The Books That Most Shaped @TripLee
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:13.440 | That's the track "Fallen" off Trip Lee's album "The Good Life", three years old and still a personal
00:00:18.460 | favorite, an amazing album. And it's Friday and we're back one last time with
00:00:22.960 | hip-hop artist and author Trip Lee. Trip, you are a writer and so of course you're
00:00:27.420 | a reader as well, so I want to ask you, outside of the pages of Scripture of
00:00:31.040 | course, who are the most influential theologians or the most influential
00:00:35.400 | books by theologians that have shaped your life and shaped your ministry?
00:00:40.160 | That's a really hard question for me because I love reading and really books
00:00:46.860 | have been huge in my life. That's part of why I wanted to write, just like with
00:00:51.120 | music. Music impacted me, I wanted to do music to impact people. The same thing
00:00:54.780 | with books, but a couple I think I could point out, "Knowing God" by J.I. Packer.
00:00:58.540 | That was a book that was recommended to me when I was about 15 or 16 years old
00:01:03.140 | and I was passionate about Jesus, but I hadn't read any really good books yet
00:01:08.140 | and I didn't know how to even find good books. I was just reading whatever and a
00:01:11.660 | guy who's a disciple of me at the time recommended that to me. And let me tell
00:01:14.940 | you, it changed my life because I had never read a book with such a big view
00:01:20.180 | of God. You know, I knew God was big and he was good, but when I read that book,
00:01:24.460 | just the depth of doctrine and theology rooted in Scripture and all with kind of
00:01:30.380 | the context of a relational knowledge of God, it really changed my life. Another
00:01:33.780 | book that was really helpful for me, there have been so many Piper books that have
00:01:37.460 | been deeply helpful for me, probably my favorite is "When I Don't Desire God"
00:01:41.140 | because for me it came at a crucial time when I was really just trying to think,
00:01:47.900 | "In my day to day, how do I really fight for joy in God?" And you know, I want to
00:01:52.180 | desire God. I understand that's a part of God sanctifying me, but how do I do it?
00:01:56.860 | And that book was just so good and helpful for me and giving me a good kind
00:02:00.700 | of worldview for that. So that book was huge. Arnold Dalimore's biography of
00:02:06.100 | Spurgeon, just called Spurgeon, was huge for me because I love Spurgeon. I've read
00:02:10.620 | a lot of his stuff and have been really encouraged by it. And I love reading
00:02:13.700 | biographies because you just get to see God's providence in the life of a man,
00:02:19.140 | and especially extraordinary. It can be discouraging when you read about
00:02:22.900 | Spurgeon because you're like, "What in the world am I doing? He did so much."
00:02:26.580 | Yes, painfully so.
00:02:27.580 | And like, "How is he this amazing?" He was a pastor in '19 and the Lord was using him in
00:02:32.060 | incredible ways, and he read all these books and did all this stuff in the
00:02:34.780 | orphanage and past his college, all of that. But it's really cool to see God's
00:02:38.540 | providence in his life because as much as you want to look at him and say, "Man,
00:02:41.700 | he's amazing," it's still really clear. The amazing one is God because he's
00:02:45.820 | orchestrated all these things. And that happens when you read so many
00:02:49.020 | biographies of Christian men and women over history. And I can name a trillion
00:02:53.620 | more books, but those are three that have really influenced me deeply.
00:02:57.420 | Wonderful. And to repeat, those books are Knowing God by J.I. Packer, Spurgeon by
00:03:03.100 | Arnold Dalimore, and When I Don't Desire God by John Piper, which you can
00:03:07.540 | download entirely free of charge right now at DesiringGod.org. Click on the tab
00:03:12.060 | that says "Books," scroll to the bottom of the page, and find the title, "When I Don't
00:03:16.540 | Desire God." Download it and enjoy it right away free of charge. We are
00:03:21.460 | grateful for Trip Lee's time these past two weeks filling in for the traveling
00:03:25.020 | John Piper. It has been rich, and we deeply appreciate the gifts and wisdom
00:03:29.020 | God has given to Trip, and we wish blessings on him and for his ministry
00:03:32.660 | that reaches so many people inside the church and outside of the church. And
00:03:36.060 | this weekend you can check out his new book and his new album, both titled "Rise,"
00:03:40.300 | and both available at Amazon.com right now. I'm your host Tony Reinhke, we'll see
00:03:45.580 | you on Monday.
00:03:48.060 | [music]
00:04:14.460 | you
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