Inspirational Quotes by Paul David Tripp
“When you’re tempted in your suffering to look around and calculate, you must determine to look up and celebrate. When all you feel like doing is complain, you must require yourself to find reasons to praise. When you feel abandoned and alone, you must preach to yourself the gospel of the boundless, eternal, and unshakable love of God. For a sufferer, a heart free of envy is a spiritual war, and we must all cry out to God for the willingness and strength to be good soldiers. The battle for an envy-free heart is big and dramatic for every sufferer, but the grace of God is infinitely bigger and more than up to the task.”
“It was not puny little David against this awesome giant. No, it was this puny little giant against the God who is the sum and definition of all that is awesome.”
“Christianity gutted of Christ is devoid of both its beauty and its power.”
“It is humbling to admit, but I have had to face the fact that the greatest danger to my ministry is me!”
“I was thinking this morning of all the duties, responsibilities, opportunities, difficulties, relationships, decisions, and concerns that flood into my mind like a dam that has been breached every morning as I wake up. It’s so easy to get distracted by it all. It’s so easy to forget things. It’s so easy to go through a day without God ever entering your thoughts. It’s so easy to load life onto your shoulders and be more motivated by low-grade anxiety than by divine awe.”
“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.”
“So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as our personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God’s glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They’re more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying.”
“We need to do everything we can to put the glory of God and his grace before our children so that the awe of God would rule over their hearts.”
“The war that rages in all our hearts is a war between the awe of God and the awe of self. The war really does somehow turn all of us into glory thieves. Perhaps we commit vertical larceny much more than we realize. Perhaps we quest for personal glory more than we think. Perhaps we take credit for what only God can do more often than we think we do. Perhaps, in subtle idolatry, we give credit to places and things when it really belongs to God.”
“So we have only one place of hope, one solid rock on which to stand, and that rock is Christ Jesus. Only when we admit that we have awe-fickle hearts will we begin to reach out for and cling to the forgiving, transforming, rescuing, and delivering grace of Jesus.”
“It’s so easy to load life onto your shoulders and be more motivated by low-grade anxiety than by divine awe.”
“A verse in 2 Corinthians 5 explains this concept of being an awe breaker. It says that Jesus lived and died so that “those who live might no longer live for themselves” (v. 15). Here’s what this powerful little phrase means: people whose every thought, desire, word, and action was meant to be motivated and shaped by awe of God, exchange awe of God for awe of self. It’s not just that sin makes us rebels and fools. It’s not just that sin makes us want to write our own laws. No, sin does something more fundamental to each of us. Sin captures and redirects the motivational system of our hearts. In a practically life-shaping way, sin changes how our hearts operate. Paul is talking here about two opposite perspectives on life. In one, the heart is filled with a vision of what I want for me and my little world; in the other, the heart is filled with wonder at who Christ is and what he has done. Each is driven by awe, either awe of personal glory or awe of the glory of Christ. Though we were created to be moved by the awe of God, sin causes our hearts to be moved by the small, individualistic agenda of awe of self. Because we break God’s awe design, we then proceed to break God’s law design. Let me say it as clearly and practically as I can. Because of sin, awe of God is very quickly replaced by awe of self.”
“Every year thousands of supposedly Christian young people go off to residential universities and forsake the faith. I would propose to you that they are not forsaking the faith at all. They never had it in the first place. They grew up under a system of control that forced the faith upon them, but when they get to college and the system vanishes, their true hearts reveal themselves.”
“they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen” (Rom. 1:25).”
“People move from church to church as if the churches in their community are nothing more than ecclesiastical department stores. They’re shopping for just the right preacher, women’s ministry, youth ministry, or worship style. These Christians’ relationship to the church mirrors my relationship to Macy’s.”
“Wherever your story takes you, you’ll never arrive there first, because your Lord is already there in sovereign presence and power, and he rules that place in infinite wisdom and holiness.”
“Many, many believers think of their church as a place to attend rather than something with which they are intimately involved.”
“Many Christians also live inside the church virtually unknown. They slip in and out of the weekly service almost unnoticed. Sure, they will exchange niceties with the people near them, and if they do that, they will learn a few cursory details about one another’s lives, but they don’t really have a relationship with the people with whom they worship.”
“8. Envy Never Tells the Truth It is so tempting, when you are suffering, to look around and compare what you are enduring to what others seem to be enjoying. And as you do this, it’s so easy to fall into wanting the life of someone else. But as you can see, envy never produces a good harvest. Envy adds layers of trouble to the trouble you’re already facing. Envy robs you of hope and destroys your ability to trust. And worst of all, envy steals away the hope that is only ever found when you’re convinced of the presence and goodness of God. (I’m going to write much more about this in the second half of this book.) Envy does all this because envy never tells you the truth. It distorts your view of your life, the life of others, and the character of God. Envy whispers dangerous and debilitating lies into your ears. Envy never takes your suffering hand and leads you to the light. Envy never causes your heart to sing. Envy never points you to places where you are being graced. Envy points out all the bad things and puts its hand over your eyes so that you can’t see the good things. Envy is a punch in the stomach when you’re already out of breath. It’s bad news when you already feel that you can’t bear anything more. Envy is the enemy of hope. Envy is a mortal danger to be avoided.”
“You will never cease to be the most amazed person on earth at what God has done for you on the inside. OSWALD CHAMBERS”
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At Columbia Bible College from 1968-1972, (now Columbia International University) Paul majored in Bible and Christian Education. Although he had planned to be there for only two years and then to study journalism, Paul more and more felt like there was so much of the theology of Scripture that he did not understand, so he decided to go to seminary. Paul met Luella Jackson at College and they married in 1971. In 1971, Paul took his first pastoral position and has had a heart for the local church ever since. After college, Paul completed his Master of Divinity degree at the Reformed Episcopal Seminary (now known as Philadelphia Theological Seminary) in Philadelphia (1972-1975). It was during these days that Paul’s commitment to ministry solidified. After seminary, Paul was involved in planting a church in Scranton, Pennsylvania (1977-1987) where he also founded a Christian School. During the years in Scranton, Paul became involved in music, traveling with a band and writing worship songs. In Scranton, Paul became interested in biblical counseling and decided to enroll in the D.Min program in Biblical Counseling at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Paul then became a faculty member of the Christian Counseling and Education Foundation (CCEF) and a lecturer in biblical counseling at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Paul has also served as Visiting Professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
In 2009, Paul joined the faculty of Redeemer Seminary (daughter school of Westminster) in Dallas, Texas as Professor of Pastoral Life and Care.[1]
Beginning in June, 2006, Paul became the President of Paul Tripp Ministries, a non-profit organization, whose mission statement is "Connecting the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life." In addition to his current role as President of Paul Tripp Ministries, on January 1, 2007, Paul also became part of the pastoral staff at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, PA where he preached every Sunday evening and lead the Ministry to Center City through March, 2011 when he resigned due to the expanding time commitments needed at Paul Tripp Ministries.
Paul, Luella, and their four children moved to Philadelphia in 1987 and have lived there ever since. Paul is a prolific author and has written twelve books on Christian living which are sold internationally. Luella manages a large commercial art gallery in the city and Paul is very dedicated to painting as an avocation.[2] Paul’s driving passion is to help people understand how the gospel of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ really does speak with practical hope into all the things they will face in this broken world. Paul is a pastor with a pastor’s heart, a gifted speaker, his journey taking him all over the world, an author of numerous books on practical Christian living, and a man who is hopelessly in love with Luella.