Read: Daniel 9:1-23
“His mercies are new every morning”. Post those six words on the mirror that you look into each morning. Affix them on the door of your refrigerator. Tape them to the dashboard of your car. Glue them on the inside of your glasses. Put them somewhere where you will see them every day. Don’t allow yourself to have a view of yourself, of others, of circumstances, of daily joys and struggles, of God, of meaning and purpose, and of what life is all about that is devoid of this gorgeous redemptive reality: mercy.
Mercy is the theme of God’s story. Mercy is the thread that runs through all of Scripture. Mercy is the reason for Jesus’s coming. Mercy is what your desperate heart needs. Mercy is the healer your relationships need. Mercy is what gives you comfort in weakness and hope in times of trial. Mercy can do what the law is powerless to do. Mercy not only meets you in your struggle, but guarantees that someday your struggle will end. Mercy is what this sin-broken world groans for. If God offered us only justice, no one would run to him. It is the knowledge of his mercy that makes us honestly face ourselves and gladly run to him. And it is mercy that we will sing about and celebrate a million years into eternity.
I love the words of Lamentations 3:22-23: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Let these amazing words sink in. If you are God’s child, they describe your identity and your hope. They give you reason to get up in the morning and to continue. They enable you to face and admit how messed up you really are. They allow you to extend mercy to the failing people around you. And they allow you to be comforted by God’s presence rather than be terrified at the thought that he is near.
Not only does God lavish on you love that will never cease and grace that will never end, and not only is he great in faithfulness, but the mercy he extends to you and to me is renewed each new morning. It is not tired, stale, irrelevant, worn out, ill-fitting, yesterday mercy. No, God’s mercy is new morning mercy. It is formfitted for the needs of your day. It is sculpted to the shape of your weakness, circumstances, and struggles of each and every one of his children. Yes, we all get the same mercy, but it doesn’t come to all of us in the same size and shape. God knows who you are, where you are, and what you’re facing, and in the majestic combination of divine knowledge, power, and compassion, he meets you with just the right mercies for the moment. Stop allowing yourself to assess your life in a way that is devoid of new morning mercies. Any scan of your life that doesn’t include those mercies is tragically lacking in truth.
Adapted from: Paul David Tripp, Morning and Evening. August 14
