Joy, Faith, and Self-Denial
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00:00:04.000 | We are back with Trip Lee. Trip, in your new book "Rise," you write this, quote,
00:00:09.000 | "Sadly, we treat God like he's handing us sleep masks in the movie,
00:00:14.000 | when really he's handing us the 3D goggles.
00:00:17.000 | He's not trying to block our joy and leave us in the dark.
00:00:20.000 | He intends to enhance our joy to give us fullness of joy.
00:00:24.000 | He wants us to enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed."
00:00:29.000 | End quote. I love that.
00:00:31.000 | So explain this, though, in the battle, this fight to say no to selfishness and sin
00:00:37.000 | out of a trust that God is, in fact, deeply concerned with my ultimate flourishing and joy.
00:00:44.000 | Yeah. Well, I know that I'm not the only one who's ever read something in Scripture
00:00:49.000 | or understood something that God has said and thought it was really hard and thought,
00:00:54.000 | "Wow, that's not what I want to do," or "I'd rather do this."
00:00:58.000 | Because Scripture does call us to hard things.
00:01:02.000 | God is actually holy and he does actually call us to holiness.
00:01:07.000 | And so it can be really hard.
00:01:08.000 | You know, there are some things that seem really great to us, but that God tells us to turn away from.
00:01:13.000 | And the easy temptation there is to think this is because God isn't good,
00:01:17.000 | because God doesn't want us to have joy, or maybe not even that God isn't good,
00:01:21.000 | but to think, man, following God means all joy has to be traded in.
00:01:26.000 | And this is why obeying Jesus has to flow from true faith, because you really have to trust him,
00:01:31.000 | even if what he's saying doesn't make really great sense to you yet.
00:01:35.000 | I mean, my two-year-old, sometimes there's things that he wants to do that are not very smart,
00:01:40.000 | like stick his finger in a socket. And that seems like really fun to him.
00:01:44.000 | It seems like a great idea. He thinks something great is going to be on the other side.
00:01:48.000 | But if my son is going to survive and he's not going to be injured and we're not going to go to the ER that night,
00:01:54.000 | he has to trust his dad. He has to do what I say.
00:01:57.000 | And he can't just try it first and then see what the consequences are and decide later.
00:02:02.000 | No, he has to actually listen to me and do what I say and fight that strong desire and say,
00:02:06.000 | "Okay, Daddy's wiser and he loves me and he's trying to help me out. I'm going to trust him."
00:02:11.000 | And it's the same thing for us. There may be a certain relationship that seems so appealing to us,
00:02:18.000 | or maybe we just want out of our marriage because it just doesn't seem like it's going well.
00:02:24.000 | Or maybe we don't want to take the slow route to rising in our job and we want to kind of step over.
00:02:30.000 | Whatever it may be, there may be some things that seem perfectly fine to us.
00:02:34.000 | We don't quite understand why God wouldn't allow us to do it, but we have to trust Him.
00:02:39.000 | God's not trying to block our joy. God is actually leading us to fullness of joy.
00:02:44.000 | And we just really have to trust that. And that trust is really only going to be built by seeing God's goodness in His track record,
00:02:50.000 | by seeing what He did in Christ on the cross, by looking in Scripture, seeing how faithful He's been to His people,
00:02:56.000 | and then trusting Him in light of that to say, "Man, God has never done anything but perfectly holy, good, loving things for His people.
00:03:05.000 | And I have no reason to believe He'd do anything different this time.
00:03:09.000 | He said this. That doesn't seem like what I would like to do, but I'm going to trust Him."
00:03:14.000 | And that really comes from love and faith. And that's really going to be the essence of our everyday fight for joy, everyday denial.
00:03:21.000 | Like, hey, fighting pride is going to have to be, "Well, you know what? I trust God when He says that He's the one who deserves all glory.
00:03:27.000 | And you know what? That it would seem good to look upon this woman with lust, but I trust God in His plan for sexuality."
00:03:32.000 | Our everyday denial has to be trusting that He's not keeping us from joy, but He's leading us to fullness of joy.
00:03:39.000 | Beautifully said, Tripp. Excellent. Thank you. We are like your son. That's a very memorable image.
00:03:45.000 | So let's get into the nitty-gritty of this.
00:03:47.000 | One of the things that we must deny ourselves is the lure to watch on-screen nudity in entertainment.
00:03:54.000 | And that's what I want to talk about tomorrow as we close out this week with podcast guest Tripp Lee.
00:03:59.000 | Again, Tripp's latest album and his new book are both titled "Rise," and you can find them at Amazon.com right now.
00:04:06.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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