Thanks for joining us on today's episode of Ask Paul Tripp. A teen reader of your book, New Morning

Mercies for teens, asked, I was reading through the Q&A section at the back when I thought of a question

of my own. Is listening to secular music wrong? Not all of it swears or speaks about sex, and some

have really positive messages.

Does listening to secular music stop us from being closer to God?

Well, like I usually do, I want to start with a helicopter view of this question and work down to more details.

There are two things that you need to think about when you're thinking about how to

interact with anything that's produced in this fallen world. And the first thing is that it's

important to realize that we live in the middle of a spiritual war.

From the time of the sin of Adam and Eve until the time where we're in the final kingdom,

there is a great spiritual war taking place.

Paul sort of summarizes that saying,

we don't wrestle against flesh and blood,

but against principalities and powers.

And you awake every day to that war.

That war is normal.

It's not just weird moments of demons and deliverance,

but it's every day.

There really is a Satan who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. We know that sin is seductive,

we know it's deceptive, we know it's attractive.

What is evil in God's eyes doesn't always seem evil to us.

Sometimes wrong things present themselves as incredibly attractive.

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