Friday's Weekly Rap Up February 6, 2015 - "New Dreams"- Trip Lee

"New Dreams" - Trip Lee (Featuring J.R. and Sho Baraka) (Lyrics)

We all want to live life to the fullest. We want to The "good life" is one that we envision, whether that be financial security, professional decisions and status, or simply just acceptance. You might say "if only I had _______. That's your idea of the good life. It's that thing you just "have to have" to make everything right.

The difficulty with living that idea of a good life is that any of those things can be stripped away in an instant. Our lives of financial security can be thrown away with just one greedy scheme. Just ask those who put their trust in Enron or Bernie Madoff. We can be let go from our jobs when a company's profits start to decline. Relationships can end. Dreams can be crushed. Ambitions unfulfilled. But there's more to a good life than comfort in accomplishments and possessions. Trip Lee explains to us in this song that the good life is the one that Christ died for us to have.  One of the last lines of the song proclaim,

"My dreams are different, you know that I been changed now

The good life is the life that’s been laid down."

Last week at Sojourn Heights, we heard about Jesus' first miracle in the book of Mark, chapter 1, verses 21-28. Here, we see Jesus healing a man with an unclean spirit and exercising authority that hadn't been seen before, especially in contrast to the teaching of the scribes at the time. It was a competitive and counterintuitive authority. Upon seeing this, Jesus' fame spread. Mark 1:28 might continue to be true for us when we as a people believe in living the good life as Jesus provided, not as we define it.

Trip Lee's The Good Life album contains many other great songs that "urge us not to indulgence of our sinful nature, but to celebration of the lasting pleasures found in Christ." My favorite, "Take Me There" is a comfort, "War" is a reminder of the constant need of Christians to fight sin and temptation, and the "banger" track from the album is "One Sixteen", which lays out the mission of Reach Records, its artists, and at a larger level those who find their identity in Christ. Romans 1:16 is the scriptural foundation of the song. Trip gives us further explanation of "The Good Life" in his book, which you can find here.