Nina Collins Harvey

“Jesus Christ came to this earth, struggled, suffered, and died so that you might die. Let that sink in. It was not His death that gave you life—His death gave you death in Him. But what happened after His death? His victory over death. The resurrection. Jesus Christ died so that you might die, and He lives so that you might live. Your life in Christ is what happens after your death in Him. There will be no resolution to these struggles in your life if you do not willingly give your self-fashioned identity to Christ that it might die. It will die anyway, so let it be in Him. And when you live, it will be in Him, too. Friends, there is no hope for you that is not Jesus. There is nothing interesting about you if it is not resurrected in Him. There is nothing defining about you that cannot live in Christ. Your selfishness is dead. Your lust is dead. Your need to be unique is dead. Your envy, greed, obsessions, guilts—they are all dead. Dead and gone in Christ. Stop trying to tidy them up and make them mean something, because they never will. Total submission to Christ is total life in Christ. This is because without dying in Him you cannot live in Him. When you submit your life to Him fully, you can live in Him, fully. There is no going halfsies with death for Christians. You can’t try to keep living the life that should have died in Christ. You can’t arrange all your little ideas about yourself in some compatible way with your idea of Christ. Let Him have it all—what remains after that death is only life. You are no longer the author of your own identities, but rather you live in the Author and He lives in you.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It