A Recommendation

This summer, before we left for Jackson Hole, I decided to make a couple book purchases knowing that me and my big belly (who we now know as Wilson) would be sitting out on all the hikes with the students. So I browsed around on The Gospel Coalition (this is not my featuring recommendation, but I do highly recommend browsing on this site) and ended up choosing two books from an author I had never heard of, Paul David Tripp:I chose this first one because I was giving a talk that summer to the students on the power that our words have over our hearts and others' hearts and how Jesus can redeem our words through the gospel. The book was incredible. But it's not the feature recommendation.
I chose the second book because I've always been interested in counseling and wanted to get a little bit more understanding of what Christian counseling was all about. This book caught me off guard in a good way. The main premise is that we are all (Christian or not) counselors to both ourselves and others around us... we counsel ourselves and others every day without realizing it. Tripp talks about how sin has ravaged our hearts and how we can point ourselves and others to the grace of the gospel through Jesus. But it's not the feature recommendation.

By this point Andrew and I are obsessed with Tripp and are playing tug of war all summer with these books. Because I discovered them (which I am pretty proud of, because Andrew normally finds the good stuff first), I claimed them as "mine" which Andrew understands to mean: DO NOT MARK IN THEM. He is very liberal with his stars and underlinings.

When we got home we picked up this little Tripp treasure:We haven't finished it yet, but we can already tell it will be our favorite marriage book. But it's not the feature recommendation.

We have recently ordered this series of talks that Tripp has done on parenting and plan to go through it in a couple of weeks with a group of our parent friends. But it's not the feature recommendation. **Right now this series is 75% off!! You can get it for 14.99 for the next few days HERE. **



You are probably thinking that we are way too into this guy, but if you pick up one of these books you will understand why. His words are saturated in gospel and we love it. Though I would love to implore you to go (to amazon... right now!) and buy all of these incredible resources, if I had to choose one today it would be our feature recommendation:Whiter than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy

I'm only on Day 4, but it has truly enriched my time with Jesus. Tripp leads you through such a humbling journey of David's cry for mercy in Psalm 51... each day's reading only takes about five minutes (includes a verse and some sort of commentary, poem, list, prayer), but he has great introspective questions at the end. I normally tend to scoff at devotional questions (Why are they always so cheesy??) but these are different and make me dig a little bit deeper into places in my heart that I mostly am reluctant to go.

Like today's question: Is there a possibility that you are not resting in the righteousness you have been given in Christ because you are seeing yourself as more righteous than you actually are?

eeek. Next question please.

So there you go. I hope you get it and I hope you enjoy it as much as we have been!