One of the most empowering promises in the Bible is that God gives his children grace for each new day. And for those of his children who are waking up each day experiencing pain, walking through dark valleys, or wrestling with God about a circumstance, this promise is particularly reassuring.
In Lamentations 3, the prophet Jeremiah, through great struggle and turmoil, cries out to God, expressing the full extent of his pain. But after his expression of pain and his admission of helplessness in his situation, he then declares a statement over his situation. He makes a sharp pivot in his perspective from observing the facts of his circumstances to gazing at the grander reality of his God who is over his circumstances.
After 20 verses of expressing the reality of his pain to God, he flips the script and begins to express the reality of God to his pain.
Verse 21 becomes the hinge where he stops listening to himself and starts preaching to himself. Though his soul is downcast, he casts down his anchor of hope in God, plunging his spirit beyond what his circumstances might otherwise suggest and grounding himself upon the Rock underneath it all. He says,
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my portion’, says my soul, ‘therefore, I will hope in him.’
Jeremiah preaches truth to himself, especially when he doesn’t feel it; namely, that God’s grace is new every morning. And even though he’s directly preaching this truth to himself, he’s also preaching this truth to all believers as well: That God will meet you in your particular circumstance, in your particular trial, in your particular need, with a particular grace, that is particularly for you today. Today, God promises you particular grace for your particular situation.
Grace For Today’s Situation, Not For Sin’s Penalty
I had a friend recently tell me, “I just don’t get what ‘grace for today’ means. We have grace to forgive us of sin. But how does this ‘grace’ meet us today in our day-to-day circumstances? I’m having a hard time understanding this connection.” His question is a valid one, and it’s not uncommon or unusual. In fact, I vividly remember asking myself this very question several years ago.
My friend is correct to state that God gives grace to forgive sin. But this type of grace in particular can be a helpful framework for understanding the full extent of God’s grace to us in general. For example, when God forgave us of sin, his grace was demonstrated not only by giving us something we did not deserve (judgment), but also giving us more than what we did not deserve (righteousness).
This is not a politically correct thing to say, but the Bible is clear that the only thing we truly deserve from God is hell (Ro. 6:23).
But even though that is really bad news, that can only mean that literally everything else we receive in this life is God’s grace. As John Piper says, “Apart from the cross, there is only judgment… therefore every good thing in life, and every bad thing that God turns for good, is a blood-bought gift.”¹
So, what does this have to do with ‘particular grace’ for today? This means that if you’re a Christian, then God’s grace doesn’t just end at your salvation; rather, it’s the gateway that brings forth God’s grace into your situation. In other words, God’s grace doesn’t stop at the moment of your adoption; it overflows for you day by day now that you’re his beloved child. Your salvation is important to God; but like any caring Father, your particular situation as his child is not irrelevant to him. In fact, your situation becomes something that God intimately acquaints as his very own.
Christian, this is why you can have hope today—because the God who met you with grace for your gravest need as his enemy is not a God who will leave you without grace for other needs now that you’re his child (Ro. 8:32). And so, as God’s child, he promises to give you grace for your situation in particular, not just for your sin in general.
However, there will be two particular temptations that will rage against you from accessing and appropriating God’s particular grace for today into your situation.
Temptation #1: Looking ‘In’, Not ‘Up’ or ‘Out’
For those who are especially depending upon God’s grace for today, perhaps the biggest temptation will be to look ‘in’ and be preoccupied with the hurt—with the need, with the desire, with the struggle, with the question, and with the situation—as opposed to looking ‘up’ and ‘out’ to see what God is accomplishing all around you.
To be sure, this is not a call to embrace stoicism—to ignore, diminish, or trivialize your pain and the valley you’re walking through. Rather, it’s to recognize that our default will be to obsess over the inward pain, and therefore, miss what God is accomplishing for us in that particular circumstance around us.
Therefore, the best thing we can do in our times of pain is not to look in, but to look out. To strive as much as we can to redirect our vision upon God, others, and what he’s doing in our life. The luring preoccupation of self will keep us blinded from seeing God’s hand at work, which is only for us. Even when it seems like, “everything is against me!” as Jacob cried when his situation seemed victimizing on every front, the reality was that God couldn’t have been more for Jacob in that very moment (Gen. 42:36).
God’s grace to meet you in your pain might not come in the way you think it ought to, however. See, when we focus on our pain, we believe that God must work in that situation according to how we feel like we must be fixed. But God, in his greater wisdom and power, knows exactly what we truly need today. For example…
Perhaps this grace will come in the form of an unlikely run-in with an old (or a new) friend that you need in your life for this season.
Perhaps this grace will come in the form of a new role at work, which will remove you from a particularly difficult circumstance.
Perhaps this grace will come in the form of a random phone call right at the moment you needed an encouraging word.
Perhaps this grace will come in the form of a Scripture passage that speaks directly and profoundly to you right now.
Perhaps this grace will come in the form of a blog post that you read. *wink*
Perhaps your plans change last minute and you’re able to see God’s protective and providential hand at work through seemingly chaos.
Do yourself a favor and look at the things immediately around you, and ask yourself, “How is God caring for me right now in this circumstance through the people, events, and opportunities around me?” I think you will be quite shocked at how obvious it really is.
God’s promise of, “I heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds” (Ps. 147:3), does not necessarily mean that God will ‘mend’ you through supernatural, ethereal ways. Most of the time, God intends to apply his intangible grace to us through the tangible means of his people, his word, and his activity in other circumstances in our lives.
So, be on the lookout. Break the tempting lure of preoccupation with inward pain, and ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to everything else around you. It is unquestionable that God is working in the things around you to apply his particular grace into your particular circumstance.
I can speak of this in my own life. God has met me with incredible grace when I was walking through my darkest valleys. When I desperately needed time away, God providentially changed my role at work so that I could be traveling 5 days a week. There have been numerous times when I have been praying to God in desperation—and before I could even finish my sentence of plea to God—I have had friends ‘randomly’ call, offering me a clarifying word of encouragement. God has even reassigned my housing plans to put me in places and with people who he knew I needed to be with in a particular season—because only they could help me with what I was going through. “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Prov. 16:9); and God establishes your steps with lots of grace for today and tomorrow if you are his child.
From personal experience, I will say that God rarely works in my situation like I think he should, but he has always done so in my situation like I know he should. I still praise God that he has worked in my life on his own terms and not according to what I told him to do. If God had worked in the way I wanted him to, I’d still be out of luck in my situation and still weaker as a person. Thankfully, through many situations, he’s changed me deeply as a person and positioned each situation for a deeper joy than I could have created on my own.
And I know God will—and is currently doing today—the same for you. If you are his child, God is working in every particular situation with an ever-particular grace. So look ‘up’ and ‘out’, not ‘in’.
Temptation #2: Capsuling Our Pain
Furthermore, perhaps the second biggest temptation while you’re hurting will be to encapsulate the entire situation of your pain—i.e., to imagine its impact upon your future indefinitely—and try to swallow it all at once today.
If and when you do this, you will surely be crushed.
Theologian and author Jerry Bridges gives an example in his book, Trusting God, of this very situation that happened to a good friend of his. He recounts…
“I think of a physician whose son was born with an incurable birth defect, leaving him crippled for life. I asked the father how he felt when he, who had dedicated his life to treating the illnesses of other people, was confronted with an incurable condition in his own son. He told me his biggest problem was the tendency to capsule the next twenty years of his son’s life into that initial moment when he learned of his son’s condition. Viewed that way, the adversity was overwhelming. God does not give twenty years of grace today. Rather, He gives it day by day.”²
Capsuling the entirety of pain—i.e., what it does mean today and what it might mean in the future—is dangerous for two main reasons: 1) It is underwritten by a premise of wrong belief, and 2) exacerbated by the premise of unbelief.
What do I mean? No matter what our circumstances might suggest to us today, we simply do not know what tomorrow will hold. Or next month. Or next year. We do not know what God purposes to accomplish in our today, tomorrow, and next year. And we also don’t know how God can and will change our circumstances today, tomorrow, or next year.
See, when we anticipate the worst of our circumstances in terms of how it may play out in the future, we are choosing to do two things: 1) wrongly believe our circumstances through spiritual shortsightedness, and 2) un-believe God’s heart to us and his ability to work for us through spiritual farsightedness.
When we try to capsule and ingest an entire projection of pain all at once—instead of taking it day-by-day—we are functionally claiming a higher view on the situation than God. This is why we must trust God with the future, exercise faith his future grace, and take one particular day at a time, with God’s particular grace, for that particular day.
As Matthew 6:34 says, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” But the converse is also equally true: sufficient for today is also God’s grace to overcome it.
Grace Is Sufficient
I think one of the most powerful and relatable passages in the Bible is 1 Corinthians 12, where the Apostle Paul describes his ‘thorn in the flesh.’ We’re never actually told with clarity what that metaphorical ‘thorn’ was, but what we do know is that Paul pleaded with God to remove it three different times, and God chose not to remove it.
Instead, God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” And Paul responded, “therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (v. 9). For some reason, in God’s bigger wisdom and love, he saw it fitting for Paul to have this ‘thorn’ so that it would keep Paul humble and dependent upon his grace. And the deeper the thorn pressed, the deeper Paul’s experience was of an overcoming grace.
Many times, as I’ve dealt with ‘thorns’ myself, I have prayed, “God, please let your grace meet me here in this circumstance! I need you to be sufficient for me right now! Please sufficiently provide for me as I am hurting!”
However, the verse resonated with me on another level as of recent. As I read the short phrase again, one word in particular jumped off the page: is. My grace IS sufficient for you. Not ‘can be’, ‘might be’, ‘should be’, or even ‘will be.’ But is. Right now. Today!
In other words, bringing God’s grace into my situation wasn’t a matter of how tightly I was holding on to God; but rather, it was primarily a matter of resting in how tightly he was holding on to me. His grace wasn’t dependent upon what I would or wouldn’t do; it was already there—in full—all along. It was evident in various ways; I just couldn’t see it at the time because I was preoccupied with looking ‘in’ instead of looking ‘up’ and ‘out’. That’s why it felt insufficient for my need. But the more I sought to look outside of my pain, the more clearly I was able to see his grace at work and particularly sufficient for the day.
One of the most empowering promises for the weary is 2 Corinthians 9:8, which reads, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” I love the maximal nature of this promise: all sufficiency in all things at all times.
The grace God offers to you today, indeed, cannot be added to. It is sufficient.
Grace Is Well-Timed
Another promise about God’s grace is that it’s not only sufficient for each day, but that it’s also well timed in each day.
The Bible makes clear that God meticulously assigns and delivers particular forms of grace into our lives—in the right measure, for the right situation, at the right time—for each specifically for the struggles of each day.
Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
This verse is a fan favorite; however, John Piper mentions that most, if not all, of our modern Bible translations actually fail to communicate the true import of this verse. Piper says,
A literal translation of Hebrews 4:16 goes like this: “Therefore let us approach with boldness the throne of grace that we might receive mercy and find grace for a well-timed help.”
The familiar translation is “…and find grace for help in time of need.” There’s no contradiction between these two translations. The familiar one draws attention to our need. The literal one draws attention to God’s timing.³
This difference in translation renders an entirely different emphasis—from our need to God’s timing—, and therefore, becomes the difference in our posture of dependence on God and our attitude in prayer. But the truth is nevertheless the same: it reassures Christians that God promises to deliver grace today that is never too slow, never too weak, always in the right amount, and always on time.
Particular Grace For Particular Needs
Resting in this grand promise that God will deliver particular grace to you for each day should give us so much hope.
Maybe yesterday presented new trials, which feel too much to bear today. Maybe the thought of facing tomorrow’s circumstances feel so overwhelming that it will seem like a victory to get out from under the covers in the morning.
Whatever your situation may be, Christian, you are united with Jesus—the one who not only has your circumstances under control, but who also sends new, particular graces to wash over you afresh for each morning. What are these graces? They are…
Strength for today’s weaknesses. Wisdom for today’s issues. Tact for today’s tasks. Clarity for today’s confusion. Sight for today’s blind spots. Forgiveness for today’s sins. Power for today’s temptations. Trust for today’s struggles. And perhaps, most importantly, a strong faith today that another wave of sufficient, well-timed future grace is on its way tomorrow, ad infinitum.
We don’t just have salvation for eternity; we have resurrection power for today. And the God who loved you deeply on the cross is the same God who stretches out his nail-pierced hands to you today, to walk with you through your valleys and trials. “The One who calls you is faithful, and he will surely do it” (1 Thes. 5:24).
“Day by day, and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here; trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment, I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.”†
Day after day, new mercies I see //
All I have needed thy hand hath provided //
Great is your faithfulness, Lord unto me!
_____________
FOOTNOTES:
¹ Piper, John. Don’t Waste Your Life, p. 54.
² Bridges, Jerry. Trusting God, Chapter 10, iBook page 203.
³ Piper, John. DesiringGod Ministries, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/lets-find-grace-for-a-well-timed-help-together.
† Lina Sandell Berg, “Day By Day,” translated by Andrew L. Skoog, n.d
