I have been really helped by many things Paul Tripp has written, and have enjoyed his presentations at Desiring God and Children Desiring God. Lately, I think I have been most helped by how he uses Twitter. He and Pastor John pack a lot into those 140 characters!
I don’t think Paul Tripp is writing his enewsletter any longer, but I found this helpful from 2010 (emphases in bold are mine):
Are there places where you’re crying for the grace of God and you’re not realizing that you’re getting it? But it’s not the grace of relief and it’s not the grace of release; it’s the boiling grace of personal transformation. Again, God will take you where you do not want to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. In those unexpected moments, don’t run away from your Lord, run to him. You are not being forsaken you are being loved.
What does all this really mean? Well here it is! You can look mystery in the face and have hope. You can live in the middle of a life that you don’t really understand, that you can’t really figure out and you can rest. You can deal with the unexpected with joy. You can accept mystery; and you can do it because you can look through the clouds of mystery and see a God of love who is actually near when he seems far.
He’s actually active when he seems passive; who is doing something very good right in the middle of when things seem that they’re going very badly. Are there places when you just can’t figure out what God is doing? Are there places where it feels that he’s not near? Where right now in your everyday experience are you dealing with the unexpected? God is at work in your life. He hasn’t turned His back on you. You see, you can accept mystery because in the middle of the unexpected there is love and grace and help to be found. God is right smack dab in the middle of your unexpected moment and he is up to something very, very good.
Paul David Tripp, Survival Skill 3: Accept Mystery, August 2010
The Works of God 
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