So many personal financial talks begin with education and a budget. That is not where Paul David Tripp in his book Redeeming Money: How God Reveals and Reorient Our Hearts says begin. In this book published by Crossway Tripp takes us to the heart of the problem which happens to be the heart.

Tripp, who has been responsible for over 30 books or video series brings years of experience as a counselor to this book. This book is filled with examples from those years of people who have allowed money to destroy them.

He encourages us to look at ourselves and believes that money is one of the principal ways to demonstrate who you think you are. By looking at a person's relationship to money, you get a sense of that person's identity. Therefore, he tells you to take a good long look at your heart.

I personally took a lot away from his chapter 4 entitled: Money and the Grace of Surrender. In that chapter he looked at the Lord's Prayer as a guide for us to surrender to the Lord and change our views of money. He says, "Financial sanity doesn't begin with hard work and careful budgeting, although both are beneficial. Money sanity begins with surrender, a surrender that rescues us from ourselves and frees us to use what God has provided in the way he intended." From there he unpacks the Lord's Prayer in a very helpful manner.

This will definitely be a book that I will refer back to as I come across this subject again in my life and preaching. It is filled with convicting truth. It made me think through my own personal view of money.

I received a copy of this book from the publishers for an honest review.