

Since God writes your story, he knows what you're facing and exactly what grace you'll need to live his way. — Paul David Tripp

Maturity is about how you live your life. It is possible to be theologically astute and be very immature. It is possible to be biblically literate and be in need of significant spiritual growth. — Paul David Tripp

If you aren't daily admitting to yourself that you are a mess and in daily and rather desperate need for forgiving and transforming grace, and if the evidence around has not caused you to abandon your confidence in your own righteousness, then you are going to give yourself to the work of convincing yourself that you are okay. — Paul David Tripp

We were simply made for glory, but not just the shadow glories of the created world. We were made for the one glory that is transcendent - the glory of God. When you grasp this, your life begins to make a difference. — Paul David Tripp

The reality that on every morning brand-new mercy greets us is not the thing that grips our minds as we frenetically prepare for our day. — Paul David Tripp

Here it is: if you are God's child, the life force that energizes your thoughts, desires, words, and actions is no longer you; it's Christ! God didn't just forgive you. No, he has come to live inside of you so you will have the power to desire and do what he calls you to do. — Paul David Tripp

The biblical model of waiting is not simply about what you will get at the end of your wait, but about who you will become as you wait. — Paul David Tripp

You and I can face the harsh realities of life in this broken world with courage and hope because we do not face them all by ourselves. Immanuel ("God with us") is indeed with us in power, glory, and grace. — Paul David Tripp

Our need is so desperate an idea, a thing, a law can't help us. It took one thing, the gift of gifts, God in the flesh, to rescue us. — Paul David Tripp

The myriad of dysfunctions of the human community can be traced to this one thing: awe. When we replace vertical awe of God with awe of self, bad things happen in the horizontal community. — Paul David Tripp

God has chosen to let you live in this fallen world because he plans to employ the difficulties of it to continue and complete his work in you. — Paul David Tripp

True restoration takes patience, subtlety, skill, and grace. — Paul David Tripp

The character of a life isn't set in ten big moments. The character of a life is set in ten thousand little moments of everyday life. It's the themes of struggles that emerge from those little moments that reveal what's really going on in our hearts. — Paul David Tripp

You can't divide human beings into the "those who make sacrifices" and "those who don't." We all carry things in our hearts for which we are very willing to make sacrifices. The issue that divides us is for what, or for whom, are we willing to make these personal sacrifices. — Paul David Tripp

I no longer need to carry the burden of the past on my shoulders, so I am free to fully give myself to what God has called me to in the here and now. — Paul David Tripp

Forgiveness is a vertical commitment that is followed by a horizontal transaction. — Paul David Tripp

Remember, when you're sinned against its tempting to respond sinfully. Don't give in, talk to your heart and seek the grace of Jesus. — Paul David Tripp

He's not first working on your happiness; he's committed to your holiness. — Paul David Tripp

God justifies the ungodly. This means there really is hope for people like us. — Paul David Tripp

The Bible doesn't tell you that he abounds in anger, but it is quick to reassure you that he is abounding in love. Be thankful today that God is not like us, because if he were, you and I would be damned. Be thankful that he is incredibly patient and eternally kind. Be thankful that he is tender, gentle, and gracious. Be thankful that he does not treat you as your sins deserve. Be thankful that because of the work of Jesus, he will respond to you with lovingkindness even on your worst day. "The LORD is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression" (Num. 14:18). — Paul David Tripp

when you blame other people for your circumstances or for the wrongs that you do, you are, in fact, blaming God. You are saying that God didn't give you what you needed to be what he has called you to be and to do what he has called you to do. — Paul David Tripp

Sin is powerful, but not as powerful as the liberating power of grace. — Paul David Tripp

It is so difficult for us to remember and be motivated by what is truly important. It is so tempting to be committed to our little kingdoms that the transcendent kingdom of God is of little functional influence. — Paul David Tripp

God created an awesome world. God intentionally loaded the world with amazing things to leave you astounded. The carefully air-conditioned termite mound in Africa, the tart crunchiness of an apple, the explosion of thunder, the beauty of an orchid, the interdependent systems of the human body, the inexhaustible pounding of the ocean waves, and thousands of other created sights, sounds, touches, and tastes - God designed all to be awesome. And he intended you to be daily amazed. — Paul David Tripp

Only when awe of God rules your heart will you be able to keep the pleasures of the material world in their proper place. — Paul David Tripp

One of the stunning realities of the Christian life is that in a world where everything is in some state of decay, God's mercies never grow old. They never run out. They never are ill timed. They never dry up. They never grow weak. They never get weary. They never fail to meet the need. They never disappoint. They never, ever fail, because they really are new every morning. — Paul David Tripp

Grace will expose the deepest issues of your heart, then point you to the Cross which covers everything that's been exposed. — Paul David Tripp

Prayer always forsakes the kingdom of self for the kingdom of God, — Paul David Tripp

Envy is self-focused and self-righteous. It inserts you into the center of your world. It makes it all about you. It tells you that you deserve what you don't deserve. Envy is expectant and demanding. Envy tells you that you are someone you aren't and you are entitled to what is not rightfully yours. Envy cannot celebrate the blessing of another because it tells you that you are more deserving. Envy tells you that you have earned what you could never earn. The world of envy no more mixes with the world of grace than oil does with water. Envy forgets who you are, forgets who God is, and is confused about what life is all about. — Paul David Tripp

When you forget mercy, you name yourself as righteous and deserving, and you live an entitled and demanding life. — Paul David Tripp

Every time you ask for forgiveness, you recognize that the biggest problems you face in life exist inside of you, not outside of you. — Paul David Tripp

the character of a life isn't set in three or four big moments of life, but in ten thousand little, virtually unnoticed moments. — Paul David Tripp

This stunning act of humble love resulted not from Jesus's forgetting who he was but from remembering who he was. This was the holy mission of the Son Savior. He had to be willing to enter the lowest human condition, to do the most debased thing, and to let go of his rights of position in order that we might be redeemed. It was a high and holy calling, and it was the only way. — Paul David Tripp

We simply weren't constructed to live only for ourselves. We were placed on earth to be part of something bigger than the narrow borders of our own survival and our own little definition of happiness. The — Paul David Tripp

The entire hope of fallen humanity rests on this one thing - that there is a Savior who is eternally steadfast in redeeming, forgiving, reconciling, transforming, and delivering love. — Paul David Tripp

God never intended for us to simply be the objects of His love. We are also called to be the instruments of that love in the lives of others. — Paul David Tripp

We rarely do anything with on single motive. — Paul David Tripp

Change begins at the level of the heart. — Paul David Tripp

God decided to leave you in this fallen world to live, love, and work, because he intended to use the difficulties you face to do something in you that couldn't be done any other way. — Paul David Tripp

We all face things that appear to make little sense and don't seem to serve any good purpose. So rest is never found in the quest to understand it all. No, rest is found in trusting the One who understands it all and rules it all for his glory and our good. — Paul David Tripp

You are called to be an instrument of wisdom in your teenager's life. To do so, you must be gentle, humble, patient, and persevering. — Paul David Tripp

God designed us to be worshipers. Everything we do is the product of worship. We are always giving our hearts to something, and if it's not God, it's something God created. All — Paul David Tripp

So the desire for good possessions is not wrong, but it must not rule your heart. — Paul David Tripp

Becaise I love God, I want to handle his truth with accuracy, clarity, and specificity. I want to build bridges of understanding from the wisdom of the Word to the details of people's lives. And because I love people, I will not be satisfied with lobbing grenades of general truth at them. Rather, through good questions, committed listening, and careful interpretation, I will enter their world with the understanding necessary to bring Christ's help to where it is really needed. — Paul David Tripp

Corporate worship is designed to remind you that in the center of all things is a glorious and gracious King, and this king is not you — Paul David Tripp

Human self-righteousness denies the need for the saving, enabling grace of Christ. Human righteousness embraces the cruelest of Satan's lies, that a person can be righteous by keeping the law. If that were true, there would have been no need for the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ. — Paul David Tripp

Contentment celebrates grace. The contended heart is satisfied with the Giver and is therefore freed from craving the next gift. — Paul David Tripp

When you remember mercy, you are humble, thankful, and tender. — Paul David Tripp

Our sin is what separates us from God, but it's our self righteousness that keeps us from running to Him for the grace He willingly gives to all who come. — Paul David Tripp