We are back with Trip Lee. Trip, in your new book "Rise," you write this, quote, "Sadly, we treat God like he's handing us sleep masks in the movie, when really he's handing us the 3D goggles. He's not trying to block our joy and leave us in the dark. He intends to enhance our joy to give us fullness of joy.

He wants us to enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed." End quote. I love that. So explain this, though, in the battle, this fight to say no to selfishness and sin out of a trust that God is, in fact, deeply concerned with my ultimate flourishing and joy.

Yeah. Well, I know that I'm not the only one who's ever read something in Scripture or understood something that God has said and thought it was really hard and thought, "Wow, that's not what I want to do," or "I'd rather do this." Because Scripture does call us to hard things.

God is actually holy and he does actually call us to holiness. And so it can be really hard. You know, there are some things that seem really great to us, but that God tells us to turn away from. And the easy temptation there is to think this is because God isn't good, because God doesn't want us to have joy, or maybe not even that God isn't good, but to think, man, following God means all joy has to be traded in.

And this is why obeying Jesus has to flow from true faith, because you really have to trust him, even if what he's saying doesn't make really great sense to you yet. I mean, my two-year-old, sometimes there's things that he wants to do that are not very smart, like stick his finger in a socket.

And that seems like really fun to him. It seems like a great idea. He thinks something great is going to be on the other side. 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, he has to trust his dad.

He has to do what I say. And he can't just try it first and then see what the consequences are and decide later. No, he has to actually listen to me and do what I say and fight that strong desire and say, "Okay, Daddy's wiser and he loves me and he's trying to help me out.

I'm going to trust him." And it's the same thing for us. There may be a certain relationship that seems so appealing to us, or maybe we just want out of our marriage because it just doesn't seem like it's going well. Or maybe we don't want to take the slow route to rising in our job and we want to kind of step over.

Whatever it may be, there may be some things that seem perfectly fine to us. We don't quite understand why God wouldn't allow us to do it, but we have to trust Him. God's not trying to block our joy. God is actually leading us to fullness of joy. 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, by seeing what He did in Christ on the cross, by looking in Scripture, seeing how faithful He's been to His people, 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.

And I have no reason to believe He'd do anything different this time. He said this. That doesn't seem like what I would like to do, but I'm going to trust Him." 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.

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. 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." Our everyday denial has to be trusting that He's not keeping us from joy, but He's leading us to fullness of joy.

Beautifully said, Tripp. Excellent. Thank you. We are like your son. That's a very memorable image. So let's get into the nitty-gritty of this. One of the things that we must deny ourselves is the lure to watch on-screen nudity in entertainment. And that's what I want to talk about tomorrow as we close out this week with podcast guest Tripp Lee.

Again, Tripp's latest album and his new book are both titled "Rise," and you can find them at Amazon.com right now. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.