Inspirational Quotes by Paul David Tripp
“When the gospel functions at the core of each facet of ministry, the balance and health of the church is safeguarded. If the gospel is central in worship and preaching, people will be humbled as they are reminded that they are not superior to others, but needy recipients of the same grace they are called to share with others. The inward face is protected because the gospel reshapes the ways we think about our relationships with brothers and sisters in Christ. We exist not primarily for one another’s happiness, but for one another’s holiness! Relationships are seen through the lens of mutual service and ministry. The gospel also propels us outward to the world with mercy and compassion. The outward face is strengthened by the gospel because our calling to love the world is not driven by self-righteousness or attempts to merit God’s approval. We move outward because God first moved toward us. Once again, people’s spiritual growth is central when the grace of Christ is central. There is ministry balance because the humility-producing grace of God keeps us honest about our own sin, as well as hopeful and confident in God’s commitment to use us in others’ lives. Gospel worship continually reorients us to the living God in the vertical dimension, which moves us outward to others with a redemptive agenda in the horizontal dimension.”
“Words separate you from the rest of creation, making you more like God than like animals. The gift of words calls us to live and speak in a God-focused manner. One of our greatest mistakes in communication is to take words as our own to use as we please.”
“Your Thorny, sinful responses to life grow out of a heart that has defected to worship something else.”
“Only when we start with God—someone bigger than ourselves—can we escape the destructive results of our own selfishness.”
“We tend to believe that the sin that surrounds us is more dangerous than the sin that resides inside us.”
“God will not quit until every bit of his work is complete in each of his children. We can have courage and hope in any situation. God’s dream for us will come true.”
“The shattered relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the cross provides the basis for our reconciliation. No other relationship ever suffered more than what Father, Son, and Holy Spirit endured when Jesus hung on the cross and cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Jesus was willing to be the rejected Son so that our families would know reconciliation. Jesus was willing to become the forsaken friend so that we could have loving friendships. Jesus was willing to be the rejected Lord so that we could live in loving submission to one another. Jesus was willing to be the forsaken brother so that we could have godly relationships. Jesus was willing to be the crucified King so that our communities would experience peace.”
“My panic was about more than being overwhelmed in my responsibilities; it revealed a lack of trust in God. We can’t move toward community with one another until we have been drawn into community with God.”
“Romans 1:25 indicates that idolatry is often the result of taking good things in creation and making them ultimate things. They usurp the supreme place that only the Creator should have in our hearts and lives.”
“Notice how much Israel’s response to hardship maps onto ours. We face hard things and we complain about things as mundane as a menu. Before long, our complaining becomes an assessment of blame. Then the blaming goes vertical as it questions God’s wisdom and goodness. We, too, are in the wilderness of a fallen world. We have not yet entered the Promised Land of eternity, so we face hardships like Israel did.”
“When we live out of a sense of who we are in Christ, we live our lives based on all we have been given by Christ. This keeps us from seeking to get those things from the people and situations around us.”
“People in the middle usually discover that more work is involved than they ever expected. It is hard to hold onto the dream, and very often expectation becomes the desire to simply survive. Amidst the hard work, it is difficult to keep your standards high and your hope alive. You are tempted to settle and compromise. In the middle, thankfulness often degrades into complaint, and hope decays into resignation. It is hard to live in the middle of something, but that is exactly where all of our relationships take place.”
“Often in our blindness, we take on our problems as identities. While divorce, depression, and single parenthood are significant human experiences, they are not identities. Our work is not our identity, though it is an important part of how God intends us to live. For too many of us, our sense of identity is more rooted in our performance than it is in God’s grace.”
“No human being was ever meant to be the source of personal joy and contentment for someone else. And surely, no sinner is ever going to be able to pull that off day after day in the all-encompassing relationship of marriage! Your spouse, your friends, and your children cannot be the sources of your identity. When you seek to define who you are through those relationships, you are actually asking another sinner to be your personal messiah, to give you the inward rest of soul that only God can give. Only when I have sought my identity in the proper place (in my relationship with God) am I able to put you in the proper place as well. When I relate to you knowing that I am God’s child and the recipient of his grace, I am able to serve and love you. I have the hope and courage to get my hands dirty with the hard work involved when two sinners live together. And you are able to do the same with me!”
“If you are a believer, you are in the process of being remade to reflect the character of Jesus himself. And your Lord is employing every circumstance and relationship in your life to accomplish that goal.”
“My words must be shaped by your need. An ambassador’s words always address the person’s true need of the moment.”
“for a Christian whose hope is in an invisible God, seeing the unseen is essential. 24”
“People need to see that the gospel belongs in their workplace, their kitchen, their school, their bedroom, their backyard, and their van. They need to see the way the gospel makes a connection between what they are doing and what God is doing.”
“And we have no more control over the not yet than we have had over the already.”
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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.